Dear Author » Marriage-in-Trouble

A Selection of December Harlequin Presents

Jane — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:00:29 +0000

I haven’t had much luck with Harlequin Presents subscriptions of late. In December, I enjoyed three of my eight books. The problem is that I’m never sure what books I’m going to enjoy and thus the subscription seems worth it. I guess I’ll reevaluate mid year 2012.

The Trophy Wife by Janette Kenny is the next to last addition in the Notorious Wolfe series (or Bad Blood series as it was originally labeled by Mills & Boon). It featured a model with an eating disorder and computer billionaire. While I appreciated that the story attempted to tackle the issue of anorexia and societal concepts of beauty which prizes thinness over everything, I felt that the story was overloaded with sex and dealt very little with the conflict between the characters. I wasn’t even convinced that they knew each other by the end of the book. They had been married for nearly two years but spent so little time together, wrapped up in their own jobs, that they hadn’t even seen their partner’s homes which may have been okay if the first time that they actually went to the other’s homes wasn’t by the 70% mark of the book. C-

The Power and The Glory by Kimberly Lang. I bailed on this one after the second chapter. The hero is the campaign manager for his father, a Senator, who sounds like a dickwad and the heroine is a protestor for some environmental lobbying group. I am so sick of politics and politicians that I could not stomach reading more than about 20 pages of this book. Maybe in another era I would find this more palatable but, alas, could not. DNF

The Man Every Woman Wants by Miranda Lee. The heroine is a lawyer who does contract work for a sports agent. She confesses that she has been weaving a tale about their faux engagement to her dying grandmother and now her dyying grandmother wants to meet him. The hero agrees to do this favor for her and has a bit of fun with it. The heroine’s family is sports mad and the heroine showing up with a former star athlete and current sports agent increases her cachet. B-

A Christmas Night to Remember by Helen Brooks. My main complaint about this story is that it takes place over two days and the couple has serious issues. The heroine is involved in a terrible car wreck. She’s maimed and scarred and has never felt secure in her husband’s love. He’s so beautiful and so rich and there are always dozens of women casting lures for him, all of which he has steadfastly ignored. The heroine was beautiful prior to the car wreck and she prided herself in being able to fit in with the fast and fashionable but now that her legs are less than perfect, she doesn’t know what will become of her and she’s sure that her husband will leave her. In order to prevent him from leaving her, she’ll leave him. He refuses to leave and in the space of two days (right before Christmas) convinces her anew of his steadfast devotion. I should love this story. It is the kind of Brooks’ story I usually enjoy but I wasn’t convinced that the heroine’s deepseated emotional fear could be assauged in just a couple of days. C

On the First Night of Christmas by Heidi Rice. Cassie gets splashed by a car careening around the corner while she is looking at holiday windows at Selfridges in London. Rather than be a doormat, she marches over to the vehicle, stopped at a signal and bangs on the window. She tells him off and when he fails to provide an appropriate response to her, she jumps in the car only to realize that the driver is a former high school classmate of hers, one she’s always had a crush on. Just off a broken engagement, Cassie’s confidence is at an all time low and when Jace Ryan comes on to her, it’s like a balm to her wounded ego. They embark on an affair, destined to only last until the New Year when Jace returns to New York. In that time period, Cassie falls hard for Jace but Jace is confused by his feelings. He doesn’t really believe in love and just wants to enjoy the moments as they come. I really enjoyed the ending because I felt like it didn’t force the issue. It does have a traditional HEA (provided by the epilogue). B

On the First Night of Christmas actually had a similar conflict to Once Touched, Never Forgotten by Natasha Tate, a book that I didn’t like much. Once Touched, Never Forgotten is a secret baby story. The heroine decides that the hero won’t be a good father and more importantly, doesn’t want to be a father so when she finds out she is pregnant she leaves him. Five years later he rediscovers her and her secret baby. She had a terrible childhood and was abandoned by her own father. She projects her fears onto the hero that he too will abandon their child. Of course, she never gives him the opportunity to choose. The hero isn’t sure he knows how to love but he promises that he will be a good father. The heroine is relentless in her accusations that he will be a terrible father based on nothing more than her own fears. She was a bitch but then he later uses sexual blackmail to get her to marry him so I figure that they belonged together. And unlike the Rice book, the hero in this one belabored his inability to love over and over again. I got it. She was abandoned. He had crappy relatives. The melodrama was over the top. D

The Marriage in Trouble Trope: Love Is Hard Work

Jane — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 09:00:28 +0000

I’m not sure how I came across this article about Olivia Wilde. I’m not a fan of hers and wouldn’t be able to pick her out of a pretty actress line up. But in an interview with Marie Claire, Wilde spoke about her divorce. “I don’t think love should be work,” she said. She acknowledged that her parents, married 35 years told her that marriage was hard work, but “When the relationship becomes about working to make it work, it’s lost that beauty and that optimistic bohemian sense that brought us together.”

Unlike Wilde, I see beauty in the relationships that persevere and it is one reason why I like marriage in trouble romances.

Broken marriages come in all shapes in romance. They are created through immaturity, sometimes through indifference, and even through cruelