Shuzluva: I’m in the same boat as Janine; I was *trying* to read two other books (one successfully, the other? Not so much) and when I got this ARC I took a deep breath and plunged right in. I’m excited to discuss the book with Janine since we share the same love of the series but have definitely disagreed about certain books and characters.

Janine: But first, a plot summary. Kiss of Snow begins with Hawke, the alpha of the SnowDancer wolf changeling pack chastising two of his young soldiers for getting into a fight while on duty. Maria is contrite but Sienna challenges Hawke’s authority. Hawke disciplines both girls but simmering under the surface is the unwanted sexual tension between Sienna and Hawke.

Longtime readers of Singh’s Psy/Changeling series know that Sienna is a member of the Psy, a race of psychics linked through a neural network called the PsyNet. Through a protocol called Silence, the Psy repress all emotions, but Sienna’s family, the Laurens, defected from the PsyNet when Sienna was deemed by the one of the leaders on the Psy Council to be too powerful.

Rather than watch Sienna and her younger brother Toby and cousin Marlee die, Sienna’s two uncles, Walker and Judd, risked their lives and disengaged from the net, and the family survived by forming its own psychic network and finding asylum with Hawke’s wolf pack.

All that happened when Sienna was sixteen. Now she is nineteen, nearly twenty, and in love with Hawke, a man who once mistrusted all Psy because of the damage they inflicted on his loved ones years before. But Sienna’s fascination with Hawke only hurts her, because Hawke, although powerfully attracted to her, resists his feelings with all his strength.

Between Hawke and Sienna stands more than one conflict. Most prominent is the difference in their ages — Hawke’s age isn’t given in this book, but I believe he is in his thirties, while Sienna is nineteen.

In addition, there is the fact that when Hawke was just ten years old, he suffered an almost unbearable loss — Rissa, the girl who would have become his mate had she lived to adulthood, died. The wolf changelings only mate once in a lifetime, and Hawke knows he cannot mate again.

Finally, Sienna is a cardinal X-Psy, which means she possesses lethal and limitless power. But that very power threatens to consume her and perhaps even those in whose vicinity she lives, including her family and Hawke’s wolf pack. No X-Psy is known to have lived as long as Sienna, and although she herself remains in denial, Judd fears she does not have much time left.

For all those reasons, especially the age difference, Hawke is wary of Sienna’s appeal to him. He tries to tell himself that she is off-limits, but her friendship with the leopard changeling Kit gets under his skin. When Hawke’s sexual hunger begins to affect the teens in his pack, he knows he must sleep with someone, but he does not intend that it be Sienna.

Sienna, angry and hurt after realizing this, decides to move on and goes clubbing with friends. After her dancing nearly incites a fight at the club, Hawke collects her and dances with her in the moonlight. Because he can’t stand to free her to be with someone else, but knows that he cannot give her all she deserves — the profound connection of the mating bond – Hawke sends Sienna mixed signals.

Sienna is torn and confused, but eventually she understands that she needs to fight for Hawke, as she’s seen her packmates do for their mates.

Meanwhile, things are heating up in the war between the members of Pure Psy and the changelings, and the coming battle threatens not just Hawke and Sienna, but all they hold dear.

Interspersed between Sienna and Hawke’s romance is a quieter romantic relationship that unfolds between Sienna’s uncle, Walker Lauren, and Lara, the wolf changelings’ healer. Lara and Walker were close friends until one night a kiss changed that. Walker drew away from Lara and his rejection hurt her, but six months later, the two still miss each other.

Also woven in is a thread about Alice Eldridge, a scientist who wrote a dissertation on the X-Psy over a century earlier, before the implementation of Silence. Alice’s emails to her father appear at the end of some of the chapters, as Alice gets closer and closer to uncovering what may or may not be the solution that could save Sienna’s life.

I’m anxious to hear what you thought of Kiss of Snow, Shuzluva. This book grabbed me by the throat and I spent every free minute reading it, even skipping dinner for hours because the story was so gripping.

Hawke and Sienna’s relationship has been building over the course of the series and this was the culmination not only of their unrequited feelings, but also of the first arc of the Psy/Changeling series itself, with hostilities between the series’ protagonists and the villains finally breaking out into war.

We were also treated to the birth of Luke and Sascha’s baby – and no, I’m not revealing the gender or name of the child in this review! Judd and the mysterious Ghost’s alliance took a very compelling turn, too, with the Ghost conflicted over whether to help Judd save Sienna when she could present a threat to his own plans.

For all those reasons I could hardly put this book down, and I was left reflecting on how well Nalini Singh builds her plot arcs and sets up her emotional payoffs. I think she is one of the genre’s best when it comes to plotting. This book was also, as you mentioned to me in an email, tightly written, and all of that made it a very satisfying read. I think it might be my new favorite in this series.

Shuzluva: First, thank you for the fantastic plot summary, Janine. I know I would have probably given something away that shouldn’t be discussed in a review, but my tendency is to overshare when I’m trying to make a point.

Janine: Thanks, but I’ve been known to give away spoilers too. I hope I haven’t done so in this instance.

Shuzluva: Regarding my immediate reaction to Kiss of Snow, I am in the same boat as you. I managed to read this book during every free minute I had and absolutely blew through it. That’s not to say this book is a light read. Things get hot and heavy in a number of ways and the reading is intense on both an intellectual and psychological level.

I actually found myself going back to re-read certain passages that had less to do with the emotional arc of the story and more to do with the nuts-and-bolts of Sienna’s designation, the movement towards open hostilities between the Psy and the Changelings (and humans), and certain tactical interactions between characters just to make sure I didn’t miss anything critical.

As I noted to you, the book is incredibly tight, with the primary story strongly interwoven with the secondary and tertiary plot lines so much so that no event or action seems extraneous or gratuitous.

Janine: Great point about the weaving of the plot lines. I loved the ways they impacted on one another.

Shuzluva: I have been fascinated by the progression of Hawke and Sienna’s relationship from the moment the two of them appeared on the page together way back when. While I don’t think of dogs as sensual creatures the same way as cats (and I’m a dog person, trust me), Hawke always appealed to me on a physical level, and from the very first, his antagonistic relationship with Sienna was a recipe for serious combustion. Their interactions are so hot that there were times I was sure my eyeballs were going to catch fire.

I have been driving myself crazy in terms of trying to figure out who the Ghost is. I have a pretty good idea, but I’m still not convinced. Judd Lauren’s alliance with him and their scenes are totally compelling. This will probably be one of my classic overshares: I cannot wait to see what happens next with the Psy Council and the repercussions it will have on the PsyNet.

One of the reasons this series works so well for me, and this book especially, is that the different characters appear without a hiccup in personality or voice. That is highlighted with the birth of Lucas and Sasha’s baby. The interactions between the SnowDancer and DarkRiver packs (and the reminders that they were once not allied with each other) were superbly done, and the focus shifted smoothly from one character to another and one situation to another. I know I’ve mentioned this before in my reviews of the Psy/Changeling series, but the characters are so well written that they each retain their individual personalities without becoming background wallpaper. With a cast that is now well over 50 characters, of which over half have been written about in significant detail, the ability to continue making all of them integral to the story is an accomplishment in and of itself.

Janine: Agreed, it is very impressive.

Shuzluva: Your use of “emotional payoff” hit the nail on the head. Kiss of Snow is a gripping read due to both the emotional and intellectual payoffs. For me, it’s definitely in the top three of the series.

Janine: It is easily up there for me as well. With regard to criticisms, I can find very few things to complain about. Singh has a tendency to use certain words and phrases a lot, but this is one of the things that give her writing style its vivid and distinctive quality which has grown on me over the course of the series.

Gender roles are a bit on the traditional side in certain regards in these books, too. The male protagonists are almost always dominant and lethal, while the women, though emotionally strong, shy away from killing. We hear about the maternal contributions of submissive females, but the submissive males don’t get much positive attention.

Some of the Psy/Changeling books I’ve liked best have been those where that hero/heroine dynamic is a little less conservative, such as Branded by Fire, with its sexually experienced heroine, or Play of Passion with its older heroine/younger hero matchup. But even though this book doesn’t fit that description, I enjoyed it so tremendously that I was only very slightly bothered by the fact that Hawke outmatched Sienna in many ways. More on the reasons why in a minute.

What about you, Shuzluva? Did this book have any drawbacks for you?

Shuzluva: I agree with you about the traditional gender roles in this series. The lack of a positive submissive male model was highlighted in Play of Passion, and I was definitely bothered by it as well as another plot point that had to do with gender roles in the same book. I know we discussed it in an email exchange, and while I loved Play of Passion, that particular point still sticks in my craw. If anyone would like to discuss it with me (I know I’m being somewhat vague here, but I don’t want to give away plot points that are well into a book) feel free to mention it in the comments.

In this particular book, the gender roles were in no way reversed, but perhaps better balanced due to Sienna’s abilities. You mentioned the males of the series being lethal, but Hawke admits he takes no pleasure in killing, which made that particular aspect of their relationship an easy read for me. I did have a bit of a struggle with the age gap between Hawke and Sienna (even though it’s unclear as to exactly what their age difference is), and frankly I wish that Sienna had just a couple more years on her. I’ll discuss that below.

Janine: Yes, let’s discuss the way Singh handled the age difference. As I read this book I compared it to Julie Anne Long’s What I Did for a Duke, where there was a similar age difference between the characters. The Long book had a more realistic treatment of that type of conflict, with the heroine at first dismissing the hero as much older, and only coming of age during the course of that story. Genevieve’s immaturity was an integral obstacle to the romance in that book.

By contrast, Singh chose to present Sienna very differently. Despite her youth and her sexual inexperience, Sienna lived through some horrors in childhood, and those things forced her to grow up early so that she is in some ways as strong and emotionally mature as Hawke.

I think it is perhaps a less true-to-life depiction because I believe that in real life someone who lived through the kind of abuse Sienna endured as a child would come out more damaged, and not necessarily strong enough to handle Hawke with all his possessiveness, dominant instincts.

But putting aside that caveat, I have to say that I really enjoyed the relationship between the two of them and didn’t care much that it wasn’t entirely realistic.

I loved that Sienna was vulnerable, but not as much as she was when she first arrived on SnowDancer land. I loved that she was mature enough to understand what was driving Hawke, while still being young enough to go clubbing in sexy jeans and dance on top of the bar when she thought he’d be sleeping with someone else.

And I loved that Hawke was so thrown by his feelings for her, so conflicted as to acting on them. I know that there are many readers who dislike big age differences, and often I do too. I also feel Singh walked a tightrope here, because Hawke would probably be too much for most thirty year old women, let alone a nineteen year old.

But ultimately this aspect of the book worked for me because Hawke wasn’t waiting for Sienna to grow up so he could jump her bones – he struggled as hard as he could to stay away from her, and only gave in when he realized how impossible that was for both of them.

Hawke’s internal struggle made it clear that his control over the situation had shattered, and in a strange way that shifted the balance of power between him and Sienna, so that despite the age and rank difference, to say nothing of his dominant alpha personality and greater sexual experience, there was a feeling of the two of them being on equal ground. He was in some ways just as powerless in the face of his need for Sienna as she felt with him early on in the book.

Shuzluva: You laid out Sienna and Hawke’s issues beautifully here. I think my greatest struggle was reconciling the Sienna I was reading on the page with her chronological age. On an emotional level she didn’t read like a 19 year old, especially a 19 year old that had been Silent for the majority of her life. I definitely had some trouble with this, and I realize that some of it has to do with my own view of age differences and maturity. And it bothered me as well that we don’t know how old Hawke is. I think it’s another indication of “it shouldn’t matter”, but it must for me because I’m thinking about it.

Janine: We agree on both these points. I wished Hawke’s age had been given in the book because I wanted to know exactly how many years separated him from Sienna’s, and I also felt that Sienna’s maturity wasn’t entirely realistic. But despite these issues, I enjoyed the conflicted, combustive chemistry between the main characters so much that I was willing to throw my reservations to the wind and fly with the story.

Shuzluva: What saved this for me was Sienna’s very age-appropriate reactions to Hawke (read: going clubbing in sexy gear to get him jealous) and her ability to slice down to the heart of the matter whether it was dealing with her own fears and feelings or Hawke’s. Sienna’s direct approach to the deepest emotional conflict was refreshing and her down and dirty confrontation with Hawke rang so true that I could almost hear the bells going off.

Janine: Terrific points about Sienna. How did you feel about Lara and Walker? That subplot didn’t grab my attention right away because at first their dynamic seemed a bit too similar to Hawke and Sienna’s, with Walker sending Lara push-pull signals and Lara being hurt by them, but once Walker started to open up to Lara, that relationship developed in a different direction from the Hawke and Sienna storyline and I started caring about them too.

Shuzluva: From Walker and Lara’s first interaction I knew we were going to be treated to a secondary romantic subplot. I admit that I mentally groaned when Walker began with the hot/cold crap and Lara acted wounded by his withdrawal. But I was curious about the one Lauren family member that seemed to be the least well drawn. I am thankful that Walker and Lara’s relationship went very differently than I had assumed (damn assumptions) and am now a huge Walker fan.

Janine: On another note, I really enjoyed the interactions between Judd and the Ghost. The Ghost remains as enigmatic as ever, and his actions in this book have made me even more interested in him than I was before. I hope he gets his own book eventually, and the same goes for Vasic and Aden from Judd’s Arrow squad.

Shuzluva: I mentioned my fascination with the Ghost above, and the confusion behind his loyalties and actions. With Hawke finishing his romantic arc, I find that I’m hopeful we will get another Psy-driven book (*cough* Kaleb *cough*) versus another SnowDancer / DarkRiver one.

Janine: Sounds good to me. There are some falcon changelings waiting for their turn, too.

It’s time to grade Kiss of Snow. I very rarely give A range grades to books unless I love the prose as much as I do the characters, and while I care about plot, which is one of Singh’s greatest strengths as a writer, it isn’t usually my highest priority as a reader or a reviewer.

Still, this book was such a roller coaster ride — with great pacing, emotional scenes that made me cry, happy moments that brought a goofy smile to my face, and scorching hot love scenes — that I can’t give it less than an A-.

Shuzluva: I am on the opposite end of the spectrum. If a book has an amazing plot and characters that are only likeable, I’m likely to give it a higher grade than if the reverse were true.

Beyond plot, I feel that a lot of components seamlessly came together in Kiss of Snow and the book provides emotional as well as intellectual rewards that are not solely dependent upon the main characters. And all the sexin’ didn’t suck either. Kiss of Snow gets an A from me.

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Related posts:

1. JOINT REVIEW: Kiss of Snow by Nalini Singh (and Giveaway)
2. REVIEW: Branded by Fire by Nalini Singh
3. REVIEW: Archangel’s Kiss by Nalini Singh

UPDATE: We’ve decouple the review from the giveaway because this is a book so many want to talk about. The review will be reposted on Monday in a new and separate post.

The winners have all been emailed.

1) Andy Swanson
2) Cath
3) Adrianne Robinson
4) Jenny
5) Sera
6) Nicola
7) sequoia
8) Erika

NOTE FROM JANE: We have 8 copies of the hardcover debut from a Dear Author favorite, Nalini Singh. These 8 copies we will give away on Sunday to a random commenter to this post. This book engendered such a strong response that Janine and Shuzluva decided to do a joint review. There may be some spoilers in this review and if you don’t want to be spoiled, just skip to the comments section and leave a comment as to why you want to read Kiss of Snow. I’ll tell you my reason. Because Singh delivered everything she promised when Hawke and Sienna were first introduced in the first book in this series, Slave to Sensation. I’ve told anyone who asked that yes, this book is worth the hardcover price.

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Archangel’s Kiss by Nalini Singh
2. Wanna Win an ARC from Nalini Singh?
3. REVIEW: Branded by Fire by Nalini Singh

Nonetheless, she is troubled by the proposal since she knows Sebastian doesn't return her romantic feelings. She still accepts the offer, both because of her feelings for Sebastian and because being his wife will enable her to secure her younger brothers' future.

Sebastian's younger sister Portia, a cold young woman who has never liked Lucy, is betrothed to a Marquess, and the family travels to the Marquess's home in the Cotswolds for the marriage ceremony. Meanwhile, because of Portia's competitiveness with Lucy, Portia and Sebastian's mother has asked Sebastian and Lucy to keep their betrothal a secret until after Portia is married.

One morning Lucy takes a walk intending to draw a view. She comes on a neighboring great house and decides to sketch it just as two riders arrive. Her cloak billows in the wind, causing a horse to rear back and throw off its rider, who happens to be James, Viscount Selsey.

James and Lucy talk and Lucy is surprised at how comfortable she feels with Lord Selsey, despite his high rank. They run into each other again over the next few days, both outdoors and during the nightly neighborhood entertainments.

One night James overhears Portia refer to her cousin as "Lousy Lucy from the workhouse." When he attempts to comfort a distraught Lucy, James learns the full story: Lucy's mother, a squire's daughter, ran off with a clerk and the family lived in squalor until her parents and several siblings died of typhus when Lucy was nine. Lucy and her two remaining brothers ended up in a workhouse, and it wasn't until she wrote to her estranged aunt that they were taken to Essex by the Arringtons, who looked on them as charity cases.

Instead of recoiling, James only respects Lucy more after hearing the story, and Lucy is warmed by James' admiration. Still, neither James nor Lucy intends to act on the attraction, Lucy because she is loyal to Sebastian, James because Lucy isn't well-born enough to marry, yet too much of a lady to dally with.

Meanwhile, James's sister Anna is introduced to Sebastian, and she is instantly smitten with him. Sebastian too is hugely attracted to Anna – and to her tremendous marriage portion as well. But he's not sure if she would marry him, and he has a reason for needing to marry soon. Thus the stage is set for something to go awry for whichever of the women marries Sebastian.

While I am not sorry I read this book, I found the first half of the book a lot less absorbing than the second half. More on that in a bit, but first, a few observations about the characters.

James and Lucy were both appealing characters with good qualities like integrity, honor, and a sense of responsibility in common, so I could believe that they would transcend the differences in their class and background. Let me add here that the attention to class and in both their cases (James, though a viscount, was considered an upstart since his title only dated back one other generation) helped add dimension to their characters as well.

One thing that troubled me a bit was the gap in their experience. They were both quite young, Lucy eighteen and James twenty-four, and both very mature for their ages. But Lucy's youth showed in her extreme naivete when it came to anything sexual and in her uncertainty over how to deal with her situation with Sebastian.

On the one hand, this helped make her a believable eighteen year old. But on the other hand, there were no such youthful characteristics to James, and I felt that he seemed as at least five years older than his twenty four years. Consequently, I also felt like I was reading a novel where the age difference between the characters was greater than it actually was, and as a result of that, there were times I felt a little uncomfortable.

Sunita: I agree with your take on the characters. Lucy seemed very sweet, but very young and unworldly. I don’t mind age gaps so I didn’t find them incompatible in that way, but I did wonder what James saw in her. The tone and approach of the book worked against them falling in lust, and they didn’t seem to have enough in common to develop a strong rapport in the short time they spent together. If anything, James seemed to feel pity and compassion for her, which for me doesn’t translate into love easily.

Janine: I felt James also admired Lucy for the strength that got her through the worst parts of her childhood.

Another issue was that the first half of A Marriage of Inconvenience did not engage my interest as much as I wanted it to. The writing style had a nice clarity to it and the main characters were likable, but for the first half of the book, they seemed too perfect to me, almost entirely without personality flaws.

A lot was said about James's vanity and managing ways but I felt that I was being told about them, rather than shown them. Since the only thing he tried to manage in the first half was his sister Anna's attraction to Sebastian, which I sensed was as disastrous as he thought it would be, his attempts to troubleshoot that situation seemed like a very minor flaw in his character.

Sunita: Yes! I kept waiting for him to be arrogant, or heavy-handed, or egotistical, but he didn’t really show any of those characteristics. He was just a nice, serious, head of family with a keen sense of his responsibilities.

Janine: Agreed. Other problems for me in the first half were the pacing and my expectations. Since the book is called A Marriage of Inconvenience, I kept waiting for the conflict implied in the title to appear – for the characters to feel inconvenienced by their duty to marry.

Honestly, I think this title is something of a misnomer, because although Lucy and James are forced to marry, the need for that doesn't arise until the halfway mark, and by then they already have feelings for each other that they just don't fully recognize yet.

In the first half of the book, the conflict is instead a subtle one which revolves around Sebastian's presence in their lives. We readers know Lucy is engaged to Sebastian, but James isn't aware of the betrothal. For me, that fact didn't create enough tension and suspense, since it was clear that Sebastian wasn't attracted to Lucy and that his interest in Anna was much greater.

I felt that Lucy and Sebastian's secret betrothal didn't present enough of an obstacle, either internal or external, to James and Lucy's happiness, and therefore I was somewhat bored during the first half of the book. The nice chemistry between James and Lucy and the impending disaster for Anna did keep me reading, but I kept being tempted to skim.

Sunita: I think I liked the first half more than you did, but I wasn’t sure where it was going. Having read The Sergeant’s Lady, I had an idea, of course.

The writing and the setting evoke an older style of Regency trad; the small house party, the relatively leisurely pace where not too much is going on. I did wonder when it would pick up in intensity, but I rather enjoyed the atmosphere Ms. Fraser created.

My one niggle was the way the Dunmalcolms were depicted. I suppose it’s possible for Highland Scots who were descended from Stuart Kings to have retained their lands and wealth after Culloden, but it doesn’t seem likely (especially since one of the heirs to the Earldom died in that battle). Similarly, it is possible for a Scottish Earl to show up in full Highland dress at a dinner party in the country, but I did wonder about it. Given the high quality of Fraser’s research in the previous book, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I did find myself asking questions and looking stuff up.

Janine: For me the second half of the story was far more engaging. Without giving away too many spoilers, it was here that Lucy and James's relationship hit some substantial obstacles, ones that revealed flaws in their characters. James and Lucy stopped seeming so saintly to me and became real human beings – still likable, but capable of making mistakes and suffering their consequences. They also grew as a result of those experiences.

Sunita: I liked the second half quite a bit as well, and readers of the previous book will really appreciate the development of Anna’s character here.

I thought the developing relationship between Lucy and James, especially their physical relationship, was really well done. Their deepening intimacy is integral to their growing knowledge of and love for each other. Indeed, these scenes made James’s anger at Lucy and their subsequent estrangement somewhat less believable to me. I’m growing impatient with the Small Misunderstanding that separates newly joined lovers and adds one more bump in the road to the HEA. I would have preferred an obstacle which put Lucy and James on different sides of an issue without pushing them apart through anger that the reader knows will have to be overcome relatively quickly.

Janine: I actually saw the final conflict as more than a small bump in James and Lucy's road. The consequences of Lucy's choices were such that I found that situation entirely believable.

A Marriage of Inconvenience is one of those tough to grade books. I would give the first half no more than a C, but the second half at least a B, so my overall grade for it ends up being a C+/B-.

Sunita: I’ll give it a B-. It’s not as intense a story as The Sergeant’s Lady and the characters aren’t quite as compelling, but it’s a worthwhile read.

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Sergeant’s Lady by Susanna Fraser
2. REVIEW: Posh Doc Claims His Bride by Anne Fraser
3. JOINT REVIEW: A Christmas Promise by Mary Balogh

John: Falling Under took a chapter for me to get into, but I found myself frantically enjoying it as the reading experience went on. The YA paranormal genre hasn’t burnt out for me yet — although I have gotten more picky — and I found the unique spin on the common cliches to be intriguing and dark. There was something from the beginning between Haden and Theia that drew me in and absorbed my interest. I didn’t know exactly why, but I knew there was something in their story that I wanted to read more into.

Jia: I’m dangerously nearing the burn out point for paranormal YA myself so I understand becoming picky. Granted, I’ve always been very picky when it comes to fantasy and fantasy-related genres, just because of my reading background. For me, Falling Under was something like a cross between Twilight, Labyrinth, and the Hades and Persephone myth. Because of that, it didn’t draw me in since so much of it felt familiar.

Unlike you, Haden and Theia were my least favorite parts of the book. I wanted to give Theia a good shake several times throughout the story and Haden’s character embodies a lot of what I currently dislike about YA paranormal romances. Those things, combined with the push-pull of their on-again, off-again relationship, made the first two-thirds of the book a slog.

John: haven’t seen Labyrinth, but the Twilight/Hades and Persephone feelings were very much there. That myth didn’t register for me while reading, but it is rather present. Alice in Wonderland was also suggested (at least, to my reading experience). Theia did have some dumb moments, but I considered those moments where any teenager would make a mistake. I liked her because she managed to overcome them in my eyes when she stood up for herself. The scene outside the club (which is one of my favorites) where she basically tells Haden he’s a douchenugget made me clap. Jane made a comment about this book sounding like a Harlequin Presents novel, and Theia is one of the similarities. She’s more often than not a beta heroine who loves to swoon in her man’s arms, but by the end of the book she gets stronger and does some kick-ass things that would be plot spoilers.

Jia: Alice in Wonderland is a great comparison! A lot of the dream sequences and scenes towards the latter part of the novel fit that. I’d say Haden contributes more to the Harlequin Presents mystique. After all, you can’t have a proper HP beta heroine without a hero who treats her like a doormat. He, and his treatment of Theia, are the biggest problems I have with the book. He’s a jerk. He flaunts the other girls in front of her. He does that thing where if he touches another girl, Theia can feel it and that is skeevy. I feel sorry for Theia, and I feel sorry for the poor girl who probably thinks Haden’s into her, not knowing that he’s simply using her as a conduit. He claims that this is for her own good, that he’s trying to scare her away but honestly, he does a piss poor job of it. He visits her in her dreams, with what I can only call courting behavior. Talk about mixed signals. I end up feeling bad for Theia because a guy who embarrasses you in front of other people is not good news. I understand Haden’s behavior was meant to confirm his otherworldly nature and that he was not someone you should trust in any way, but it came off as gross rather than dangerous to me.

I did like the reversal in the last third or so of the novel. I think I would liked the book more if some of that type of action had been scattered evenly throughout the story. I was a little disappointed that when Theia does get stronger as a character, we switched over to Haden’s point of view. I have no interest in woobified characters and the angst that makes them do the bad things they do, so I was bummed. I wish we could have seen Theia cope with her circumstances and the changes in her life. On the other hand, we did get to see more of the supporting characters and that’s a plus in my book. Them, I really liked without any reservations.

John: I really enjoyed the dream sequences. The macabre parts were just so gruesome, and made the book feel really unique to me. Most PNR YA authors tend to go for a watered down darkness in their books. Haden is definitely a Presents hero, and that’s why I love him. After talking to Jane I started on the Presents line and was hooked on the heroes — and I resent the doormat comment (even if, for some of the books, it is true). Haden did flaunt girls at Theia, but he was also dealing with mixed feelings of attraction and attempted avoidance. As soon as she bitched him out and he was man enough to apologize, I felt like his assholery was redeemed. I thought the conflict was understandable considering he had been attracted to her for a long time (if a bit on the creepy side), and was finally able to work on those feelings — but of course have to destroy her soul at the end of it. I’d probably be sending mixed signals if my hormones were that erratic. Of course, in this case it’s a matter of reader understanding. I just happen to think Haden deserves it based on his apology (and the fact that he’s still sexy and acts more gentlemanly to her afterwords.)

As to the reversal, it really threw me for a loop. I never expected that to happen. My copy of the book probably gave me the eye as I sat gaping at it. The events that make it happen cause the reader to never see it coming. Gwen got major props from me for being able to surprise me that much with it. It showed a lot of character courage, because it was almost like she had to see it through Haden to get the full effect of Theia’s change. Staying in the same viewpoint for that particular section wouldn’t have been bad, but I think it would have jolted the reader even more. Out of the two of them, Theia’s personality was the one that changed most – and most readers wouldn’t have believed it no matter the circumstances. The way Gwen ends the book makes up for the lost Theia time in my opinion because the possibility it ends on is so devilish. In a way she does her readers (and story) a great service by actually corrupting her heroine. From all the PNR in YA I’ve read, the authors have a tendency to think that the characters have to be pure and corrupt attracted. The concept of two gray people is really rare, especially when the evil/darkness is a driving force of conflict in the story.

Jia: A bit creepy? Haden has been watching her without her knowledge for a long time! That’s stalking. Or, at the very least, obsessive voyeurism. That’s plenty creepy. I get that it’s part of his nature but there are plenty of ways to make a supernatural love interest seem genuinely dangerous without resorting to treating girls badly or using them. Theia shouldn’t have to call Haden out for using his abilities on her best friends in front of her. I believe that scene even happened later in the book, so he should already know that crosses the line with Theia.

The macabre scenes and dreams were absolutely my favorite parts of the book. They had a nice horror to them and I agree that while we see many paranormal YA novels labeled as “dark,” they’re a softer, toothless type of dark. That’s often a personal complaint of mine. They hint at a threat but never actually go there. The scenes in Falling Under remind me strongly of Nevermore, another paranormal YA that debuted last year. Readers who liked that aspect of Nevermore will probably like this aspect of Falling Under, because they’re very similar.

I think the main reason why I liked the reversal of Theia’s character is because it seems like it’s getting pretty rare to see such a strong character change over the course of a single novel. These days, where multi-book series are the norm, a character arc can take several books and sometimes I am just not willing to sit through 5 books to see if a protagonist evolves. That is just too much time. So I did like seeing Theia start at a certain point and end at a completely different one by the time the novel finished. But I think that’s also why I’m disappointed that we didn’t see it from her perspective. It doesn’t happen that often and when it does happen, we witness it from the guy’s point of view when I still think of this book as Theia’s story. Then again, I’m not particularly fond of late-introduced viewpoint narrators either.

What did you think of Theia’s relationship with her father?

John: That has also happened in Shiver, which is another book I enjoyed immensely (and, as I recall, so did you.) Where exactly does it go from sensual voyeurism to stalking? To me there is indeed a line, but in the world of PNR it’s not the cut and dry one. Romance and YA in general often show that kind of thing. Girls following the guys they like at school and learning random things about them because of their major crushes/lurve. We tend to not think that’s creepy, so what’s wrong with a hot macabre Darcy figure doing the same? Haden did watch her but it was out of interest, and he didn’t have a way to communicate with her until that point. He didn’t get pleasure from the act, so I felt like it skirted the creepy factor. It was implied in my reading mind that he wouldn’t have chosen that course if there had been a better (and admittedly less dark) way to see her and meet her. He tried to use them to get Theia away from him. It’s a lose/lose situation for Haden, because Theia is at least kind and bull-headed enough to insist she stay with him no matter the warnings. I didn’t recall any use of this tactic once she was actually into his conflict, but that could just mean nothing registered for me as important enough use of that behavior for me to remember it.

I have yet to read Nevermore, but judging on what I’ve heard and your opinion, I’d safely say that it would match this book quite nicely. The darker scenes were some of my favorites as well.

You bring up an interesting point, and I find it a real strength that the book wasn’t skimping us on a full character arc. I’m glad it happened because I wouldn’t have come out with as many positive feelings about Theia if she hadn’t been changed by her experiences. It would have been nice to see it from her view-point, but at the same time I can’t help but wonder if there was a larger purpose for it. Her relationship with her father wasn’t my favorite. It was probably my least-favorite part of the book. Keeping her so secluded like that seemed extremely unrealistic to me – even if she reminded him of his dead wife. It was like something out of a gothic novel. It worked for the feel of the novel but in the next book I’d like to see it taken a step down or two so it feels more realistic and the conflict can be explored instead of heightened for dramatic effect.

Jia: Actually, my opinion of Shiver can be best described as “meh” and in fact, the longer I am away from having read it, the more my opinion goes down. The main reason why Haden’s behavior crosses the line for me is because it’s not consensual. He was watching her without her knowing. Not even in school or in a public place, but at home and in her dreams. It’s invasive. And I get the strong sense from the text that we, as readers, are supposed to give him pass because he’s hot. This is actually one of my least favorite tropes across all fiction genres.

I thought Falling Under had a lot of callbacks to gothic novels, to be honest. The whole opening scene where she’s running across the lawn of the big house in her virginal white nightgown felt very gothic to me. So I don’t think it was just the controlling father. I did like that it was a young adult novel where the parent is present and actually parenting (though admittedly not very well or in any way that could be called healthy) because I feel like there is a dearth of parents being around in YA novels. It’s improved in recent years but there’s such a long history of dead/absent/estranged parents in the entire body of literature for younger readers that it’s like a drop in the bucket. I do wish it could have been more positive. I have seen and known parents who are overprotective in the same way Theia’s father so his behavior wasn’t that unbelievable for me, especially when you take into account his personality which is very stuffy. I do think it faded out around the same point in the book where Theia starts rebelling, so I agree that the existing conflict there could have been explored more. It would be interesting to see how the father-daughter relationship changes in light of what happens to Theia.

Speaking of Theia’s other relationships, I did like her two friends and the guys around them. In a lot of books, the supporting cast seems to exist for the sole purpose of helping the main character and while they did help Theia when she needed help (because that’s what friends do), they had their own lives and interests outside of Theia’s concerns and conflict.

John: I thought your review of Linger implied a larger liking of Shiver, but that’s my mistake. This is a case where I freely gave my consent because I felt like his intentions weren’t malicious. ‘Supernatural stalking’ through powers and looking glasses – or anything like that, really – is problematic because more often than not if the heroine can read minds or see into dreams or what-have-you, it’s assumed the reader is okay with it because she either can’t help it or is from a culture/world where the use of the power isn’t as obtrusive. In Haden’s case, I think it’s much the same. Living in the human world his whole life would probably not have allowed him to find watching a strange girl okay. I’m not a huge fan of the trope but Theia didn’t dwell on it, so as a reader I didn’t necessarily read anything into it beyond ‘she’s okay with it’.

The gothic feel was very welcomed for me. I am a fan of PNR, but a story that has a touch of the spooky in it works wonders for me when I’m in a funk and need something more out of this world. To me my parents aren’t that overprotective, so it was just harder to relate to the situation. I haven’t met anyone whose parents have come close to that level, either. I didn’t completely disbelieve it, but it did make the scenes a little more strained for me. The changing relationship will definitely be something to see in subsequent books.

Her friends and their own romances were good highlights for me. It’s nice when the main character has strong people around them. I especially loved the straight guy in drag who played the role of fortune teller. That moment was so hilarious. So, what did you think of the book overall?

Jia: While I liked the gothic elements and nightmarish feel of certain sections of the book, my frustration with Theia, Haden, and their relationship kept me from full enjoying the novel. I also found the narrative to be uneven in terms of pacing. I mentioned earlier that the majority of the book dragged for me, and I would have preferred the action to pick up earlier rather than waiting for the final third to do so. So despite the fact that there were some parts I definitely liked about the novel, they were not enough to balance out the things I didn’t because the parts I disliked, I disliked a lot. So for me, this book was a C-.

John: The gothic elements were a side I totally agreed with you on. Gwen showed her best when she was writing those scenes. Distorted Alice in Wonderland should be a new subgenre of YA as far as I’m concerned. I found Theia and Haden to be more forgivable and human characters, and as a teenager their relationship didn’t bother me as much. I was sucked into the novel and read it very fastly, so the pacing worked for me. The book’s father/daughter relationship rubbed me the wrong way for most of the novel, and the only other thing I noticed that bugged me was that it still followed some of the YA PNR formula outside of the unique scenes. The elements were fresh enough for me to really enjoy it and anticipate the sequel, so I found the book to be more of a B+.

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It has been five years since we've had a new Laura Kinsale book to read, and Lessons in French is quite a departure from her last book, Shadowheart.

Callie, or more properly, Lady Callista Taillefaire, is a 27-year old thrice-jilted heiress who wants nothing more than to live in relative peace – and raise her prize bulls. She believes that the only real attraction she possesses is her fortune, that her coppery hair, shy disposition, and agricultural passion are not only unfashionable, but also downright repellent to any man of worth. And especially to one man, in particular, whom she hasn't seen in ten years but who regularly stars in her imaginative daydreams.

Trev, or more properly, Trevelyan Davis d'Augustin, Duc de Monceaux, fled Shelford and Callie after her father, the earl, found the two of them hidden in his carriage, practicing more than the French Callie had been supposedly learning from Trev's mother, the duchesse. It was one thing to politely tolerate displaced French émigrés as neighbors, but quite another to tolerate one's daughter being ruined by a young, handsome, wild, and clearly unworthy young Frenchman. Now that the duchesse is so ill, however, Trev has returned, a wealthy man, with the happy news that he has won back the family estate as Monceaux.

Trev has done nothing of the sort, of course, having spent the past ten years in a somewhat itinerant and disreputable series of roles, from French prisoner to military translator to boxing promoter. It is the last that has made Trev's fortune as well as his fate, which at the moment is not looking so optimistic. For unbeknownst to Callie and his mother, Trev is not even supposed to be in England, else he be hanged for a forgery it matters not whether he actually committed.

But he is happy to take the risk, not only for his mother's sake, but also for the happy surprise that Callie is still in Shelford and still unmarried. And it is very clear to the duchesse (and likely even the village goats, who "very properly kept their opinions to themselves"), if not to the thrice-rejected Callie, that Trev is in love with the young woman with whom he shared so much youthful passion and so many harebrained adventures.

So what's one more?

Callie's cousin, the new earl, gambles away Callie's beloved Hubert, a bull of such fine conformation that Callie is planning on taking him straight to the upcoming county exhibition at Hereford. When Trev's plans to buy Hubert back from Colonel Davenport (who has wanted Hubert for quite some time, and who also plans to show him at Hereford), go awry, Trev and Callie find themselves falling right back into their own companionability, with Trev thinking this will be his last indulgence before leaving England for good, and Callie thinking she will spend three days with the one man she truly loves before retiring to the country as a spinster heiress.

The farcical adventures that follow implicate nearly everyone in the novel, from Major Sturgeon, one of Callie's three suitors who has returned to re-win her hand, to a mysterious woman from Trev's past, to Trev's clever, ailing mother, to the newly-minted fiancée of Callie's younger sister, Hermione.

Janet:

There's a point in the novel where Trev tells his mother that Callie "is a little heroine: she is all heart," and that's basically how I felt about the book as a whole. I found it a very emotional read, even though the tone was often quite light and even a bit cynical, at times. Callie and Trev's loneliness was so palpable to me as a reader, and it reminded me of several other, darker, Kinsale books, especially My Sweet Folly and Seize The Fire. Callie seems much more like Olympia or Folie to me than Merlin from Midsummer Moon, the book to which people seem to be comparing Lessons in French. And Trev felt much more like Robert Cambourne, or S.T. Maitland, or Sheridan Drake, without so much angst and past trauma. Despite the whimsy and wit, there was a definite thread of regret in the narrative, too:

It was not that she sounded disappointed, or miffed, or offended, the way any number of women of his past had sounded when he had tactfully refused their very agreeable offers. She didn't weep or withdraw. There was only that single small syllable she spoke, but he heard all the damage, the hurt they must have given her, those bastards who had left her standing at the altar or alone in the line of chairs against the wall, all their excuses and lies, those blind, blind, stupid bastards who never saw what was right before their eyes.

I don't know if it's a common timeframe among certain books, or Trev's somewhat cynical romanticism, but I loved the sense of longing portrayed in both Trev and Callie's characters; it gave the novel as a whole a poignancy that felt a bit darker rather than lighter to me.

Joan:

I've actually had a hard time going back to Lessons in French for a reread, the same way I do for Seize the Fire, precisely because it's a little bleak, and shot through with longing and loneliness. The comparison with Midsummer Moon is coming from Kinsale herself, and although Lessons in French does indeed have what Kinsale terms "hedgehog humor" here and there, the fact that Hubert is in fact a huge lumbering bull, rather than a little spikey hedgehog, has symbolic relevance to the book's feel. The humor is there in the characters' banter with each other, but it's doesn't inflect the overall feel of the book itself.   The underlying emotion of the book is melancholy – nostalgia for a lost time and place that wasn't all that great to begin with, regret for lost innocence that wasn't all that innocent anyway, yearning for a companion without being sure that someone to share things with would actually solve anything.

Janet:

I agree, Joan, and this issue has me reflecting on the whole idea of Callie as an "anti-kick ass heroine,' which I've seen around, too. I don't, actually, like to think of Callie in those terms, because the quality in her that seems so prominent is the way she copes and endures the powerful losses she's suffered, the way she remains optimistic and good-hearted.

On the one hand there is the way she uses her daydreaming as a substitute for what she cannot openly wish for:

It seemed worse than a disgrace now, it seemed a betrayal to be here with Trev, to want him beyond anything else, and yet be entertaining a proposal from another man. But it was not as if Trev had asked for her hand. Indeed, he said he was going away back to France. And he had said nothing to suggest that he desired to wed her and take her home to his estates. She might indulge in a great number of fantastical daydreams, but that was one fantasy that she ruthlessly denied to herself.

. . .

Callie tried to make a daydream for herself. It was what she always did when she could not quite bear what was real. She was, as most of those who knew her had informed her with some exasperation at one time or another, quite capable of becoming so lost in her thoughts that she did not hear any words spoken to her. But this time she could find no way to lose herself in any reverie-’or delusion, as they all seemed.

And then there is the way the unfolding of the story finds her in a very real adventure, one that makes her unable to use her old coping mechanism and immersed in a reality that exceeds both the fear and joy of her daydreams. In any case, the happiness is suffused with loss and the tragedy is infused with comedy, such that in my opinion they are really inseparable.

I think that's why I found the first love scene so powerful; it's like Trev is bringing Callie fully into the present, fully into herself, fully into her awareness of both of them as a couple. at least in that moment:

He held himself over her, his mouth hovering just above hers. "You want it all?" he breathed. He felt wild now, unreasonable. "You want me?"

She made a faint nod in the darkness. He wanted her with a need that had the blood hammering in his veins. He felt her lips part. Her body was delicate and soft beneath him, freed of all the petticoats and corsets and limits….

He turned his head down and kissed her temple, holding himself still inside her. He wanted to move so badly that he was shaking, but he waited in exquisite torment. "Je t'adore," he whispered. "Je t'aime. Do you want me?"

Her tension softened. Her hands opened across his back. "Oh yes," she breathed.

He pressed into her. She whimpered, but it was a sweet passionate sound, frantic, her body closing and squeezing around him.

"Do you want me?" He drew back slowly, torturing himself.

"Yes." She arched up, taking him deep as he pressed again. A moan escaped her.

Trev arched his head back, his eyes closed. "You want me?"

Because this is a Romance, of course, this uncomplicated space cannot last. But I think it's those moments in the text where we get the emotional payoff for enduring all the yearning and longing and loss we readers experience on behalf of the characters.

Joan:

Which is not to say that Callie and Trev aren't as fully realized as any of Kinsale's other heroes and heroines. They are and both are delicious. And if this were a character-driven book, it would be truly, deeply, wonderful. But Kinsale's weak point has ever been plotting and the raft-load of coincidences, machinations, and deus ex machina that brings together the loose ends begs a little more suspension of disbelief than I'm willing to grant.

Janet:

You know, I really felt that the plotting of Lessons in French was much tighter than in previous novels, especially books like My Sweet Folly and Seize the Fire, both of which I felt echoing faintly through this book. But perhaps because of that, it felt that there were too many coincidences that acted in concert to facilitate the ending of the book. A figure from Trevor's past shows up just at the right time; Hermione's new fiancé proves useful in exactly the right way at the right moment; an old suitor of Callie's returns to catalyze a whole series of revelations and connections previously unknown, etc. And while I appreciated one very clever turn related to Callie's three failed engagements, even that felt a bit contrived, as you suggest in the deux ex machina mention.

I'm usually willing to tolerate some deux ex machina results in farce, but this novel was so much more than that, I agree with you that it undermined the strong character-driven elements of the novel.

Joan:

I was also impatient with the pacing of the revelations. It took me a while to get into the book. I know stuff is hidden, especially about Trev's life, but it took too long for the reader figure out what was going on. Once I was let in on the book's secrets, it was a much quicker, more engaging read.

Janet:

Me, too! The first time I read the book, I really had to work to get through the first hundred pages. It felt slow, even lazy, much like Hubert! Now the second time I read it, these pages went much more quickly, probably because I already knew how things unfolded and could pick out all the hidden clues and half-expressed significances.

Joan:

Re-reading what I wrote above, it seems harsh. Any other book with these issues would get a C rating. But this is still the incomparable Laura Kinsale, who can write a book in Middle English and get people not only to understand but also to adore it, who can write about sadomasochism in Renaissance Italy and win a freaking RITA. Lessons in French is a tour de force that in any other author would have us singing to the skies with praise and wonder. But this is the first Laura Kinsale book in five years and had incredibly high expectations. So, while it’s not her personal best, IMO, it's still stunning and amazing and brilliant.

Grade: B+

Janet:

There is must so much I love about this book. I love that it's a pastoral; I love Callie's affection for Hubert and the fact that she feeds him Bath buns (this may be partially because I love Bath ;D); I love Callie's agricultural ambitions and her canny understanding of the social dynamics she must negotiate; I love Trev's romanticism, and I swooned at the very impassioned speech he delivers to Callie when she tries to insist for like the hundredth time that they are merely friends; I love the care that's obvious in drawing the picture of this not quite idyllic story-scape. And I think the novel deftly balances the tragic with the comic in a way that does not erase the tragic but still allows us to celebrate Callie and Trev's ultimate happiness. While Lessons in French is not my favorite Kinsale, its poignancy has stayed with me ever since I read it, making it a strong B+ for me, too.

Best regards,

-Joan/Sarah F. and Janet

This book can be purchased at Amazon
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FTC disclosure: This book was provided to the reviewer by either the author or publisher. The reviewer did not pay for this book but received it free.

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Sarah Finley’s husband left her to marry his boss. Her children have been tossed out of elementary school for a violation of the weapons code. Her friends and neighbors are avoiding her like the plague. Clearly, Sarah is in need of a Plan B.

Enter Charlie McNulty. Charlie is a buttoned down investment banker, focused on his road to a partnership. He’s also a ton of fun on the dance floor and in the bed. Sarah thinks he just might be the perfect second chance man. If only he weren’t working for her ex!

Jayne: So, you liked the first book better?
Jane: No, I don’t think I liked the first book better. I thought the first book was a bit more challenging because you, as the reader, had to get over the cheating.
Jayne: I meant, better than I did.
Jane: Oh, right, yes, I probably did like it better than you. Although I acknowledge your complaints were totally valid. I was just impressed at how Hartman really brought me around.

Jane: How would you have rated this one compared to the first book?
Jayne: I liked it a bit better. I didn’t have to get over the heroine not being sorry for the spot she put the hero in with the rest of the town. I did have to deal with Sarah ever having married Erik the Prick.

Jane: I loved the opening scene where Sarah goes to her husband’s office and starts throwing things around.
Jayne: Yeah, I loved that. She’s never thrown a hissy fit before but when she does…she really does.
Jane: I thought Hartman did a good job of showing Sarah as someone who wanted to settle down and she was willing to accept “leftovers” so to speak. I do think that Sarah loved Erik. She kept taking him back, even after he would break up with him. She really had no backbone initially but then isn’t that what her story arc was about – reclaiming herself, not willing to settle. I suppose the question is why was she so wimpy in the first place.

Jane: Was it realistic that her divorce and subsequent problems with her children would have been the impetus for her radical change?
Jayne: I guess she was in a rut, accepting that this was the best that her marriage would ever be but willing to put up with it for the children. I guess as a kick in the pants…a divorce and having her husband remarry on the same day would do it.
Jane: Plus the humiliation of everyone talking about Erik’s affair on top of her efforts to make everything so perfect for him. Or at least, perfect for her children.

Jane: I thought Hartman did a great job of playing up the consequences for the family’s one bad day. The families are shunning her kids and her. Everyone looks a little differently at them.
Jayne: Everyone was willing to gossip about her and her actions and those of the children but almost no one stuck up for her.

Jayne: It did bother me that it doesn’t seem like she’s got any true friends beyond Hailey.
Jane: This is true. Given how much she volunteered and was involved in her kid’s events, you would have thought she would have had one or two friends within that school system.
Jayne: Somebody to be on her side…Instead it’s all, “can you make the strawberry shortcakes even though we don’t want you there to serve them.”
Jane: I know! I can’t even imagine the chutzpah of someone to do that. Egads. I guess that was Charlie’s role, making her isolated was a way of allowing him to play the white knight.
Jayne: Or forcing him to be the white knight.

Jane: True. Did you find his character arc believable?
Jayne: Hmmmm…It seemed a bit sudden but this is a romance with a page limit.
Jane: I thought she did a good job of showing v. telling. LIke the one scene in which Charlie feels uncomfortable at his brother’s house, as if his brother’s family could no longer sustain whatever emotional need it had been filling in the past.

Jayne: What about the whole “Vegas” thing? People seem to have some really hawt sex in that carriage house.
Jane: There must be some aphrodisiac in the carriage house. I thought the Vegas thing was a little screwy, honestly, but I liked how it played out.
Jayne: The poker game was great. Each cheating but the other knowing and abetting it.

Jayne: As a mother, how do you like Sarah’s interactions with her children? Would you stand for Erik’s forgetting his weekends and letting his obligations to his children slide?
Jane: I think that there isn’t much you can do about it. I’ve had several friends go through divorce and sometimes the dads stay involved but often they don’t. Even when they remarry and have new families. I thought Erik was a terrible, terrible asshole and I didn’t think he was very three dimensiional. But, I do know of people who do this.

Jayne: So, it’s better not to force anything?
Jane: Yeah, I’m of the opinion that a bad parent is worse than no parent at all. And Charlie was committed to being there those kids. Maybe that is very fairytail-ish

Jayne: This is the second book in a row in which a father has fallen down on the job. First Olivia’s real father and now Lily and Simon’s father. Is Hartman saying anything about fathers today?
Jane: Isn’t the father in the first Hartman book you read a good dad?
Jayne: Or just setting up the McNulty Bros as good guys?
Jayne: Yeah, he was a good egg.
Jane: I did think that Erik would have been more involved in his daughter’s life since she was more close to him in terms of personality and likes/dislikes. So to some extent, I felt that Hartman overreached. We already knew that Erik was a bastard and he could have easily been a more realistic bastard by choosing to spend time with Lily instead of Simon.

Jayne: I do love Simon and Lily.
Jayne: They seemed to be real children with real life problems. I love Charlie’s interactions with Simon and Lily. He doesn’t push or force his way into their lives but gives each what they need. He also seems like he’s the perfect guy to take up Erik’s position as Lily’s sports supporter.
Jane: Yep. I liked how Lily’s competitiveness wasn’t debased to make Simon a more attractive child and vice versa. They were very different and Sarah’s challenge was to love and accept them equally.
Jayne: And maybe help Simon fit in a bit better sports wise. But I agree that we won’t try to force Simon into something he doesn’t want to do.
Jane: The baseball scene was awesome. It’s definitely one of my favorites in the book.
Jayne: I can just see Lily with her catcher’s mask on. “Squash them like grapes!”

Jane: Hartman does a very good job at selling you on the realism of the setting. I think she’s a very thoughtful author.
Jayne: That was a great bonding moment between mother and daughter – when Sarah finally realized what Lily wanted to hear.

Jayne: JT, Hailey and Olivia are here again but in subdued roles that fit their place as secondary characters. I didn’t feel that they were taking over this book to show how happy they are.

Jayne: I loved the Drunken Breakdown.
Jane: Yes, the Drunken Breakdown was awesome with both Charlie and JT getting into the spririt of things.
Jayne: Yeah, they still have their teasing relationship and moments when women’s speak is baffling to them both.
Jane: Hartman does great guy characters. The brother’s interaction was priceless.
Jayne: I guess this was really the beginning of Charlie’s change in character. Him being willing to endure what could have turned into more tears and emotional stuff. The kind of thing he was raised on and didn’t want to deal with again. So when Sarah begins her remodling of her kitchen, which I guess is really the continuation of her remodeling her life, he can deal with the fact that she’s got a crowbar in her hand. And not get too worried about it.

Jane: So his transformation is more at the end and Sarah’s is more at the beginning?
Jayne: No, I think they finally reach the same point at about the same time. They just have to travel by different routes. She has to learn to let loose and he has to learn to let her let loose. Charlie was always trying to avoid the type of emotional confrontations and environment in which he was raised but he learns that emotions aren’t bad things and that he can survive them and a messy life.
Jane: And that chaos in his life doesn’t mean instability, at least emotional instability
Jayne: Sarah’s always done what she thought everyone else wanted her to do but now she’s finally doing what she wants to do. The final scene with Erik, Lauren, Charlie and Sarah in the kitchen was a bit OTT but all the same, very satisfying.
Jane: Hartman got in very subtle and not so subtle digs all around.

Jane: What grade would you give it? Where would it rank in your Hartman books?
Jayne: I would give it a B and rank it in the middle of the three Hartman books I’ve read.
Jane: I would probably give it a B or B+ too. I haven’t read* His Secret Past and would rank this book above Wanted Man and The Boyfriend’s Back.

*Since our conversation, I have read His Secret Past and that is definitely my favorite Hartman.

This book can be purchased at eharlequin or in ebook format from harlequin

and other retailers on December 1, 2009.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Boyfriend’s Back by Ellen Hartman
2. REVIEW: A Wanted Man by Ellen Hartman
3. REVIEW: His Secret Past by Ellen Hartman

Jennie: I was one of many readers mightily impressed with Carolyn Jewel’s previous historical romance Scandal, which I read in January and graded an A-.

Janine: Totally with you on that. Scandal was one of the most impressive books I’ve read this year, and it’s stuck with me so much that I recently went back to my own review and raised the grade from an A- to an A-/A.

Jennie: I was very much looking forward to Indiscreet. While I had some problems with the second half of the story, overall, it did not disappoint.

Janine: Agreed again, although, as readers will see our opinions about what works in this book differ a bit more than they usually do.

Jennie: The book begins:

How everything started.

This incident took place at about two o’clock the morning of September 3, 1809. The location was the back parlor of a town house owned by the Duke of Buckingham but lived in by the Earl of Crosshaven on a ninety-nine-year lease, presently in its twenty-third year. It should be remarked that Lord Edward Marrack, the younger brother of the Marquess of Foye, was in attendance that night. Lord Edward had been something of a rake until his engagement to the daughter of a longtime family friend. The Earl of Crosshaven currently was a rake.

Several chapters start with this unconventional stage-setting device, and while it startled me at first, I found I rather liked it.

Janine: Although I liked the book very much, this device was one of the few things in it that did not work well for me. I was fine with it for the first chapter, but after that I often found these omniscient narration chapter openings distracting because I would get caught up in the action of the story and then would come a chapter break and this type of description and everything would come to a standstill. And often the information being given would be something I already knew, so it was frustrating — though not enough to seriously mar my enjoyment of the book.

Jennie: Hmm. Well, I think it worked for me for an unusual reason: it did take me out of the story (which is something I also don’t like, usually), but in a way that I found slyly amusing, a sort of wink and nod acknowledgement that it was just a story, after all.

I also liked the scene that follows this introduction, in part because I really wasn’t sure who the hero was or where the story was headed. The Earl of Crosshaven proceeds to boast that he has seduced Miss Sabine Goddard, a young lady recently come to town and one whose reputation had so far been spotless. Lord Marrack disapproves of his friend bandying the young woman’s name around; he doesn’t know her, but he does know that the boast will be all over town by the next day and that she is effectively ruined. His last thought is that her uncle, an eminent scholar who has recently been knighted (the reason for the Goddards’ presence in London), and Sabine’s guardian, will probably put her out on the street when he hears the story.

Janine: Yes, this was a very good scene and it intrigued me on multiple levels.

Jennie: Cut to a year and a half later, where the action has switched to Turkey. Lord Marrack has become the Marquess of Foye with the untimely death of his brother, and has fled England following the breaking-off of his engagement. He encounters the infamous Miss Goddard and her uncle at a party, and immediately finds himself drawn to her.

The scandal that Crosshaven’s lie produced has forced Sabine and her uncle, Sir Henry Goddard, to withdraw from English society, and they are traveling for a book Sir Henry is writing. Sabine acts as an assistant and to some degree a caretaker to her uncle, who is in poor health.

Contrary to Foye’s earlier speculation, Sir Henry Goddard did not turn his back on his niece after the scandal with Crosshaven erupted. However, Sabine is convinced that he does not believe her protestations of innocence, and indeed he does treat her interactions with men with suspicion. The affair has obviously strained their close relationship (Sabine’s parents died when she was very young; Sir Henry is the only real parent she has ever known).

Foye has been made cynical by the way his engagement ended. He is determined to marry an older, experienced woman if he marries at all; he’ll have no love match. His attraction to the young Miss Goddard (23 to his 38) is inconvenient for him, and he tries to fight it.

I know a lot of readers aren’t crazy about huge h/h age differences; honestly, in the past I’ve never been much bothered by them, and just as I began to get old enough to perhaps view them differently, they became a lot less common in romances. The age difference between Foye and Sabine in Indiscreet didn’t bother me, but the agonizing Foye does over it did annoy me. To be fair, I suppose that a hero that recognizes the potential problems and is concerned about them isn’t a bad thing. It’s just annoying because it’s not really a "problem" for which there is any resolution. He’s not going to get any younger, and she’s going to age at the same rate that he does. So the only resolution is for him to get over it, and the reader is aware of that from the start. Which makes any time spent on the issue feel like a bit too much.

Janine: I understand your perspective, but this didn’t bother me. I think I would have had a harder time with the fifteen-year age difference had it been presented as no problem whatsoever for either of the characters. As it was, the fact that Foye agonized over it made me like him better than I think I would have if he had been excited to have found himself a much younger woman.

Jennie: Yes, I’m not sure what sort of acknowledgement I would’ve preferred, because I think an acknowledgement was necessary. I just find that sometimes the more characters agonize over something that I know can’t really be overcome, the more annoyed I get. So I guess I prefer to have such agonizing be as succint as possible.

More interesting is Foye’s insecurity over his looks. He is not your typical breathtakingly handsome romance hero – his features are often described as "irregular", and he’s a big hulk of a man. He’s somewhat self-conscious about his lack of beauty, and tends to be vain about his dress, which I found a touching detail.

Janine: I liked that very much too. Just in general I loved Foye — more on that later.

Jennie: Sabine, of course, has also been burned (and has her own set of insecurities, chiefly about being very well educated; when she first came to London she discovered just how unusual her interests made her). The fact that Foye was a friend of Crosshaven’s does not make her at all inclined to think well of him. In fact, when they first meet, she is afraid that he intends to expose her to the circle of expatriates and British military officers she and her uncle socialize with, or that he may proposition her. Thus, she’s extremely wary about the interest Foye shows in her.

Janine: I loved the tension that resulted from that. Foye and Sabine both had this heightened awareness of one another that was delicious to read about.

Jennie: Yes, and I loved the fact that as a result, Sabine’s awareness wasn’t based on attraction, at first. I find it so rare in a romance that either the hero or the heroine isn’t immediately attracted, that every instance thrills me a bit.

Through a series of meetings Foye and Sabine do come to a wary sort of understanding, and eventually, love. Nevertheless, there remain some significant barriers to their HEA. This all occurs in the first half of the book. The ease with which those barriers were swept away made me realize how flimsy they were to start with. (Which is often the case in a romance, if you think about it. I see it as an author’s job to make me not think about it.)

The second half of the book shifts from the interpersonal conflict between Sabine and Foye to a conflict that is almost entirely external and action-based. I liked this section less. I do sometimes like action, especially when it’s well written. But the lack of hero/heroine conflict in this section and the abrupt shift from small and internal to large and external left the book feeling unbalanced. I think it may have worked better if the sections were switched – at times the story was vaguely reminiscent of Laura Kinsale’s The Dream Hunter – a book I love. That book has the big action-adventure part first, and then the story shifted to a smaller, more character-driven tale. Somehow this works better for me.

That’s not to say that there is no interpersonal conflict in the latter half of the book, but it’s mostly beneath the surface and focused on the hero and heroine’s doubts and insecurities. I think it’s tricky to write "does s/he really want and love me?" hand-wringing in such a way that it’s not tiresome, and I did occasionally find it tiresome in Indiscreet.

Janine: Thanks for the shout out to Kinsale’s fabulous The Dream Hunter. I do agree that the two books were a bit similar. As for the internal conflict in the second half, I loved the subtlety and complexity of it.

As mentioned before I loved Foye. I loved the way he transformed, or rather, showed another facet of his personality, in the second half of the book. Where he had been a thoughtful, even sensitive man, he also showed that when it was necessary for him to have a harder edge and do what was necessary to ensure his and Sabine’s survival, he could do that as well.

I felt that Sabine’s response to that was fascinating. While she was grateful, she also wasn’t sure she recognized him as the man she’d fallen in love with, and this made her uncertain of her feelings for him and his for her. Foye sensed her reaction, and what’s more, he was also torn between his desire for her and his need to protect her good name. I thought that all this added layers of complexity to the story and I enjoyed it very much.

Jennie: You make a good point, and it reminds me of something I’d forgotten that I did want to mention. I thought that Sabine’s reaction to being disguised as a boy was very interesting and well-done. Her observations about the freedoms her disguise allowed her, in spite of the fact that her male persona was in a much lower social position, were really compelling and thought-provoking.

Janine: Agreed. It also highlighted Sabine’s vulnerability and added tension to the story. So overall, I liked the contrast between the first half of the book and the second, after I got used to it. My main issue with the second half was that it made me think of a friend of mine. She is Lebanese-American as well as a romance reader, and she often finds it difficult to read romances set in the Middle East due to negative stereotypes. As much as I enjoyed Indiscreet myself, I would feel leery about recommending this book to her, because none of the Turkish characters were fleshed out, including the villain.

Jennie: Hmm. Well, I did not feel that most of the Turkish characters conformed to any negative Middle Eastern stereotypes that I’m aware of. That said, I agree that they were not fleshed out at all. The story (and most of the characterization) focused on Foye and Sabine, so it wasn’t quite so noticeable to me that there weren’t any fully realized native characters. Though I was a bit uneasy at the “white slaver” aspect of the villain’s character, because that does conform to some stereotypes in my mind. So I can understand you having qualms about recommending it to your friend.

To get back to my complaints about the second half of the book, I want to be clear that I’m not saying it’s bad by any means; it’s really not. I have a lamentable tendency when reviewing to expound at length on the negative, and I don’t want to ignore the positives of what was overall a very good book. Indiscreet features excellent prose, sympathetic and well-drawn characters (even the villainous Crosshaven is allowed a small measure of redemption in the end), and an unusual setting. It’s really only the pacing and arrangement of the plot that I have any real issue with (minor complaints about hand-wringing aside).

Janine: I didn’t have a problem with the arrangement of the plot at all. There were a couple of happenings in the last chapter of the book that raised questions in my mind but to go into them would involve revealing some big spoilers, so I’ll refrain. Suffice to say that I thought the ending felt a bit rushed.

I want to take a moment to appreciate Jewel’s prose. Few authors do a better job of conveying a character’s interior thoughts and emotional responses. Take for example this excerpt, from Foye and Sabine’s first conversation, when Sabine is telling Foye’s fortune based on a reading of what remains in his teacup.

“Lady Foye, perhaps?” she said in a sweet voice.

“No,” he said after too long a silence. “There is no Lady Foye.”

She looked up, interested more by his flat tone of voice than by his declaration of bachelorhood. He wasn’t looking at her. His attention was interior, on some deep and private pain. She hadn’t expected to see anguish, yet that was what she saw in his eyes, and her heart pinched a little on his behalf.

“Another woman, then,” she said. Looking at Lord Foye, with his irregularly put together face, was suddenly too intimate an experience. His eyes were too raw with loss. Had she inadvertently reminded him of a lost love? “Someone who will love you, my lord. Exactly as you deserve.”

Without thinking, she leaned forward, peering into his face. Foye’s gaze came back to the present. Their eyes locked, and with no warning, her breath caught in her throat. Her skin prickled up and down her body, all in pointed awareness of the man sitting across from her. He wasn’t handsome. He wasn’t at all. But Sabine’s heart beat hard against her ribs as if he were.

She leaned away, still struggling to get enough air into her lungs. She felt she had not moved soon enough, that she had unwittingly allowed an intimacy she would never permit in actual fact. A spark of fear settled in her chest because even with the distance between them, she remained lost in his eyes. Lost.

It was Foye who broke their gaze. “What else do the tea leaves predict?” he softly asked.

I think that’s just marvelous writing, the kind that makes me want to savor every word. There is such a smoothness to the language here and yet it doesn’t call attention to itself because it directs all of our attention to the characters and what they are feeling. The result is some powerful emotion in the reader. This is a writer at the top of her craft, which is why, caveats aside, I highly recommend this book.

Jennie:I agree with you about the gorgeousness of the prose (and about the rushed ending, alas). My grade for Indiscreet is a B+.

Janine: Mine is a B+/A-.

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

This book was provided to the reviewer by either the author or publisher. The reviewer did not pay for this book but received it free. The Amazon Affiliate link earns us a 6-7% affiliate fee if you purchase a book through the link (or anything for that matter) and the Sony link is in conjunction with the sponsorship deal we made for the year of 2009. We do not earn an affiliate fee from Sony through the book link.

ETA by Janine (in the way of FTC disclosure): I met Carolyn Jewel at RWA this past July and had the opportunity to tell her that I enjoyed Scandal.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Indiscreet by Carolyn Jewel
2. REVIEW: Scandal by Carolyn Jewel
3. REVIEW: Scandal by Carolyn Jewel

Clockwork Heart takes place in a fictional Industrial Age city-state called Ondinium. One of Ondinium’s industries is the mining of ondium, a precious metal lighter than air. Ondium is used to make wings for Ondinium’s icarii, flying messengers allowed to travel freely between Ondinium’s three sectors.

Ondinium is a divided city. Its citizens worship a goddess known as the Lady of the Forge and believe in reincarnation. Most of Ondinium’s citizens are divided into three castes, and the members of each caste live in separate sectors, and have their caste marks tattooed on their cheeks. Upper caste citizens are believed to be more enlightened than others, and are referred to as exalted. In theory the icarii, who do not belong to any caste, don’t have to defer to them, but the reality is different.

The story begins when its heroine, an icarus named Taya, comes to the aid of an exalted woman and her child who are trapped in a sabotaged wireferry. Taya is the closest icarus to spot Viera Octavus and her young son Ariq, and she carries Ariq down to safety, and then, with the help of her fellow icarus and ex-boyfriend Pyke, rescues Viera.

Taya and Pyke are questioned by a lictor, Ondinium’s equivalent of a police detective, who suggests that a group of anti-technology terrorists called the Torn Cards may have sabotaged the wireferry. The lictor asks Taya to watch out for anything suspicious from the air, and report such activities to the lictors.

Shortly afterwards, Taya delivers a message to the office of Decatur Alister Forlore, an exalted member of the ruling Council, at Oporphyr Tower. Taya arrives to find Decatur Forlore conversing with the man who has just finished repairing his clock. Unlike Decatur Forlore, who wears an exalted’s robes and jewels, the repairman is dressed in cheap clothing, so when he turns around, Taya is shocked to see that the repairman, too, has the exalted markings tattooed on his cheeks. He is a man who has chosen to live outside his caste.

The two men, Alister and Cristof, are brothers. They are also cousins to the woman Taya rescued, and they question Taya about Viera’s welfare. After Cristof departs, Alister offers Taya wine and flirts with her, and she is attracted to him enough so that she has to remind herself that she and Alister belong to different castes.

Later that night, Taya attends a family wedding in the low-caste Tertius sector. On her way home she is set upon by thugs who want to steal her ondium wings. Before they can do so, Cristof, Decatur Forlore’s brother, appears and helps her fight them off. Cristof takes Taya to his clock shop to care for her wings and they strike up a conversation. But when Taya leaves the shop, there is an explosion in a nearby refinery, and she begins to wonder if Cristof had something to do with it.

In the coming days, Taya meets both Cristof and Alister again. She goes on a date with Alister, who is as charming and friendly as his brother is surly and aloof. She is also feted by exalted in honor of her rescue of Viera and Ariq from the sabotaged wireferry, and she learns of Alister’s suspicions that the terrorists’ activities may be related to a program he is writing for the computer known as the Great Engine, which helps run Ondinium’s society.

The program, “Clockwork Heart,” is designed to predict which couples will have happy marriages. Alister thinks that the terrorists known as the Torn Cards may have learned of the program and may be willing to stop at nothing in order to prevent its use. And although Taya suspects that Cristof may be one of those terrorists, she finds that she is drawn to him and to Alister both…

And now for the conversational portion of this review:

Janine: Let’s start our discussion of Clockwork Heart with the question of genre. How would you categorize this book, or would you? There is no genre label on the spine of the book, and after thinking about it, I think it’s a true genre-bender, with elements of fantasy, mystery, romance, and science fiction of a steampunk flavor. What do you think?

Jaili: I went into Clockwork Heart thinking it was a steampunk historical romance because that was how it was described during a discussion about book recommendations. However, it isn’t as I expected. It’s genre-defying, but at the same time it isn’t. It’s a patchwork of genres, which turned out to be one of the best strengths – and the biggest weakness – of this novel.

Janine: Genre distinctions are important because they set reader expectations. I have to admit that in my case, I wanted more romance than what there was in this book. Yes, there is a romantic relationship that eventually develops, and it even has a happy ending, but it felt kind of cursory to me, and that made the book disappointing to me, despite the fact that it had several strong suits.

Jaili: You said it all. I also had no idea it featured a love triangle. If I had known, I wouldn’t have touched Clockwork Heart because I have a terrible habit of peeking at the end to see who the heroine will end up with. I used to suffer disappointment with other novels when the heroine didn’t choose the one I thought she should have chosen, hence the peek-at-the-end habit. I only do this with love-triangle novels. Because I don’t like peeking at the end, I avoid them. However, I could guess early who Taya might end up with because it was clear who the author favoured, which means I didn’t need to look at the end. Thank goodness!

Janine: I’m laughing because I peek at the end of love triangles also! And I did it in this case because I couldn’t guess. But since I don’t want to spoil which man Taya ends up with, I’ll just say that I felt they both had their problems. Alister, though elegant and loaded with charm, was a bit too slick and cavalier at first, while Cristof was a bit too prickly and standoffish at first. I wasn’t sure that either of them could make Taya happy, and I wasn’t completely convinced that the one she ended up with would do so, even at the end of the book.

Jaili: To be honest, there were moments when I felt Taya was a Mary Sue because not only the brothers were interested in her, there was her ex-boyfriend who seemed to carry a torch for her and there were a couple of other men who seemed to flutter their eyelashes at Taya. I think that contributed to a feeling the actual pairing wasn’t that convincing. I have heard, though, that there will be a sequel. Perhaps their relationship in the sequel will solidify enough to make it convincing.

Janine: Interesting thought about so many men being attracted to Taya. I didn’t pay attention to the Mary Sue aspect of that, but it’s a good point.

Let’s talk a bit about the book’s strengths. I was most impressed with the richly detailed world Pagliassotti crafted. Ondinium was a very complex place, with the castes that made up its social strata, the reincarnation religion, the 19th century technology, and the many characters which included foreign thieves, politicians, lictors, vendors, miners, programmers and icarii.

Jaili: Oh, yes. The worldbuilding was fantastic. I was truly impressed. There were many clear influences from a couple of Eastern cultures by the way of the caste system, the religion and some other elements, but I think Pagliassotti made it her own. Just about.

That said I had the impression it was a historical with a familiar setting, but it wasn’t. I’m still not even sure of the time setting. The only thing I know is it has 19th century-style technology, but the time setting? I have no idea. The past, the present or the future? I simply don’t know.

I think I even wondered if it was supposed to be similar to the society portrayed in Frank Herbert’s SF fantasy novel, Dune (which I have to say is the only SF fantasy novel I read! To my fantasy-mad husband’s distress, I’m not a fan of fantasy novels.) There is a slight similarity between the societies of Dune and Clockwork Heart, but I have very limited experience with fantasy novels, so perhaps my comparison may be wrong.

Janine: I think it was a fantastical steampunkish world, rather than one that has a connection to our own past, present or future. I agree that the blend of East and West worked because Pagliassotti made it her own. I was impressed by the way all the elements of the worldbuilding meshed almost seamlessly. The combination of complex yet accessible worldbuilding and the sympathetic characters reminded me a bit of some of Sharon Shinn’s books, like Heart of Gold and Jovah’s Angel.

Jaili: I take it back. Dune isn’t the only SF fantasy novel I’ve read because I’ve also read Jovah’s Angel! It’s a good comparison. You’re right, it does remind me of JA. I also agree that the elements merged very well, which is impressive for a debut author.

Janine: I thought the mystery was well constructed in the sense that I didn’t guess exactly what was going on and who the various villains were in advance, and I am usually good at sussing out such things.

Jaili: I guessed early and was proven right in the end, but there was little enough to hang my guess in question until it was confirmed. In fairness to Pagliassotti, I heavily read and watch mystery and crime fiction as well as romantic suspense. There are very few that surprise me nowadays. With this in mind I thought she did well with the mystery angle.

Janine: As I’ve hinted above, I think the sympathetic nature of the characters was another strength. But there was also a weakness in the characterization, which I didn’t really become aware of until I started wracking my brain to try to figure out why I didn’t enjoy the book more: The major characters didn’t really have much in the way of layers or hidden dimensions. I would have loved for the characters to be explored more in the course of the story, but for the most part, with the heroes of the book, what we saw was what we got.

Jaili: As I mentioned earlier, the book’s strength is its patchwork of genres, but it’s also the biggest weakness. It didn’t allow me to invest. When I read a romance novel, for instance, I adjust to-’I suppose-’a framework of a romantic story to invest myself in characters and their developing relationship in spite of its genre; let it be SF, mystery, urban fantasy and whatnot. With a crime novel regardless of whether it has a romantic element or not, I’d adjust mentally to figure out the mystery along with the fictional investigator.

Clockwork Heart didn’t have a major genre that I could adjust myself to. Because of Clockwork Heart’s genre-defying nature, I couldn’t cope with having to switch between mental adjustments constantly. Mystery. Fantasy. Romance. Adventure. I usually can cope with a typical novel with at least two elements, e.g. romantic suspense or futuristic romance, but Clockwork Heart is, in essence, a fantasy novel that has its own terminology with a world that I wasn’t familiar with. I think readers who enjoy fantasy novels wouldn’t have this problem, though.

Anyroad, it was interfering with my enjoyment of the story, so I chose to focus just on characters instead and found that they, as you say, didn’t have much depth or layers, which was quite disappointing.

In spite of all that I liked the characters, especially Taya. She was the saving grace because if I hadn’t liked her, I wouldn’t have finish the novel.

Janine: I agree that Taya was appealing even if she didn’t have as much depth as I would have liked.

Several of my favorite novels have blended genres, including Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, Byatt’s Possession, Japrisot’s A Very Long Engagement, and Sharon Shinn’s angel books, among others. So I tend to think it all depends on how well integrated the genre elements are and whether such books are satisfying on more than one level.

It’s time to grade Clockwork Heart. This book is a tough one to grade, because my head and my heart are split. Usually my enjoyment level goes hand in hand with my intellectual assessment of a book. In this case, though, my enjoyment was no more than a C, while I think the craftsmanship deserves at least a B. I had a cold when I read the book, and it is possible I would have enjoyed it more had I been healthy, so I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt and a B-.

Jaili: I had no idea I would have problems with grading this book! It’s an excellent fantasy novel, no doubt. Even more so when we consider it’s a debut. I read somewhere online that Pagliassotti wrote the first draft of Clockwork Heart for a popular annual online event, National Novel Writing Month. Very impressive. As a steampunk-based fantasy novel, it’s excellent. Her use of 19th century technology in this setting is out of the world. As a romance novel? It’s so-so and I could do without the love triangle. I’m not a fan of love triangles, to be fair. A mystery? Also, so-so. Like the patchwork nature of Clockwork Heart, my initial grade was a patchwork: A, B and C.

I’m still disappointed it’s not a steampunk historical romance, but it gets an A- from me because of Pagliassotti’s craftsmanship, the worldbuilding, the steampunk element, and the fact I enjoyed it.

This book can be purchased in mass market from an independent bookstore or in ebook format from Fictionwise.

Related posts:

1. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: Tempted by Megan Hart
2. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: Forbidden Shores by Jane Lockwood
3. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: The Edge of Impropriety by Pam Rosenthal

Janine: Adam is vacationing on a tropical island with his friend Stacy. As the story opens, Adam has been eyeing Brett, a fellow tourist, but because of Stacy’s drunken antics, he does not have much opportunity to approach the man he desires.

After lusting from afar, Adam get his chance when their tour bus stops and Brett struggles to use his digital camera. Adam gives Brett a few pointers and takes the opportunity to flirt with him. The two spend a few days getting to know each other, and most of the signals tell Adam that Brett returns his desire.

It’s not until toward the end of the vacation, though, that Adam gets a chance to be alone with Brett, and when he does, Brett is passive. At first Adam is confused, and then he figures out that Brett is a submissive. Brett wants Adam to take charge. But Adam has never tried BDSM before. He wants an affair in paradise with Brett very badly, but can he learn how to play the role of dom?

Janine: The first thing readers should know when assessing my comments is that I haven’t read that much m/m or BDSM romance. I have fallen in love with a few works that feature m/m relationships — namely Ginn Hale’s Wicked Gentlemen, Jesse Sandoval’s story in Tangle (“Los Conversos”), E.M. Forster’s classic Maurice, and Anne Rice’s early vampire books. On the BDSM front, I’ve really enjoyed Rice’s Exit to Eden, but haven’t yet found another BDSM romance that has resonated with me. Thus, “An Affair in Paradise” was a bit of a stretch for me.

Joan/Sarah F.: On the other hand, of course, I currently read pretty much exclusively m/m romance and I’m in a never-ending quest for good BDSM romance of almost all persuasions. So “An Affair in Paradise” was a perfect little story for me. The other thing readers should know in order to assess my comments is that I acted as a first-reader for MHT on this story. While I wouldn’t say I was a critique partner or even a beta-reader, MHT did send me this story to see if I thought it got BDSM right. As I had nothing to correct, my input (“OMG! It’s fantastic!”) had no effect on the finished product.

Janine: I enjoyed “An Affair in Paradise” but only very mildly. Part of the problem for me may be the length of the story. At roughly 10,000 words (about 40 book pages), it’s pretty short and that doesn’t leave much room for showing Brett and Adam’s relationship outside the bedroom. We are told that Brett and Adam talked a lot and got to know everything about each other before the relationship became sexual, but I would have liked to be shown a little more of that getting-to-know-one-another stage of the relationship.

Joan/Sarah F.: This is actually an issue with many of MHT’s short stories. They tend to focus intently on the beginnings of the relationship, but then just as the relationship gets started and the characters are just about falling in love, the story stops. I feel this story was sort of like a brilliantly imagined thought experiment: How do you establish a relationship when the submissive is the experienced BDSM partner and the dominant has never even though he might be interested in BDSM play? And I adore the product but could wish that it were longer.

Janine: Another thing I would have liked to have seen more of is the setting. It’s not every day that I read something set on a tropical island so I would have loved to get a better sense of place — the flora, the fauna, the view they snapped pictures of, the types of drinks Stacy had. But the setting was presented in a fairly generalized way that left me wanting more.

Joan/Sarah F.: For me, this just kept the focus of the story solidly on the budding relationship, without the distractions of atmosphere and description.

Janine: I was also confused about a couple of things. At first, I wondered if Adam was closeted and dating Stacy, because they shared a room. While I was wondering about this, it kept me from investing more deeply in Adam and Brett’s burgeoning relationship, since I didn’t see how such a conflict would be resolved in 40 pages. Then it was cleared up that Stacy was only Adam’s friend, but I think I would have preferred not to be confused about this from the beginning, because at that point, it felt like the main obstacle had been explained away.

Joan/Sarah F.: As I’m much more familiar with MHT’s writing, I never had this misunderstanding. MHT doesn’t DO closet cases. Ever. But as a new reader, with the m/m genre’s focus on closet cases, I can understand this.

Janine: Of course, the real main obstacle was Adam and Brett’s feelings of uncertainty about one another. Would Adam enjoy being in the dom role? Would he be able to pull it well enough to give Brett pleasure? That was a much more involving conflict to me, and I enjoyed it.

Joan/Sarah F.: Yes! This is where the story shone brightly for me. I love stories where people come to understand more about themselves than they would if they hadn’t met the other character.

Janine: The other thing that confused me was Brett’s past with his previous partner. From Adam’s POV, Brett’s ex sounded like a jerk, and some of Adam’s thoughts on the subject made me wonder if Brett’s previous relationship had been a healthy one for Brett. That worried me, because again, I didn’t see how those kind of issues could be resolved in such a short story. Once we got Brett’s POV, though, I understood that the ex wasn’t as much of a jerk as I’d thought he was. But this was another thing I would have preferred not to be confused about.

The author’s writing has a sharp clarity that I enjoyed, but I also found some of the sentence structures repetitive. I don’t think this is something that would bother most readers; I expect I am more sensitive to it than many, but it did keep me from enjoying the story as much as I might have otherwise.

Joan/Sarah F.: And I love MHT’s writing style. I love how the words are a transcript of what’s in the characters head to the extent that what’s said and what isn’t complement each other and how the characters move or look add to the conversation of words, thoughts, and bodies:

Biting his succulent lower lip, Brett brought his arms up, crossing his wrists overhead, a pose that immediately told Adam to go for it, do it, take. Still- "Can I-"

Brett’s voice was soft, dark. "You can do whatever you want."

Oh, shit, yes, yes- Adam didn’t know what that was about, but he liked it.

Janine: Moving on to the things I liked, I felt that the two heroes had an endearing, human quality. I really liked Adam’s intial dilemma of how to approach Brett, and Brett’s similar dilemma of whether or not Adam would want to get into his kinks. I felt their vulnerablity in the situation and that made me care about them.

I really liked the twist that even though Adam was the dom and Brett was the sub, it was Brett who was basically initiating Adam into the world of BDSM. And I liked the way Adam was torn between shock at some of the things Brett was into and being turned on by them. It made it easy to identify with both characters and made things more equal between them. Brett said he would do anything for Adam but it was clear that Adam would also do some things he wasn’t used to doing and was therefore not always 100% comfortable with or confident of doing correctly, for Brett.

The sex was for the most part sexy to me. The characters were hot for each other but also each cared about the other’s feelings. It was a nice balance of that. I wasn’t completely convinced that the two guys belonged together but I could imagine that the fun they were having might eventually translate to a deeper commitment.

Joan/Sarah F.: MHT’s skill at character development definitely show in this story. As you said, both characters are very human, very real. This translates to a wonderfully realistic, sympathetic, and OMG!sexy! exploration of BDSM, done with humor and creativity, that is, I think, accessible and hot and fun to non-BDSM-identified readers, too.

As with the best BDSM stories, though, this story shows lovers at their best, BDSM aside: caring for each other, willing to do what pleases their partner, as well as chasing their own pleasure. Add the BDSM aspect of initiating a clueless but very willing dominant to the mix, and I love this story and have reread it at least five times by now, each time finding it just as sexy, just as funny, and just as…cozy? as the last time. Cozy because I can feel the emotions these characters have for each other deepening and taking hold. It’s romance at its best.

My only concern is that the HFN ending isn’t solid enough for me. The characters are compatible and attracted and want to spend time together, but they’re planning their next vacation together, rather than trying to figure out how to meet each other outside their vacation. The story is ripe for a sequel, which is something that Torquere does very well, at least.

Janine: Yes, I could imagine a story about Adam and Brett’s next vacation together too. On the whole, I feel that “An Affair in Paradise” was a bit more enjoyable than average. I probably would not read it a second time, though, so my grade for it is a C+.

Joan/Sarah F.: At its best, “An Affair in Paradise” is, for me, a feel-good keeper and a reliable reread, which is why my grade would be a high B+.

This book can be purchased in ebook format from Torquere Books as of March 28, 2009.

Related posts:

1. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: Tempted by Megan Hart
2. REVIEW: e Before Christmas by Matthew Beaumont
3. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: The Serpent Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

Jennie: I was very happy when I discovered Megan Hart’s Harlequin Spice books a couple of years ago – I read Dirty and Broken in short order, and liked them both a lot. I was less enamored of Tempted, but figured that not every book is going to work for me, even if the author is one I enjoy. Unfortunately, I had some major problems with Stranger, as well, and I think I’ve identified some aspects of Hart’s writing that I dislike.

Janet: Dirty is still my favorite of the Hart books I’ve read. I have not read Tempted yet, and I haven’t read anything before Dirty. I enjoyed the edgier aspects of Broken but had a lot of trouble with the ending, and the short, "Reason Enough," disappointed me with the way Elle seemed to have transformed into a baby-wanting Suburban wife so quickly after her marriage to Dan. I would place Stranger second after Dirty in my Hart hierarchy.

Jennie: Dirty seems to be a favorite with a lot of Hart’s fans, from what I can tell. I did appreciate it a lot when I read it because it was both different and well-written – a combination that is harder to find than you’d think.

The plot of Stranger: Grace has taken over her family business – a mortuary – from her father. She is working hard to grow the business, and doesn’t seem to have much time for a personal life. What she does have is a penchant for hiring male escorts for anonymous sex. Things get complicated when Grace mistakes a guy she encounters in a bar, Sam, for her "date", and sleeps with him.

There are several things in the summary above that will give the reader a clue that this is not the average romance. To add to the unorthodoxy, Grace does eventually meet up and pursue a relationship (for pay, mostly) with Jack, her missed date from the bar. While Stranger does not contain a typical love-triangle plot, I’m sure there are readers who will be put off by a heroine sleeping with more than one man for the better part of the book.

I want to applaud Hart for taking chances with her characters and plot. I wish the chances that she took worked better for me.

First of all, I will admit that I was somewhat put off by the heroine’s profession. On the one hand, I commend the author for choosing an unusual and perhaps misunderstood profession for her heroine. On the other hand, I’m pretty squeamish about death (I used to be even worse). Whenever Grace would describe working on a body, and then go on to her next task or action – drinking a soda or returning to her office to work – I had to mentally insert, "and I took off my gloves and scrubbed my hands and arms really well". I found it hard not to focus on the corpse aspect of the story.

Janet: LOL on the hand washing, Jennie! Now I’m just the opposite in the sense that I’m fascinated by certain death-related rituals, funeral home work included. I was a big fan of "Six Feet Under," and I had a few moments where I would think back to the series as I was reading Grace’s musings on the nature of life and death and grief, especially her insights into how her work was primarily for the benefit of the living people left behind, even more than the dead whom she prepared for the funerary process.

Jennie: It’s funny you mention "Six Feet Under", because I resisted watching for the first couple of seasons because I was so put off by the subject matter. I did end up getting into it around Season 3, at the urging of a friend, and eventually went back and watched all of the episodes. It was a great show (I think the ending was one of the best endings of a series, ever). But I think I liked it in spite of the funeral-home setting, not because of it.

Janet: I will admit, though, that I also found this aspect of the book a bit cliché – the heroine named Grace who is a mortician and has a commitment phobia because she doesn’t want to be in a position to face this kind of grief with a husband or child. And I was a little baffled by the fact that she didn’t seem to apply this same phobic reaction to her own parents and siblings, but then, she didn’t really have a choice in their existence, so that might be part of it. And still it managed to work for me, in large part because it was just so unusual to see a female protagonist in a profession like this, especially as a business owner and not just a mortician or one of those quirky make-up artists for the dead you sometimes see in women’s fiction or film.

Jennie: I did have a problem believing in the reasoning behind Grace’s fear of relationships because it was presented pretty superficially, in my opinion. It felt more like an afterthought or an excuse for Grace’s behavior rather than a real emotional problem. Because of this, it was harder for me not to be judgy about her choice to hire escorts, which honestly did feel kind of sleazy to me.

Grace seemed to have a healthy attitude about her work and about the reality of death, except when an excuse was needed to explain her fear of emotional intimacy. The persona she presented most of the time just did not jibe with someone who was so traumatized by the reality of death that she was unable to form healthy attachments.

I was also put off by the fact that her issue was never really resolved, except I guess by the Power of Twu Luv – which felt too trite for such a realistic book. I thought Grace actually had some pretty large psychological issues – issues that drove her to indulge in some fairly compulsive and unconventional behavior – that probably needed to be addressed with professional help.

Janet: Although Grace blames witnessing the grief of others in her father’s mortuary growing up, I really felt that the crux of her issues was her father and the difficult relationship they had. The way she sees his interest in the business after she takes it over as intrusive; the way he seems so critical of her; the way he seems disappointed in the fact that his son had no interest in the business so it’s now up to his daughter to run it; the way he seems pretty controlling, all of this, even though most of it is Grace’s perception of her father, struck me as very important in Grace’s commitment phobic feelings.

Late in the book she realizes that they are not so dissimilar:

"I’d worked with my dad often enough to know his style. . . . But watching him this time I seemed to see it all with fresh eyes. I saw myself in my dad, in subtle ways, like which straps on the gurney I buckled first or how I folded the body’s hand."

At this point in the story Grace is going through her own sense of grief over Sam’s abandonment of her, and I thought perhaps she was beginning to see that she was like him in other ways, although she never really gets there. But for me, as a reader, it was another clue that Grace is as controlling as her dad, even though she exhibits the characteristic differently. She’s hyper-organized, extremely conscientious about being available, structured, and wants things done her way. She has high expectations for those who work with her, even though she’s humane in her treatment of them. And then there’s the scene where her father apologizes to her for not being there more when she was a child, and I factored that in, too, getting the impression that Grace was simply not well-connected to her father, the first male role model in her life, and then the family business left her steeped in death, and did anyone make an effort to take the scariness out of that for her? What did you think when she tells Sam, "Because before you, I was so afraid of being unable to live without someone, I could never live with someone"? Did you just not believe her, or was it just not enough to explain what you saw as Grace’s issues?

Jennie: I felt that line was a little too glib, and symptomatic, again, of the way that Grace’s issues were dealt with.

Regarding Grace’s father-hmm. I’m a little torn now because your explanation makes a lot of sense. But I think it was either too subtle for me, or possibly you understand Hart’s characters better than she does. On the one hand, I want to encourage romantic authors to write with subtlety, complexity and realism. On the other hand, when it’s so subtle that the reader has to do a lot of the work to connect the dots, I think that may be expecting too much. But it’s possible that other readers picked up on your interpretation as well, and maybe it’s just me that didn’t quite get it.

I’m not sure what to think about Hart’s writing at this point. I liked Dirty, even though Elle got on my nerves (I gave it a B). Broken was my favorite of her books, an A-, and perhaps that was at least in part because the heroine had a solid external reason for her angst. I was really looking forward to Tempted, but it ended up only earning a C+ from me. Again, I found myself annoyed with the heroine, who seemed spoiled and selfish to me. I also found myself preferring the "other man" in that book, though I understood why the triangle was resolved the way it was.

Taken as a whole, Hart’s heroines have a complexity and a toughness I admire. Unfortunately, when I look at the as a whole, they seem to share some other traits: they are cold, self-centered, and a bit humorless.

I was musing on Hart’s heroines in connection to another contemporary author, Alisa Kwitney. Kwitney’s books also feature first-person heroines and neurotic characters. But
Kwitney imbues her characters with so much more charm than Hart does. Of course, Kwitney’s books are very different – much more humorous than Hart’s, and she has a tendency to include unwieldy suspense plots that never make much sense. But her books aren’t downbeat, and Hart’s often are, at least a little, to me. It’s great to see an author creates a complicated, difficult and unique heroine. But I also need her to be sympathetic, relatable or at least understandable. My grade for Stranger is a C.

Janet: I think I read Grace’s father the way I did because he’s just so imposing in the book, both on Grace and on the narrative itself — just walking in and trying to take over, intimidating Grace’s assistant, and generally disregarding anyone else’s feelings.   Now I felt his control issues were solved a bit too conveniently, too, but that’s a separate issue, I guess.

As I said above, I think Hart’s strength is creating these erotic Romances about women who have trouble loving in a committed, intimate way, and that she uses the sexual adventurousness of these women to create a context in which they can open up emotionally. I agree with you that Grace is not the warmest person, but I think she provides a sense of strength and stability for Sam, who is very emotionally open but not very structured, organized, or confident about his ability to succeed in any traditional way. So I see Sam and Grace as naturally drawn to one another because of that and good for each other emotionally. While Grace didn’t have the emotional poignancy of a heroine like Elle, at least not for me, she was more "normal," I think, or at least not as extreme in her emotional issues, which means she didn’t have to travel as far toward emotional connection with Sam.

I also liked that Sam doesn’t start to break down until he "wins" Grace, because I felt that the dreamer in him, the creative artist, was very well articulated in the way he pursued Grace – like the way an artist courts his muse, perhaps. And then to see him as the saboteur of the relationship seemed very logical to me, because his idealism – without the proper support structures and organization – was his downfall in his career, too. I totally agree with you that I would like to have seen more detail in the way his growth is accomplished, but I think some of it was that he learned about constancy and commitment and consistent work from Grace. Although that still doesn’t explain the way she takes him back so quickly at the end.

Jennie: That reminds me that I didn’t actually like Sam all that much. Again, maybe the issue is simply that he was a little too realistic for me to find him romantic. I didn’t mind him being portrayed as a laid-back artistic type, but Hart focused a little too much on the negative aspects of that persona for me to find Sam truly appealing. At times, the word "loser" came to mind, though I know that’s a bit harsh. I actually liked Jack better, though I’m not sure he would’ve made a believable committed mate for Grace.

Janet: Despite my issues with the resolution, though, the majority of the book worked well enough for me to earn a B. When I read it, I was so engaged that it kept me up late, late, late, as I felt the need to keep reading to the end.   With that and the unusual characters, triangulation, and edgy take on erotic Romance (despite what Hart might say about what she is and isn’t writing, I believe she is really writing erotic Romance), I liked Stranger.

This book can be purchased in trade paperback from Amazon or ebook format from the Sony Store and other etailers.

Related posts:

1. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: Tempted by Megan Hart
2. REVIEW: Reason Enough by Megan Hart
3. REVIEW: Dirty by Megan Hart

Janine: The Better to Hold You was one of my most anticipated books of 2009. I’m a big fan of Alisa Sheckley’s wry, satirical chick lit novels which were published under the name Alisa Kwitney. I remember picking up The Dominant Blonde back in 2002 and being so delighted to discover a new-to-me-author who had written such an intelligent, funny and touching book. Sex as a Second Language is also a big favorite of mine.

Jennie: Yes, Kwitney has probably been my favorite contemporary/chick lit novelist for a while now, ever since I read The Dominant Blonde (at your urging, I believe, Janine!). I’ve enjoyed all of the books I’ve read by her since then, particularly Sex as a Second Language and On the Couch.

Janine: In discussing her books with a friend, I once said that this author never flinches from showing her characters in embarrassing situations or portraying them making unwise choices, but their witty observations and wobbly egos always save them from appearing less than bright. Instead, they come across as intelligent, insightful people with flaws, foibles and insecurities of which they are acutely aware. Like soft boiled eggs, Kwitney’s characters have outer shells that crack when they are hit, revealing a shaky layer that protects an even more vulnerable core.

All of this is true of Abra Barrow, the heroine and narrator of The Better to Hold You. A 29-year-old veterinarian interning at New York City’s Animal Medical Institute, Abra is also the daughter of a washed up B-movie actress and a Spanish director. Abra’s husband Hunter is a writer who recently visited Transylvania to investigate werewolf myths. Since his return to Manhattan, Hunter has been writing obsessively, craving meat, and playing dominance games both in and out of bed. Abra also begins to suspect that Hunter may be cheating on her.

Meanwhile, at the Animal Medical Institute, Abra’s instructor Malachy Knox, a brilliant researcher whom the interns have dubbed “Mad Mai,” lectures about the lycanthrope virus, which he believes can change some people on the cellular level. Malachy thinks Hunter may have learned something important about the virus during his visit to Transylvania.

When a dog named Pia, who appears to be part wolf, is brought to the institute for medical treatment, Abra and her friend Lilliana suspect that Malachy might experiment on Pia unless they prevent it. Abra is presented with the opportunity to do so when a scruffy man she previously saw on the subway comes to the institute and introduces himself as Red Mallin, a wildlife removal operator from out of town, and a friend of Pia’s owner. Abra decides to take the chance that Red is really who he says he is, and entrusts Pia to his safe-keeping.

The meeting is brief, but Abra is struck and flattered by Red’s obvious attraction to her, since she has never felt entirely secure in her marriage to Hunter. Though Hunter is much more her type — urban, handsome and well-educated — he has always seemed to Abra to be a little bit out of her reach. Going back as far as college, when their relationship began, Abra has never been certain that what Hunter saw in her — “a little nun, perfectly at peace with herself” — is really there.

Disagreements begin to crop up more and more in Hunter and Abra’s marriage, but Abra is afraid to stand up for herself, because she doesn’t want to lose Hunter. She begins to dream strange, vivid dreams. When Abra visits her eccentric mother, her mom does a tarot reading which reveals that magic is coming into Abra’s life, that the universe will be playing a trick on her, and that Abra may be in danger.

The tension between Abra and Hunter escalates, leading to an ugly discovery. Eventually, Hunter decides to relocate to the country, and Abra follows him to the town of Northside, where she encounters Red Mallin, and things that go bump in the night…

The Better to Hold You is a tough book to review because, although there are paranormal goings on throughout the book, Abra, the narrator, doesn’t see them for what they are until more than halfway through the book. So without getting into spoiler terrain, it is difficult to describe these.

Jennie: I think you’ve done quite a good job without giving too much away. I really like your comparison of Kwitney’s character’s to soft-boiled eggs. Very apt! And it encapsulates why I like her heroes and heroines so much: Kwitney manages to create heroines that are relatably neurotic without being pathetic or weak. She creates heroes that manage to retain an appealing masculinity while showing quite a bit more vulnerability than your average romance hero ever shows (a few of Kwitney’s heroes could fairly be described as “bumbling”, but it doesn’t take away from their charm or lessen their masculine appeal).

Janine: I so agree with you about her heroes! Before going into the many things I enjoyed in The Better to Hold You, I’ll admit that because the novel is classified as urban fantasy, I was expecting a different book — one where the fantastical elements were more pronounced throughout. I got impatient waiting for Abra to realize what was going on around her, though in hindsight, I think it was very realistic that she wouldn’t. How many of us would believe in werewolves and other monsters? For Abra to deny what was going on was actually pretty sensible on one level.

Jennie: I sort of had the opposite reaction, in that I think I expected what I got – a Kwitney book with paranormal overtones. But I actually got more annoyed by Abra’s denseness as the book wore on – to the point where it seemed that it wasn’t so much sensible behavior from a character’s perspective but perhaps necessitated by the plot. I also felt the lack of a big “aha!” moment – it was more like: denial, denial, denial, and then, “oh, okay, all this stuff is real”, without as much dramatic tension as I would have expected from such a revelation.

Janine: I didn’t feel that Abra’s denial was out of character, but I do agree with you about the lack of a dramatic revelation. One thing that was really interesting was the way Abra’s denial about the supernatural happenings around her mirrored her denial of the problems in her marriage to Hunter. Even though Abra didn’t see the signs as clearly as she could have, they came across to me as a reader.

Jennie: Yes, and I think that’s what created some frustration for me as a reader. Particularly in first person narration, to have events presented to the reader by the narrator and interpreted by the reader through the narrator, and to have the narrator come to very different conclusions…well, I think it creates a slight sense of dissonance. There is just something different about first person narration (which I am a fan of, by the way) – being inside a character’s head creates an association that, at least for me, makes the character’s blind spots harder to take.

Janine: That is interesting, because I actually have the opposite feeling. I expect blind spots from a first person narrator (what is termed “the unreliable narrator” in English classes). I enjoy the tension these blind spots create, the feeling that I realize something that the narrator does not. It is actually when blind spots are absent, and the narrator’s perception is matched or validated by that of all the other characters, that I become frustrated, because that never happens to anyone in real life. So I was glad that wasn’t the case here. My only problem with Abra’s denial was that it made the fantasy elements of the book less visible, and I wanted a full blown urban fantasy book.

To get back to the storyline, Abra’s fear of being dumped by her husband prevented her from taking a stand and asking for what she wanted and needed from him, and my feeling was that this in turn was one of the things that made Hunter more aloof.

This book really made me think about something that romances don’t always address — the fact that so often in romantic relationships, there is one who wants or needs the other more than he or she is wanted or needed in return.

In Abra’s relationship with Hunter, it was Abra who was in the less secure position. In her interactions with Red, though, she was in the more secure postion. Sheckley showed both the appeal of both Hunter and Red: the appeal of the unattainable man, and the appeal of the man who makes you feel like a queen.

Jennie: Yes, I think Scheckley did do a good job portraying this realistically – and even tying in some of the fantastical elements (the idea of the alpha male being depicted in a rather literal way, here).

Janine: Yes. I wish I could say I loved either Red or Hunter, the way I loved Liam from The Dominant Blonde. But just as she showed the attractive sides of both men, Sheckley also showed their unattractive aspects. Red was a little too country for Abra in many ways, while Hunter, who on paper was more her type, didn’t show her the same level of devotion.

Jennie: See, I found Hunter just insufferable. He was realistically insufferable – I’ve seen relationships that are slightly less exaggerated versions of Hunter and Abra’s in real life. But I don’t find it appealing to read about, and the more appalling Hunter’s behavior got, the more I wanted him to get his comeuppance.

I think Red looked good in comparison to Hunter. He was such a contrast, in almost every way. He worshipped Abra, and I liked her enough to want her to be worshipped. No, I didn’t love him for himself as much as I loved Liam or some of the other heroes from the author’s Alisa Kwitney books. Perhaps I didn’t identify with him quite as much because we never got Red’s POV. But I did like him, quite a lot.

Janine:I liked him as a person, but he was not exactly romantic hero material to me. Hunter had more of the romantic glamour that I look for, but with a big downside. I did like Abra very much though. She was an insightful, witty and caring woman, and I felt she deserved someone who could fulfill her needs.

Jennie: Yes, exactly. And as with the best romances, I think there was some recognition that Abra herself needed to change in order to get her happy ending.

Janine: Good point. Let’s talk a bit about Sheckley’s prose style. I feel that in terms of sheer craftsmanship, she is one of the most skilled authors of contemporary romantic fiction and that she deserves to be much better known than she is. Here are some of the reasons why:

1) Her dialogue is spot on, as in this conversation between Abra and her mother:

My mother sighed and lit a cigarette, watching me get myself back under control. “Here. Do you want a cigarette? Don’t look at me like that, sometimes it helps.” She shook out the match. “Why you want to keep him with you, I’ll never understand. He’s a bastard.”

I gave a little hiccup of a laugh. “You just think all men are bastards, Mom.”

“It’s a safe assumption.”

“God.” I folded the tissue and blew my nose again. “How my father stayed married with you for ten years, I’ll never know.”

“You talk like he’s such an angel. Remember who left!”

“Mom, you were having affairs right and left. And you hounded him all the time. I remember when I was ten you actually had a fight where you said he was personally responsible for the subjugation of women in the Spain.”

“He was a filmmaker. There’s a responsibility there. Besides, he said a lot of shit about me.”

2) She also has a great way with narration and metaphors:

The problem with Manhattan is, everyone comes here eventually -all your old friends, enemies, lovers, demons. People you met on vacation in Nepal will wind up beating you out for a taxi. The bully who called you dog breath all through first grade will turn up at your local diner, and will remember you didn’t come to his sixth birthday party, which is where the whole trouble began. Don’t come to the big city to become anonymous. New York is like Oz: The Wicked Witch of the West turns out to be the lady who didn’t like your dog back in Kansas.

3) Another thing I love is her wry social satire. For example, there is this great spoof of self-help books when Abra picks up a book called Understanding the Alpha Male:

Is your mate an Alpha Male? Take this test.

1. Would your mate describe himself as:
A) A team player
B) One of the guys
C) A highly autonomous individual with leadership capabilities
D) Your lapdog

2. When confronted with a major life choice, does your man
A) Ask your advice
B) Ask an expert’s opinion
C) Tell you and the expert what’s wrong with both of you
D) Pant and whine

3. When driving, if cut off by another car, does your mate
A) Curse and yell
B) Pursue the offending vehicle very closely and then swerve off at the last possible moment before impact
C) Physically assault the small dog sitting in the other driver’s lap
D) Shake uncontrollably, often losing control of his bladder.

Jennie: Yes, I love this author’s voice. I was happy that the change in genres didn’t change her prose. I also really liked the clever weaving of fairy tale elements into the story. Even when Scheckley went a bit over the top with them, late in the story, I appreciated that here was a paranormal that didn’t take itself too seriously.

Janine: I think I actually wanted the book to take itself a bit more seriously. I feel a little torn on what to grade The Better to Hold You because, though the charms of Sheckley’s writing are many, this particular book was somewhat slow to get off the ground, and I wish that I’d fallen in love with one of the male characters. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it and am glad I read it. I look forward to the next book in the series, Moonburn, which comes out May 19th. My grade for The Better to Hold You is a B.

Jennie: My grade is also a B (though a high B; it was almost a B+), and I will definitely read the next book in the series. I think ultimately my issues were mostly centered on the power imbalance between Hunter and Abra; if the villains had been punished more thoroughly for their misdeeds, I would have found the book as a whole more satisfying.

Janine: My take on that was that the villains weren’t punished more thoroughly because we’ll be seeing more of them in future books. I agree with you about the book being a high B — not quite a B+ but better than many other books I’d rate a B. I hope readers give it a try.

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or ebook format from the Sony Store and other etailers.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Flirting in Cars by Alisa Kwitney
2. REVIEW: Sex as a Second Language by Alisa Kwitney
3. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: The Serpent Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or ebook format.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Voices of the Night by Lydia Joyce
2. REVIEW: Shadows of the Night by Lydia Joyce
3. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: The Edge of Impropriety by Pam Rosenthal

We’ll let Jayne start out with her plot summary:

What we get is a period (Georgian) detailed look at two people falling in love against some pretty tall odds. Richard Kerre is a handsome lord who could have his pick of women. Rose is frankly amazed that he seems to love her. And Richard is floored to have finally discovered his soulmate when he least expected her, and when he’s in no position to make her an honest offer. He’s contracted to marry a society beauty and in those days, a signed marriage contract was legally binding and if broken, could lead to expensive legal payouts and being shunned in society.

Rose’s family also has doubts about Richard’s true intentions. He’s known as a seducer and worldly man. Why would he choose a plain, twenty-five year old, on the shelf, provincial nobody? To add to that, there is an old scandal involving Richard’s twin brother and a possible one if the identity of a killer is not determined. Though it was originally listed as an out of niche romance/mystery, the mystery actually takes second place to the romance though there are already two more books in the series and perhaps they contain more of that element.

Connolly has done her research and I felt I was in the 18th century. The characters don’t act like transplanted 21st century people. Richard has a habit of glacial aristocratic hauteur that can depress the most forward social mushrooms. There is no sign of hobnobbing with the servants and everyone knows his place in society. It’s a fascinating world to look in on but one that has its moments of unease for a 21st century reader.

I think societal rules were a bit more relaxed than what we’re used to in historical regencies. Plus Richard was an aristocrat and Rose was gentry so they could bend them just a bit if they wished and took precautions to mollify the sticklers. I do love how Richard and his family use their consequence to kind of get their own way at times. And though all are polite to servants and underlings, they never, ever indulge in democratic flights-of-fancy of any degree of equality nor do the servants expect it.

From Jan:

I wasn’t sure what to expect of these, because to be honest from Connolly’s online posts I always felt she cared more about historical detail than what to me was important in romance, a great story with emotional resonance. But boy was I wrong. Once I started reading them I literally couldn’t put them down.

Richard and Rose were more real to me than most characters I read in romance, and I felt along with them. They were very romantic. And while they acted of their time, they didn’t behave like they had to constantly be proper and within the confines of societies rules (what I’d expected). To the contrary, they both see what they want, they examine the consequences, then accept them and go for it. I liked that. I liked the honesty between the two, and how Connolly never resorted to misunderstandings or TSTL heroine actions to further the plot. All of this served to create a romance I could really believe it, which made it all the more effective.

I enjoyed the settings, because she drew them carefully, the first book more so than the second. She made the time feel more real than it often feels in romances. She doesn’t always supply a lot of detail and lush prose, but she supplies all the necessary detail, and it makes you feel like you’re in the manor having dinner with the characters. It’s really a wonderful piece of worldbuilding. And accurate. I thought I’d caught her three times and she was correct each one.

RE: the first person story telling

Jayne: Richard is a great hero and I never felt like I was in the dark about his thoughts after that first little bit in Yorkshire when Rose is still trying to figure out what’s going on. Remember, he loved her first and it took her a bit to get over her awe at his appearance (I love the way he uses that to control what people think about him).

RE: Richard

Jan: I felt that way about all the characters really, that I understood their motivations and emotions despite the fact that we never see inside their heads. It seemed skillfully done to me.

I loved Richard’s use of awe too. He’d planned and used his status so well to keep everyone at bay. It made the times when his mask slipped so much more meaningful. And I also loved the fact that he used his advantages ruthlessly, just as a man of the times would, without PC interferences.

Jane: Richard is a spectacular hero. I loved his uppityness and how Rose couldn’t change him if she tried, but it was clear over the course of the books that love was changing him – making him more open, perhaps even more trusting.

RE: Gervase, Richard’s twin:

Jane: Gervase. Fabulous and heartbreaking. Connolly did a great job of turning conventional thinking on its head with these twins. Gervase was observed by outsiders as the match for Rose and not the popinjay. Connolly reinforced the idea through small touches such as the horse, the clothing, even the mannerisms, that Gervase was the masculine, hearty one while Richard was the snuff pinching, makeup wearing, bewigged dandy.

Jayne: “Waiting for Gervase!” He just has to get his own love interest or I’m going to explode with frustration. He’s really a great character.

RE: Societal conventions

Jan: I think the rules were looser then too. But what I liked so much was that they took the rules into consideration, then made the very difficult decisions they did, knowing what the consequences would be to themselves and their families. It made their passion seem much more real and overwhelming.

Jayne: And I like that Lynne makes sure the readers know exactly what those consequences would be. Not only for R/R but for their families as well.

RE: The sex scenes

Jayne: Lynne really has been able to slowly but realistically show their growing love and comfort with it and each other. The love scenes were hot. None of this “no sex please, we’re British!”

Jan: Oh, no kidding they’re hot! That was another thing I noticed. Normally in romances the first sex scene is all that the writer really concentrates on, and after that it’s kind of “then they had sex again in another position”. Here, as their intimacy grows in other ways, it grows in the sex scenes as well, and they are more and more fulfilled as the series progresses. Which is how it really is in good relationships.

This book can be purchased at Samhain.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Yorkshire by Lynne Martin (aka Lynne Connolly)
2. REVIEW: Harley Street by Lynne Martin (aka Lynne Connolly)
3. REVIEW: Devonshire by Lynne Martin (aka Lynne Connolly)

The Edge of Impropriety begins with a prologue set in Italy in 1818, in which the book’s hero, Jasper Hedges, is trying to negotiate the currents of a dangerous conversation with his sister-in-law. Jasper’s two-year-old niece, Sydney, is playing nearby while Jasper, a scholar of the classics, and Celia, a beautiful baroness, dance around the subject of their fifteen year old son, who is being brought up as the heir of Jasper’s brother John.

Neither John nor Anthony, the child Celia gave birth to fifteen years before, know that Jasper is Anthony’s biological father. Celia and Jasper have kept their betrayal of John a secret for a decade and a half, and Jasper is resolved that the secret will remain buried forever, even if the costs to himself are exile from England, and never meeting his own son. But that very night, Jasper’s plans change when Celia and John drown in a sailing accident. Jasper becomes guardian to Sydney and Anthony and returns to England.

Eleven years later, Jasper, now forty-seven, is living with thirteen-year-old Sydney and loves her as though she were his own child. Twenty-five year old Anthony, though, is a different story. While Sydney is as intellectual as Jasper, Anthony is as beautiful and frivolous as his mother was, concerned mostly with being fashionable. He still does not know Jasper is his father, and he describes his strained relationship with Jasper to Marina Wyatt, Countess of Gorham, this way:

“I disappoint him. Don’t know what it is,” he continued, “but we’re never together five minutes before he manages to make it absolutely, abundantly clear that I’m not — never was and never will be — what I should be, that I’m still a stupid schoolboy, and that he won’t be satisfied until I’m some version of him. Queer, ain’t it? Especially since by and large people seem to like me as I am.”

Marina listens with sympathy. Anthony wanted to be her lover, but she has turned him down but agreed only to be his friend. A thirty-six year old widow, Marina makes her living writing novels about high society. But before she married the Earl of Gorham, Marina was the earl’s mistress, and before that, she was Maria, an Irish girl who did things that, should they be revealed, would scandalize most of society’s members.

Unfortunately for Marina, one man, Gerrald Rackham, not only remembers her past, but uses it to blackmail her. Marina’s books must sell well to afford her not only her living but also the payments Rackham extorts. And so, Marina creates publicity for her novels by being seen with the men her heroes are patterned after. The hero of her latest novel, The Key to Parrey, is patterned after Anthony.

Marina, Anthony, and Marina’s publisher, Colburn, meet together to discuss how to best publicize the new novel. They decide that since Marina and Anthony have been seen together and are assumed to be lovers, they should now appear to have a falling out and separate.

One of the characters in Marina’s novel could be taken to be modeled on the daughter of Marina’s late husband, Lady Isobel Wyatt, so it’s decided that Anthony will now pursue Lady Isobel, who is wealthy enough to be a great choice of wife for him. Colburn also asks Anthony to introduce him to his uncle, since he thinks Jasper could author a book on antiquities that might make Colburn a tidy profit. They agree that Anthony will bring Jasper along to Marina’s dinner party.

Soon afterwards, Marina spots Jasper, Sydney and Sydney’s governess, Helen Hobart (who is secretly in love with Anthony) at the British Museum. Marina is struck by Sydney’s intelligence and by Jasper’s obvious caring for the girl. Neither Marina nor Jasper knows who the other is, but they are attracted to one another, and a look passes between them before they go their separate ways.

When Marina and Jasper meet again at her dinner party, sparks fly. Marina decides the attraction is too great to resist, and she issues a covert invitation to Jasper, to return later that night and become her lover. After ascertaining that Marina and Anthony were never lovers, Jasper accepts and he and Marina fall on each other with great enthusiasm. The two agree that for Sydney and her reputation’s sake, their relationship will remain secret in public but that for the remainder of the season, the nights will be theirs.

Of course, things don’t go that smoothly, and the secrecy which is so important to Jasper is threatened by the affection that develops between the lovers, and then, by Marina’s blackmailer.

And now to the discussion portion of this review:

Janine: I really enjoyed The Edge of Impropriety and I thought I’d begin our discussion by asking how you thought it compares to Rosenthal’s other works. I haven’t read the erotica Rosenthal wrote under the name Molly Weatherfield, or her romance under her own name, The Bookseller’s Daughter. I have read Almost a Gentleman, the novella “A House East of Regent Street,” The Slightest Provocation and now The Edge of Impropriety.

Although Almost a Gentleman was enormously popular, it didn’t work so well for me. I felt that it started out as a very daring book and then ended up sticking very closely to the very conventions that it seemed to be challenging at first. I did love that Phoebe, the heroine, procured the services of a male prostitute, but I was sorry to see the Phoebe’s infertility miraculously cured to satisfy David (the hero’s) traditional attitudes and his need for an heir. For me, it was the least successful of Rosenthal’s novels and I closed it feeling disappointed.

I know that Janet (Robin) felt somewhat similarly about “A House East of Regent Street,” but I think this may be my favorite of Rosenthal’s works, perhaps because this was where I first fell in love with her writing. The heroine, known only as Miss Myles at first, was an ex-prostitute and a nobleman’s mistress with ambitions to open her own establishment and the hero, Jack, an ex-sailor, strictly working class but trying to marry up. She agrees to several sexual assignations with him if he’ll rent the house for her to use as a brothel. There were several things I loved about this book, including the main characters’ unconventional backgrounds; the way Miss Myles, not Jack, was the expert in the bedroom and she taught him the ropes; and the camaraderie that developed between them.

The Slightest Provocation, Rosenthal’s third romance, was a daring book on several levels. First, the hero and heroine’s background as an estranged couple who had married too young and, because of their insecurities, ended up hurting each other by both being unfaithful. Second, there was the way Rosenthal put a horrible fight between Kit and Mary early in the book, one that almost made me lose hope for them at the outset. I’m convinced it was necessary to the story Rosenthal told, but it’s not what I expect when I pick up a romance.

Third, there was the book’s structure; the way Rosenthal used flashbacks to piece together Mary’s past. These weren’t your garden variety flashbacks; they didn’t tell the story of the relationship in the order that it took place up to the beginning of the novel. Instead, the order of the flashbacks was nonlinear. We got the early years of their marriage, when the infidelity took place, before their first meeting, for example. So this was yet another way in which the book was not what I was expecting. And there were others, like the resentment Mary’s maid felt for her mistress, or the way the book explored a government spying on its own population, a hot political issue of our times.

I was completely wowed by the sheer daring of The Slightest Provocation as well as by the craftsmanship that went to it and the emotional quality of the story, and I pimped it wherever I could, but not everyone I recommended it to loved it as much as I did. I had the sense that it was too unconventional for some readers — that if they didn’t mind the adultery in Kit and Mary’s background then the fighting was so lifelike that it turned some of them off, or else they found the non-sequential flashbacks confusing. My feeling, after discussing it with other readers, was that while I ate it up like a chocolate mudslide, for some people it was too far outside their comfort zone.

Which brings me to The Edge of Impropriety. I think the title is an intriguing one, in light of Rosenthal’s fiction, because it seems to me that she is a writer who tries to find the edge of genre conventions. To me, all of her books that I’ve read are interested in questions of conventions and their boundaries. How far can the characters go, given their place in society? And how far can the book go, given its publication in the genre? Where is that dangerous edge that is going too far, and what is more exciting (for the characters and perhaps even for the author) than pushing up against it?

For me, it’s interesting to compare The Edge of Impropriety to Rosenthal’s other works. I don’t think it’s as challenging as The Slightest Provocation. The structure is more traditional — I think there’s one brief flashback but that’s it. Jasper and Marina both have scandalous pasts but I think they are more instantly sympathetic to the reader than Kit and Mary. There are political issues, relating to Britain’s imperial plundering of other countries, but there’s not the same kind of strong parallel to our own political issues that there was in TSP.

But at the same time, I think it’s less conventional than Almost a Gentleman. The treatment of Marina’s infertility, for example, is far more realistic than the treatment of Phoebe’s. The characters here are older — it’s not every day that you come across a forty-seven year old hero. And Rosenthal is not afraid to show empathy even for the villain.

So in terms of its edginess, The Edge of Impropriety seems to me to be about on par with “A House East of Regent Street.” I think it will probably appeal to a greater number of readers than The Slightest Provocation did, and since I liked it I wish it much success, but I’m also a little sad that it’s not as revolutionary or ground-breaking as Rosenthal’s previous novel.

What do you think about how Rosenthal deals with conventions in The Edge of Impropreity?

Jennie: I liked her treatment of them a great deal, for the most part. I did feel that she touched on Marina’s Irish heritage a  little  too lightly – she had some interesting points to make but I felt that they were made almost in passing, which gave the observations a shallow feel that I don’t think Rosenthal intended.

I did like the rather light touch that the author  depicted Marina’s infertility with, on the other hand.

I have only read Rosenthal’s The Bookseller’s Daughter, which I don’t recall well but do remember was marred by a TSTL heroine, and The Slightest Provocation. The latter was a B+ for me, and I agree, edgier than The Edge of Impropriety, but ultimately didn’t rise to the level of an A grade for me owing to the lack of emotional attachment I felt to the hero and heroine. I definitely warmed more towards Jasper and Marina, though I think that had more to do with characterization than the conventionality or lack thereof of the story.

Janine: How do you feel about Jasper as a hero? I liked him very much, possibly even best of all of the heroes in the Rosenthal books I’ve read so far. I liked his obvious intellect and attractiveness but also the way he sometimes felt his age, and the way he felt unfashionable and even a bit socially inept in comparison with Anthony, who was such a darling of society.

I also loved Jasper’s relationship with Anthony and Sydney and the way Rosenthal used his interactions with them to show how much Jasper cared about them. It was both ironic and poignant that although Sydney wasn’t his biological child and Anthony was, Jasper was able to shower his love on her in a way that he was not able to do with Anthony, because he did not dare to have the truth of his relationship to Anthony come out.

Jennie: Yes, I liked Jasper a great deal, too. I don’t always love older hero and heroine pairings; when I was younger I was quite a snob about them, and even now that I’m older than Marina, older couples don’t always work for me. They can feel a bit melancholy to me – their life experiences make them more realistic, but in way that can be a problem. They have real hurts and scars and are aware that happily ever after is for fairytales.

But for whatever reason what is sometimes a weakness for me was actually a strength with these characters. Late in the book, Jasper is ruminating on some ancient Greek prose he’s been translating; apparently rather melodramatic tales full of "shipwrecks, slavery, pirate raids, lovers parted under duress", and he muses to himself:

It was laughable, in its way, how the writers contrived that their characters endure every misfortune the ancient world could provide, forced them to bear every possible trial-except age and cynicism, perhaps, a lifetime of bruising experience, pride, and stubbornness.

I loved that observation. In spite of the fact that, or perhaps because, it reflected my very reasons for finding some older-couple romances a touch unromantic, and also because it seemed to me a sly meta-commentary on romances in general. I noted recently in another review my preference for stories that really focused on the hero and heroine’s relationship, without external subplots featuring spies, mysteries or villains. There are few subplots in The Edge of Impropriety, and there is a villain, but none of that detracts from the story of Jasper and Marina; their developing love story stays front and center.

Janine: What about Marina as a heroine? I loved hear early cynicism, the way she tried to repress her romanticism, which was evident not just in her thoughts but also in her methods of publicizing her books. Her past was interesting too, though I wanted more about her roots in Ireland.

Jennie: It’s possible I liked Marina even more than Jasper. She was tough in the most appealing way, and she had a sense of humor about herself (I loved her thought in the midst of her and Jasper’s tumultuous first lovemaking, "How very singular. Lady Gorham usually manages this part of it so much more gracefully"). I felt that Rosenthal did a good job of showing us her personality, rather than just telling us about it.

I also wanted to know more about her roots in Ireland, and  about her marriage. I reluctantly accepted that Rosenthal didn’t intend to go into details; sometimes my desire to have everything spelled out for me wars with my common sense, which tells me that less is more and that a little mystery can be preferable.

Janine: I enjoyed the development of Jasper and Marina’s erotic and romantic feelings for each other. At the same time, though, I wish we could have seen Jasper and Marina interact outside the bedroom more than they did. I closed the book believing they had fallen in love and that they had enough in common to draw them together, I also felt that in some ways they didn’t know each other that well, which was acknowledged by Jasper fairly late in the book. I could believe in the happy ending, but it was as more of a happy beginning. How did you feel about the relationship?

Jennie: Yes, doesn’t Jasper think something to the effect that they need daylight hours to really get to know one another? Since I thought the circumscribed nature of their relationship was pretty central to the plot, I never found myself wishing for it to be different. I did see the end as a "happy beginning", and I actually kind of liked that (incidentally, there was another unusual aspect of the ending that I also liked – it somehow fit the backward development of Jasper and Marina’s relationship – but I will leave it to readers to discover for themselves).

Janine: One of the strongest things about The Edge of Impropriety, IMO, is the way Rosenthal situates the romantic relationship between Jasper and Marina within a thicket of other relationships — Jasper’s to Sydney and Anthony, as well as Miss Hobart, Marina’s to Anthony, her late husband, her blackmailer and her publisher. I felt that all these relationships grounded Jasper and Marina’s nighttime encounters in context and social fabric. There was a sense of community to the book, and I loved the way that the minor characters’ lives were (to borrow Sydney’s metaphor) woven together. Characters like Rackham, or two young women Anthony contemplated marrying, or a prostitute we only see a couple of times, still managed to surprise and delight me. Was that the case for you as well?

Jennie: I agree; I thought Rosenthal did an excellent job in weaving the characters together. I loved that Jasper was the father to Sydney that he couldn’t be to Anthony. I really loved the resolution of the situation with Anthony’s two  potential wives  - Rosenthal gives us just enough information to draw our own conclusions about their story.

I did feel a little less charitable towards Rackham than I think Rosenthal ultimately felt (at least going by Jasper’s musings about him late in the book, in which he seems to see him as misguided and tortured). She did a little bit too good of a job of making  Rackham vile, and while I appreciated understanding his motivations, they did not make me feel particularly sympathetic towards him.

Janine: Are there any other strengths or weaknesses of the book that you want to mention? I felt that the pacing flagged a bit in the middle and the secondary romance that involved Anthony could have been more interesting. But I loved the way the book sparkled with wit, the intelligence and maturity of the main characters and the wonderfully unexpected turns of the plot.

Jennie:There were a few moments that felt a bit trite and coincidental to me. I’m not sure they even would have stood out in another book, but in one as skillfully written as this one, they did. I also agree that they secondary romance wasn’t hugely compelling. Anthony was a little too immature and callow for me to care about very much.

Janine: Finally, what grade would you give The Edge of Impropriety? It took me a while to settle on a grade, but I’ve decided it’s an A- for me.

Jennie: I was thinking A- all the way, but I actually think I’ve talked myself into an A. It’s not a perfect book (very few are), but I think it’s worthy of a straight A grade.

This book can be purchased in trade paperback from Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Slightest Provocation by Pam Rosenthal
2. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: Forbidden Shores by Jane Lockwood
3. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: Your Scandalous Ways by Loretta Chase

At the beginning of Lord of Scoundrels, a book that has been in print since its first publication in 1995, Lord Dain meets Jessica Trent for the first time

She was not classic English perfection, but she was some sort of perfection and, being neither blind nor ignorant, Lord Dain generally recognized quality when he saw it.

That statement fairly sums up my experience with Your Scandalous Ways. It is a kind of perfection, romance perfection perhaps. Francesca Bonnard is a high class courtesan who was married to John Bonnard, a highly ranked politician in England. He divorced her, threw out into the street, and hoped she would end up used and diseased and possibly dead. The only course open for Francesca was the oldest profession but she parlayed that into being one of the most famous and most expensive whores alive. Her protectors were princes, dukes, dignitaries. Every notch in her bed post became a weapon in her correspondence to her former husband. Younger sons of England’s titled set, like James Cordier, simply did not have enough cache.

Of course, James Cordier is not an ordinary younger son. He’s a spy, a thief, and a whore himself; only he sleeps with women for his government instead of for money. He is dispatched to obtain letters that Francesca supposedly has in her possession. James is a bit tired of being the government’s whore but if he has to sleep with a beautiful woman one last time then he’ll do it and then retire to the country side with a milk and roses miss.

It’s hard to sum up in a few sentences what I liked about this book. Francesca, for one. She’s such a survivor but you can see her vulnerability in how she’s still fighting this battle against her horrible former husband; how she constantly tells every new person that she’s a whore as a shield so that they can’t stab her with it later. James is the perfect match for her. He’s strong but emotional. His longing for the traditional English miss is dashed to dust nearly the minute he meets Francesca. He never, ever looks down on her and even suggests that his parents would love her (after all his mother is very unconventional). I thought this book was expertly plotted with no wasted scenes, no throwaway dialogue or extraneous characters. The one weakness I saw in Lord of Scoundrels was the plot and particularly how it kind of fell apart at the end. There was no weakness here, that I could see. It’s a book I know I will read forever and it’s one I’ll recommend to my daughter when she’s of an age. It shows that true love does triumph and it does heal and it is magical.

Robin:

I haven’t been able to make it through Lord of Scoundrels yet, so I can’t comment on that comparison, but I definitely agree that Your Scandalous Ways is “some kind of perfection.”

Let’s start with the first sentence of the first chapter. It’s one word: “Penises.” Followed by one more: “Everywhere.” That’s it; the first paragraph. How many Romance novels begin their first chapter with the word “penises”? Right then I understood that I was reading a different book, a book that would challenge and excite me, kind of like the, . . . well, okay, back on track. The penises, it turns out, belong to a veritable hoard of Putti on the ceiling of the “decorative insanity” that is Francesca Bonnard’s Venetian villa, little naked boys suspended above her that she compulsively counts, certain they are reproducing by the day:

“They crawled about the ceilings, lifting plaster draperies or creeping among the folds, looking for who knew what. They clung to the frames of the ceiling paintings and to the gold medallions over the doors. They vastly outnumbered the four bare-breasted women lolling in the corners and the four muscled adult males supporting the walls.”

The Putti are such a perfect reflection of James and Francesca’s relationship: ostentatious, overwhelming, annoying, lush, and unexpected, perhaps even unwanted — in short, trouble.   And it’s all because of the way Chase builds these characters from the ground up as surprising subversions of Romance types, playing with the types as she sketches out their generic misbehavior (sort of how I felt when I read Joanna Bourne’s The Spymaster’s Lady). Francesca does use her courtesan status as a shield, but it’s a shield with the substance of absolute truth; she is a courtesan, a woman who promised herself after her humiliation at the hands of John Bonnard that she would always choose the who, when, where, and how long of any sexual relationship, and she really means it.

Francesca is a woman who had to fight for her freedom and who understands its value. She’s one of the few Romance heroines whom I believed when she insisted that she didn’t want to fall in love. Which, of course, electrifies her relationship with James, who, I think, is even angrier than Francesca about their mutual attraction. James may be a guy who is willing to do what it takes for every mission, but he is craving freedom, too, and a woman who refuses to simply fall into his embrace as an easy and and easily forgotten conquest really pisses him off. In fact, I think the anger between these two is as powerful as their attraction, and in a strange way, it gives a palpable depth to their love.   I don’t know if I’ve ever read a Romance where such a dark and powerful core of anger drives a romantic attraction and yet is so deftly sublimated into seemingly superficial verbal jousting.   I mean, this book was funny.   And poignant (especially when we find out what James has endured during his career and what really drives his anger at Francesca).   It was like watching two people fence with flame throwers, beautiful and dangerous, nothing I’d want to attempt but something I can’t turn away from.

Jane:

It was a great sparring match and what made it so exciting was that the two were so evenly matched. It was stubborn alpha male against stubborn alpha female. One problem in the Bourne book was how often the power seemed to shift to the hero’s hands, but in this book, the seesaw was even. I even thought that Francesca played the traditional male role, at times. She thought that perhaps she would dally with James, even though she shouldn’t because he wasn’t quite the luminary she usually brings to
bed. She gives him jewelry at one point and my favorite part of the whole book is when he is about to throttle her for putting herself in danger.

“You’re beautiful when you’re angry,” she said.

But James is never emasculated partly because he gives back as good as he gets. He doesn’t give in and he is constantly challenging her. He treated her as an equal.

He got the waistcoat off and draped it neatly over the chair seat. “I have an excellent idea,” he said. “Especially now that I’ve seen you naked.”

‘You don’t need to flatter me,” she said. “I don’t need honeyed words.”

‘When have I flattered you?” he said. He undid the button at the neck of the shirt sticking wetly to his torso. It sagged open, revealing a V of his powerful chest, gleaming bronze in the candlelight. “I believe I called you an idiot more than once this morning alone.”

Robin:

Oh, yes, that point where she turns the gender tables on James is wonderful, because he is, despite all of his protestations, the romantic in the relationship, from his long curly hair to his passionate intensity. He even lusts after Francesca’s jewels like one would a lover. Remember the scene in the gondola where she bets him that she can seduce him right there, and James almost loses it when she starts fondling herself, torn between the attractions of her necklace and her breasts? It really is amazing that you can have two people who are used to being in control, who really *don’t* give it up for the other in any way that compromises their core values.

As for Francesca, she exemplifies what I’m starting to think of as the anti-heroine heroine in Romance, the heroine who not only fights love, but fights the Romance formula, continuing to subvert the reader’s expectations about how a relationship should proceed through a novel. I can see where a character like her can frustrate readers, but what’s so great about Chase’s book, I think, is that James is so frustrated that readers who get frustrated by Francesca can sympathize with James.

This is really, I think, Chase at her most masterful, using humor to highlight the darkness underneath, but not giving in to maudlin angst.   One of the things I didn’t like about the last book, Not Quite A Lady, was that difficult things seemed resolved too easily and swiftly.   But here I didn’t feel that at all, because she so perfectly balances that signature dry humor with the bittersweet aspects of the story.   This is a happily ever after made for people who don’t really believe in happily ever afters, I think.

Jane:

What is so wonderful is that James and Francesca belonged together and Chase makes you believe it from the very minute that they appear on the page together. And Chase closes in much the way she begins, with the ceiling of little penises being the focus, only now Francesca is joined by James in studying the art form. The other day you talked about how romance, as the love fantasy, is supposed to be “sex positive, woman positive, man positive, love positive, and relationship positive.” That’s how I saw Your Scandalous Ways. It was positive and uplifting and beautifully reaffirming of love.

This book can be purchased in mass market at the end of May from Amazon or Powells or ebook format. (no link yet).

Want to read this early? Answer the following question. I’ll pick 5 random winners from those who give the correct answer.

What gemstones is Francesca wearing in the excerpt?

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Viscount Vagabond by Loretta Chase
2. REVIEW: Not Quite a Lady by Loretta Chase
3. REVIEW: Lord Perfect by Loretta Chase

Jennie F.: Yes, it seems to be a theme with us!

Janine: LOL! Jennie, I’d like to start with a brief discussion of the labeling of this book and of its cover.

First, Tempted is described as “An Erotic Novel” on its front cover; and simply as a “Novel” on the spine. Are the book’s romantic elements strong enough that you would consider it a romance? Are its erotic elements prominent enough that you would call it erotica? Or do you feel that “erotic novel” is the right definition?

Jennie F.: I think coming up with a niche for this book (and to some degree, Hart’s other books) is a bit problematic. I would have a problem calling Tempted a romance, because I didn’t find the resolution very romantic; it was more bittersweet. The erotic elements are not prominent enough for me to label it erotica, though. Even calling it an “erotic novel”, I think, may mislead some readers.

Perhaps it’s just my own personal definition of “erotic novel”, but I wouldn’t necessarily expect to face some of the heavy emotional issues that Hart writes about in a novel labeled that way. I suppose “erotic novel” or simply “novel” works best for me, although the latter might leave some readers (albeit readers who don’t bother to look at the racy cover or read the back text) a bit shocked at the content.

Janine: Those labels work pretty well for me, but I brought it up because labeling and the way it sets up reader expectations has been a much discussed issue here at Dear Author. If we expect a certain kind of ending or a certain kind of content because of the way a book is labeled, and then we don’t get it, we can often feel very frustrated even though the book itself may be well-written.

Jennie F.: Yes. I think Hart is extremely difficult to classify; I’d almost call her erotic women’s fiction, but not the kind of women’s fiction that is at all chick-litty, more the sort of serious kind. I don’t think that label would fit on a spine, though. :-)

Janine: I understand what you mean, because Hart’s books do deal with women’s issues, and yet, I hesitate to call them erotic women’s fiction because I have this association to women’s fiction as a genre in which the characters sometimes lack a kind of romantic glamour that I crave; but Hart’s characters have that glamour in spades.

Getting back to the issue of genre and how much we want books labeled accurately. At the same time, I think it’s often true, for me at least, that some of the books that are most interesting and exciting to me are those genre-benders that are hard to categorize. The Time Traveler’s Wife, anyone?

Jennie F.: Oh, absolutely. Honestly, that’s a large part of Hart’s appeal, for me. Her prose is decent, but not remarkable, IMO. It’s the way she tells a story and combines different elements, confounding genre expectations. Usually that’s a good thing, but I think maybe not so much in Tempted.

Janine: I myself like her prose and think it is better than average. But before we launch into a discussion of the book, I want to know, what do you think about the cover?

I bring it up because I was grateful for online bookstores when I purchased this book. The photo on the cover is so explicit that I’m not sure I could have got up the nerve to grab this book from the shelf at a brick-and-mortar bookstore and bring it to the front of the store and then present it at the register.

On the other hand, when I did get the book in the mail, I was struck by the beauty of the cover, too. So I was wondering if it made an impression on you.

Jennie F.: It is lovely, but I’m a little uncomfortable with overtly erotic covers. I can bring myself to buy them in bookstores by reminding myself that the clerk probably doesn’t care *that* much what I’m reading.

Janine: You’re a braver woman than me! I still buy them, but off the internet.

Jennie F.: Hee. I still remember years ago buying a Black Lace book at Borders, getting a male clerk, and being so flustered that I forgot my change and he had to call me back for it. Very. Embarrassing.

I don’t usually buy erotic books (or romances, for that matter) in brick-and-mortar stores anymore, but that’s because my purchases in those genres are usually more planned, whereas the books I buy in brick-and-mortar stores (literary fiction or non-fiction, generally) tend to be impulse buys.

But reading them in public would be a no-go. Though that’s true of a lot of the more bodice-rippery romance covers, too, though for a slightly different reason (for the former I worry that people think I’m a pervert; for the latter, a twit).

Janine: I read Hart’s Broken (the cover of that book made it clear it was erotic subject matter, but wasn’t as visually explicit as the cover of Tempted) in a public place, but I have to confess that I felt self-conscious about it and wondered if people were looking at me and if so, what they were thinking.

I really wish I had a little more “Who cares what people think?!” in me.

Jennie F.: Yeah, I’m saving that for when I’m 80. I plan to use it to harangue various low-level functionaries about typographical and grammatical errors (like the movie marquee I saw recently that advertised the film “Before the Devil Knows Your Dead”). I’m too aware of how fussy and pedantic I’d come off doing it now, but I figure with one foot in the grave, I won’t care so much.

Janine: LOL.

Jennie F: I think the cover of Tempted nicely conveyed what the book is about, though.

Janine: Yes, I agree. And it’s also a thing of beauty — the beauty of the human body.

Jennie F.: Right. It was sexy, and as I said a little too explicit for public consumption, but still tasteful and beautifully done.

Janine: Next, I’m going to launch into a description of the book for the benefit of our readers who haven’t read it:

Anne Kinney is in her late twenties and happily married to James, a nice, attractive guy with a good job. They have a house on the lake and what seems like the perfect life, until James gets a call from his childhood friend Alex. Alex and James were best friends for years until they had a falling out.

Alex moved to Singapore shortly after that, and when James and Anne married, a long distance friendship between Alex and James resumed. Now Alex has sold his company in Singapore for millions and is on his way back stateside. James invites him to stay at his and Anne’s house for a few weeks, and Alex takes James up on the invitation.

James is not his usual nonchalant self when he talks to Alex on the phone, so right off the bat, Anne is very curious about Alex and about James’s friendship with him.

While waiting for Alex to arrive, Anne meets with her three sisters to plan a 30th anniversary party for her parents. But Anne’s father is alcoholic, and although she doesn’t admit it to anyone else, Anne doesn’t understand why her mother puts up with it and why her sisters never really admit there is something deeply wrong in their family.

James’s family seems far more normal to Anne, but she also feels that she will never please James’s mother, who desperately wants Anne and James to have children. Anne is grappling with endometriosis and with memories of an unwanted pregnancy that ended badly, and she doesn’t know if she is ready to have children yet.

When Alex arrives, attraction flares between him and Anne. Anne discovers that Alex too comes from a dysfunctional family, and his bad boy allure is as powerful in its way as James’s good boy appeal. She finds herself telling Alex about the time her drunken father took her out sailing as a child and they almost drowned, something she never told anyone else about.

At the same time, there are times when Anne feels shut out by the rapport that Alex and her husband share. Yet James seems to desire her more than ever now that Alex is their houseguest. The boundaries between the three slowly begin slipping, and it is not clear to Anne what it is that any of them wants. Is Alex in love with James? Is James in love with Alex? And who is Anne more in love with, James or Alex?

I don’t want to reveal too much more about the main plot, although it should be obvious to anyone who has glanced at the cover that eventually Anne, James and Alex end up in bed together.

There are also storylines about two of Anne’s sisters that get developed later in the book.

Tempted is written in first person from Anne’s point of view and I thought Anne was a well-developed character. I liked the way her life seemed flawless on the outside but that in fact, she was not as mature as she thought she was.

Jennie F.: I didn’t love Anne, personally. But then, I wasn’t entirely crazy about Elle in Dirty, either. My favorite Hart heroine is Sadie from Broken. I think Hart writes heroines who are flawed in interesting ways, but maybe in ways that make them less sympathetic to me.

Anne’s lack of direction made her less relatable to me. Not that I’m a real go-getter, but she was what, around 30? She didn’t have a job, didn’t seem to have much in the way of plans for getting a job. I wondered what she did with her days (before all the hot sex with Alex). Maybe I was jealous of her!

Janine: I haven’t had a problem sympathizing with any of these heroines, actually. I had Anne pegged as a little younger; in her late twenties perhaps? Her parents were having their thirtieth anniversary, so I don’t think she was thirty yet. More specificity about the characters’ ages and career situations would have been good, I think.

Jennie F.: I do agree that there was an interesting dichotomy between the superficial trappings of Anne’s life and what was going on inside her. But I’m not sure that dichotomy was resolved to my satisfaction at the end of the book.

Janine: Yes, I see your point, and yet, there was realism to the resolution in that it fit Anne’s character. I liked the fact that the attraction between the three main characters had an impact on Anne and James’s marriage (I’m trying not to give it away) and was not simply there to titillate the reader.

Jennie F.: Yes, I agree with this. It was really an emotional attachment between the three characters, not just a sexual one, which in many ways is why it ends up becoming a source of conflict.

Janine: Exactly. And that’s also what makes it interesting. Especially since two of them are married, and yet, no one can be called a cheater in a threesome.

Jennie F.: I wasn’t sure how I felt about James’ setting Anne up for the affair with Alex. It did feel a little sleazy to me. If James had been better developed as a character, it might not have bothered me. Not that it bothered me excessively, but it was one more thing that made James a little less appealing.

Janine: I didn’t feel that way at all. It was actually one of the things that made James’s character interesting to me, especially since I wasn’t sure at first if his motivation for that was competitiveness with Alex, attraction to Alex, the desire to see all Anne’s needs and desires fulfilled, or fear that if he didn’t suggest it, an affair between Anne and Alex might still happen.

I felt that Hart did a good job with Alex’s character. He was a bit mysterious but that was as it should be, since there was so much Anne didn’t know about him. For me, Hart succeeded in making Alex edgy, appealing and human, not an easy feat.

Jennie F.: Alex was appealing, perhaps too much so; he and Anne seemed to understand each other in a way that Anne didn’t share with James. It left the triangle a little unbalanced.

Janine: I didn’t feel that he was too appealing, though I agree that the triangle was a little unbalanced. I think it could have been more balanced had James’s character been developed better.

Jennie F.: Maybe it was because Alex was more of a traditional romance hero – bad-boy, sexually experienced and adventurous, successful in everything he does despite coming from a disadvantaged background. It made James fade into the woodwork a little.

Janine: While I liked James well enough, I agree he was neither as interesting nor as appealing as Alex. But what was a bigger problem for me was that I felt that there was too much I didn’t know about him. Since Anne is the narrator and I have the impression that she and James have been married for a few years, I felt that Anne should have known him more thoroughly and been better able to familiarize us readers with her husband.

Jennie F.: Yes, that was a lot of my problem with the book as well. The presence of Alex, and the dynamic between Alex and James, made James less appealing, perhaps even a bit less manly, in my eyes. He seemed weak when measured against Alex’s vibrant energy.

And while Alex and Anne shared the bond of troubled childhoods, James’ seemingly charmed existence made him feel flat. It did have the effect of making it seem like Anne didn’t really know him, in spite of their years of marriage. She seemed to idealize him. Not in a worshipful way, but as if she only saw the surface of his happy-go-lucky persona. I ultimately wondered if Anne was with James for the right reasons.

Janine: I wouldn’t use the words flat or weak to describe James, but he had not been tested by life the way Alex had, and so in some ways he felt more like an unproven quantity.

I also felt, though, that I didn’t hear as much as I wanted to about James, didn’t have enough of a sense of his hopes, his dreams, his disappointments in life — in sum, what made him tick. And since the narrator was his wife, a woman who had been married to him and should know these things, it felt like a glaring lack to me not to have more of these things communicated in the book.

In many ways I felt that James had the potential to be the book’s most interesting male character, because Alex was much closer to the typical romance hero character, and James was more unusual. I wanted Hart to really plumb his depths to a greater degree than she did, but I still enjoyed reading about him.

Your comments on James and Anne are very interesting to me, because I see that where I had put down the feeling I had that Anne didn’t know James well enough to Hart’s choice to go into the subplots about the family members rather than develop James’s character more deeply, you put it down to a deliberate choice on the author’s part to show that Anne chose not to see beneath James’s surface.

Jennie F.: Yes, and it makes me wonder if Anne just didn’t understand James very well, or if perhaps there just wasn’t that much to understand – he wasn’t that deep. Take, for instance, the situation with his mother – James’s mother was really rather a nasty character, to Anne and, it is later revealed, to Alex as well. And yet her ugliness apparently was never turned on James, nor did it rub off on him. It seems to have no effect on his life, his familial relationships or his worldview, until he does finally tell his mother off on Anne’s behalf.

I was left feeling frustrated and didn’t know if I should blame the author for not giving James more depth, James himself for being shallow, or Anne for not seeing beyond James’s facade. Though it is a good sign, incidentally, when I’m willing to blame the characters rather than the author for their shortcomings; it means that they did come alive for me, at least to some degree.

Janine: That’s a good point. Regardless of the other issues I had, all three main characters came alive for me as well in this book.

As I’ve alluded to, there were times when I felt that Hart took on too much material in this book, with the numerous subplots about Anne’s family members. These characters reflected aspects of Anne’s life, but I think I would have preferred fewer pages devoted to them and more to exploring the triangle of James, Anne and Alex.

Jennie F.: This didn’t bother me as much, though I also didn’t find any of these other storylines hugely compelling. The resolution of the older sister’s problems felt particularly pat to me.

Janine: Yes, I agree on both counts. These storylines weren’t compelling in and of themselves (though I liked the way one of them connected to Broken) and were mostly interesting in what they revealed about Anne.

It’s not that I felt they were without value, but more that I felt that the emotional engine of the book was in the triangle between Alex, James and Anne, and that I wanted to know more about each of the men and their relationship with one another, as well as with Anne. The book was long enough that I think if one of the subplots had been dropped, there would have been room to develop the triangle more equally, and then it could have been a fantastic read.

Jennie F.: Yes, I agree. Since I didn’t find them that compelling, I think the book could’ve lost at least one of them easily.

Janine: The last scene of the book made me feel that the author, like her heroine, wanted to have her cake and eat it too. The recipe of sexual fantasy and gritty reality that Hart has been so exceptional at blending in her two previous books for Harlequin Spice, Dirty and Broken, felt like it wasn’t gelling quite as well here as it has in the past.

Jennie F.: Yes, I totally agree. Perhaps because in the other two books, the heroine’s emotional growth was spurred by her relationship to the heroes of those books. Whereas here…I suppose that was the intent, but at times it felt like two separate stories occurring side-by-side. While the heroine came to peace with her issues, to a degree, I’m afraid that I felt that in some respects she was “settling” for her life as it was rather than really resolving things and moving forward. Which is undoubtedly more realistic, but just as undoubtedly less romantic, at least to me.

Janine: I felt somewhat as you did, but it wasn’t a strong feeling for me. I feel that Anne would have lost something and gained something no matter what she’d done at the end of the book. The last scene actually seemed a bit unrealistic to me, and I would argue that a more realistic choice might have been more romantic as well. Ultimately, though the book wasn’t as romantic as Dirty and Broken, it did not seem unromantic to me, either. I was okay with it, in the romance department.

Jennie F.: Hmm. Maybe it just comes down to my expectations as a romance reader. I think I would’ve liked it best if it had ended with the ménage still in place. I felt like Anne lost something when Alex left, and that the three-way relationship gave each of them something that they needed. That did make it bittersweet for me.

Janine: Well, I just can’t see the ménage continuing in Hart’s suburbia with no problems, but maybe I’ve watched too much of HBO’s “Big Love,” LOL.

I still recommend Tempted though, because even when she’s not in top form, Hart keeps me interested, and because her view of contemporary America feels so much more real to me than what I see in many contemporary romances. And also because, if I haven’t mentioned it before, some of the sex in this book was quite hot.

Overall, though Tempted isn’t her best work, I wasn’t sorry I spent $13.95 on it, either. I will definitely read Hart’s next book, too, since I’m very eager to see what she will write about next.

Jennie: I fully intend to keep reading her, for the reasons you mention. Romances deal with sex and erotica deals with sex, but often neither does so in a particularly honest or realistic manner. Hart is different in that respect – I do feel that her take on sex and relationships is less fantasy-based (which again, *can* mean less romantic, though I don’t think it has to). I would not warn anyone off Tempted, but would suggest that if you haven’t read Hart before, you start with Dirty or Broken; both are superior books IMO.

Janine: I agree completely (Isn’t it funny how we have a way of doing that?). What grade do you give Tempted, Jennie?

Jennie: I would give it a C+

Janine: I think I liked it a bit better than you did. For me, it’s a B-.

This book can be purchased in trade paperback or ebook format.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Dirty by Megan Hart
2. REVIEW: Broken by Megan Hart
3. REVIEW: Dirty by Megan Hart

Just as I had finished reading Forbidden Shores by Jane Lockwood (a pseudonym for Janet Mullany) and was getting ready to review it, I had a conversation about the book with my good friend Jennie F., who had also recently read it. Jennie’s comments were so insightful and thought provoking, and I enjoyed our chat so much that I thought it might be fun to (after editing it a bit, and applying the spoiler font to spoilers) share the conversation with all of you, in lieu of a more traditional review.
-Janine

Janine: Okay. I finished this book and am ready to discuss it. First, I want to bring up that although Forbidden Shores is labeled “Historical Romance,” it should at the very least be considered an erotic romance, and maybe even straight erotica. There is a lot of sex, and not just between the hero and heroine.

Jennie F.: I just finished it too. I would think it would fall somewhere between erotic romance and erotica. The focus is definitely on sex, but there’s enough other stuff going on for me to hesitate to label it straight erotica.

Janine: I agree with that; it seems like a hybrid of the two to me.

Jennie F.: BTW, I went to Lockwood’s website and she mentions that one of her inspirations was reading Adam Hochschild’s Bury the Chains, about the efforts of English abolitionists in the 18th century. I read that earlier this year, and it is a very good book.

Janine: I’ve heard nothing but good things about Bury the Chains. Here, for our readers, is a plot summary of Forbidden Shores:

The story takes place in 1800. Allen Pendale and Clarissa Onslowe meet on board a ship called The Daphne. They are sailing to a Caribbean island where a position as governess to the daughter of a plantation owner named Lemarchand awaits Clarissa, and where Allen plans to visit his father, also a plantation owner, and inform him of Allen’s mother’s recent death.

Clarissa is a clergyman’s daughter and former abolitionist who was ruined when she fell in love with a man and went to bed with him. When the rest of her family disowned her, her uncle offered her a position as his housekeeper, but now the uncle is dead, and despite her anti-slavery sentiments, Clarissa is on her way to the Caribbean, to work for a plantation owner, of all things.

Allen is an attorney and the younger son of an earl who has a knack for getting involved with married women. Allen and Clarissa meet when an irate husband tries to shoot Allen and Allen knocks Clarissa down to protect her from the gunshot. Clarissa does not appreciate Allen’s gallantry, especially since Allen lands on top of her. She is irritated with him but secretly aroused, too.

Allen and Clarissa both fantasize about each other and then, one night they end up having sex on the deck behind the chicken coop. They have fun but then decide it’s best to pretend that nothing happened.

Shortly after that, their cabin mates, Lemarchand’s overseer and his wife, become so seasick that the best solution to the problem seems to be for them to share a cabin, and for Clarissa and Allen to share the other one. (Like the AAR reviewer, I was very doubtful that such a thing would actually have happened in the Georgian era).

At this point, Clarissa reveals to Allen that she hopes to become the mistress of some very wealthy man on the island, and to earn a lot of money on her back. There’s just one problem — her sexual experiences are limited, and would Allen be willing to teach her everything he knows about sex?

Allen is plenty willing. So he and Clarissa have lots of different kinds of sex, to the enjoyment of both. Then they arrive on the Caribbean island, and it is time for them to part company. But just as they are intending to go their separate ways, they meet with the wealthy plantation owner, Lemarchand, who goes by the name March, and Clarissa falls in love with him almost right away. It’s love at first sight for March, too. Only the object of his affections isn’t Clarissa — it’s Allen.

After Allen does something that offends her sensibilities, Clarissa sets her sights on March for her wealthy protector (something else that seemed to me like it could be historically inaccurate, since she was his daughter’s governess). Not long after she does so, Allen realizes that he is in love with Clarissa.

So now the focus of the story is a triangle, but not a traditional one in which two men are in love with one woman. Instead, it’s a triangle where each person is in love with someone who loves someone else.

I don’t want to say much more about the book because I’ve already revealed things that happen quite far into it, but it’s tough to discuss it without giving away spoilers, because of the way the book is constructed.

I will add that at some point, there’s a sexual mà©nage in Forbidden Shores, too. I’m mentioning this even though it happens far into the book, because I think it’s the kind of thing that readers like to know about a book in advance.

Jennie F.: Yes – I’ll add that in case it makes a difference to anyone (it was brought up on the AAR thread about the book) that while there is m/m interaction, it doesn’t involve anal sex. I wondered if Lockwood’s omission of any m/m anal sex was a concession to potentially squeamish readers – somehow I don’t think so. Readers who are interested in erotica featuring m/m scenes probably wouldn’t draw the line there. So I tended to see it as more a decision to stay true to the characters rather than go for that extra shock factor, which I respected.

Janine: I agree with you on that. There’s a sense of intelligence and an earthiness in Lockwood’s writing style that appeal to me, so I really wanted to love this book. The characters, especially Allen, had some depth and dimension; the settings, shipboard and Caribbean, were unusual, and I enjoyed that very much.

I also liked the literary allusions to The Tempest and loved that the story had a slavery angle. I really appreciate that Lockwood did not pretty up what slavery was like. The depiction of slavery was very realistic, and that was one of the best things about the book.

Forbidden Shores is clearly above average in many ways, but despite that, I closed the book feeling that it did not live up to its potential.

Jennie F.: I agree that there was a lot to like; it made the flaws that kept it from being a great book all the more disappointing.

Janine: Agreed. One reason I felt that way is that it took me a while to warm up to Allen.

Jennie F.: I liked Allen fairly early on. He had a certain ironic self-awareness that reminded me a bit of a Judith Ivory hero, or of Sheridan from Kinsale’s Seize the Fire.

Janine: Yes, that’s true, but he also had a certain uncouthness that those heroes lacked. Sometimes I enjoyed that (especially in the first sex scene), but at other times, it kept me at arm’s length from his character.

Jennie F.: That didn’t bother me. If anything, it leant a bit more of a realistic edge to his character. Despite his apparent success as a ladies man, Allen ultimately seemed to realize that it wasn’t because he was so suave and irresistible that all those married women fell into bed with him. Ultimately, he was the character I liked best.

Janine: I started out liking Clarissa best, but as the book progressed, I liked her less and Allen more. My feelings toward Clarissa underwent a sea-change when The Daphne reached shore, and she decided she was in love with March.

By far the biggest flaw in the book for me is that I could not understand for the life of me how Clarissa could fall in love with March so quickly. Yes, March was gorgeous, wealthy and elegant, but Clarissa was a former abolitionist, for heaven’s sake, and March’s wealth came from the back-breaking labor of the slaves that he believed in treating with cruelty.

Jennie F.: The instances of love at first sight (Clarissa for March; March for Allen) are what really brought the book down for me. I am not a big believer in love at first sight, and it’s a fanciful notion that didn’t fit into this book, that was to a certain degree more realistic, and as you said, earthy than the average romance.

Janine: Well, I can sometimes believe in love at first sight, but the author has to work double-time to convince me of it, and I don’t feel that Lockwood did that in this book. You’re right that March’s instantaneous love for Allen was pretty inexplicable too, but the insufficient motivation was even more glaring in the case of Clarissa’s love for March, because the gap in their values was so wide.

As I read I kept asking myself how Clarissa could love March. She was upset with Allen for a transgression that, although bad, was nowhere near the level of the wrongs March committed, but she wasn’t nearly as angry with March.

Jennie F.: I really lost the thread of Clarissa’s character even earlier, with her decision to become a courtesan. Her motivations were not sufficiently explained, so it ended up coming off as a sort of porny plot device to get Clarissa together with Allen and March.

Janine: I agree that the motivation for her decision to become a courtesan was not explained but for some reason I was able to accept this much better than her falling in love with March.

Jennie F.: At least her falling in love with March was somewhat unexpected, from a romance POV. Whereas the courtesan thing seemed a bit clichà©. Though I agree it was less morally distasteful than falling in love with a slave owner.

Janine: Perhaps if Clarissa had been shown getting to know March more gradually, I might have believed that she loved him, but as it was, I never really did. To sell me on love at first sight, an author really has to lay the groundwork that shows that the lovers have a lot in common before they meet, or else that one complements the other in an essential way. But I didn’t see anything like with March and Clarissa.

Jennie F.: I would’ve settled for laying some groundwork that Clarissa was ready to be deluded; that she could fall in love with the *idea* of March rather than the man himself.

Janine: Oh, excellent point. There was a while when I thought that this was where Lockwood was going. I thought Clarissa would turn out to be merely infatuated rather than in love, and to be deluding herself about March. I think I would have found Forbidden Shores more interesting and more romantic book if I had felt that something like that was conveyed, because the infatuation could then have been merely an obstacle in Clarissa and Allen’s relationship, and overcoming that obstacle would have ultimately made Allen and Clarissa’s relationship stronger.

Jennie F.: I agree. I guess it was it was more unconventional, but not very romantic. By the end, Clarissa at least was saying that she had loved March, past-tense, but again I didn’t feel I got enough of her interior thoughts to really get a feel for when her feelings changed. Presumably when she found out what he’d done to Allen, but that doesn’t make her particularly admirable, that she tolerated his abuse of his slaves but only fell out of love when that abuse extended to Allen.

I ended up feeling that Lockwood really gave Clarissa’s thoughts and motivations short shrift, which was a shame, because she had some potential as a character.

Janine: I too felt that a lot of Clarissa’s thoughts and emotions were missing from the sections in her POV, and this made the book more frustrating. I’m still not completely sure whether Lockwood intended us to believe that Clarissa was merely infatuated or that she felt a deeper love for March than that, although I lean toward the latter. But either way, because I couldn’t believe in Clarissa’s love for March, and because I thought a lot less of when she loved him (or thought she loved him), the story fell apart for me toward the end. I was still interested in Allen and his character arc, but there wasn’t enough in the book to satisfy me.

I also have the feeling that I was supposed to find March sexy and to care about what happened to him. But I just didn’t, because of the way he made his fortune. Maybe it sounds moralistic of me, but I can’t help it — this is the way I feel.

Jennie F.: I think we were supposed to at least understand the magnetism that drew Allen and Clarissa to him. I don’t think Lockwood was entirely successful in depicting that, though again, I think maybe she could have done that through examining the aspects of Allen and Clarissa’s characters that could have made them susceptible to March in the first place, rather than trying to make the reader fall in love with March.

Janine: Yes, good point. What do you think about the erotic aspects of the book? I thought the first sex scene between Allen and Clarissa was mega-hot, and a few others were pretty hot too. There were others between the two of them that I could take or leave. The mà©nage scenes didn’t really turn me on much at all, and I don’t think it was because it was a threesome. I have enjoyed a threesome scene in one of Megan Hart’s books, so I think the issue here was that having so many unrequited feelings flying around made the scenes somewhat uncomfortable to read. I did enjoy one very hot kiss between March and Allen.

Jennie F.: I think this is where the book did succeed for me – I found all the sex scenes pretty hot. I do hope the author writes more erotica, because I think she has an affinity for it.

I did mean to say that I liked Clarissa’s forthrightness in suggesting the mà©nage a trois. That could’ve come off as a porny erotica set-up, but it had a bit of poignancy because of the nature of the triangle.

Janine: It’s mentioned on the back cover that Allen has a secret, and even though it doesn’t come out until quite late in the book, I guessed what it would turn out to be very early on, and even had a strong hunch about what would happen when it came out, which proved to be correct.

Jennie F.: I don’t know if I would’ve guessed; I was bad and read ahead. I think there were some hints, but I’m not sure if I would’ve put two and two together.

Janine: Well, it’s clear from reading Blythe’s review at AAR that she didn’t guess the secret, and I really don’t think most readers would. I seem to (she says immodestly) have a knack for that sort of thing. But because I did guess this secret, I kept waiting for it to come out and when it finally did it seemed like that section of the book, and especially Allen and Clarissa’s reactions, was too compressed and should have been fleshed out more. I think the book needed to be longer.

Jennie F.: I agree with you that the book would’ve worked better had it been longer. I would have liked to have known more what Clarissa thought about Allen and her relationship with him after the revelation of the secret.

Janine: Overall, I felt that there was a lot to appreciate in this book, but also some things to be disappointed in. The ending does point to a HEA, but I didn’t feel the book was very romantic.

Jennie F.: I think I agree that it did not feel very romantic in spite of the hinted HEA – I think because Clarissa’s feelings for Allen never seemed to rise above attraction and liking, and when they were estranged, a sort of nostalgia for him and their times on the ship.

Janine: What grade would you give Forbidden Shores?

Jennie F.: I would give it a B; not a high B – closer to a B- than a B+. Judging it strictly as erotica I’d probably give it a B+; judging it strictly as romance a C. I do give it a bit of a bump for being something different; I’m always looking for that.

Janine: Me too, which is another reason why I wanted to love this book, and am somewhat disappointed that I didn’t. I’m not sure if I’ll be tempted to reread it, but I’m glad I read it at least once and I do think it’s above average. So for me, the B- grade seems to fit.

This book can be purchased in trade paperback format.

Related posts:

1. CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: The Serpent Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
2. REVIEW: Forbidden by Lila Dubois
3. REVIEW: Forbidden Pleasures by Lora Leigh

The transcript below is a chat that Jayne and I had regarding the book. Some of it is spoilerish and I’ve tried to denote that but if you don’t want to be spoiled at all, please don’t read this before you read the book.

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Leopard Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
2. REVIEW: The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
3. REVIEW: Leopard Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt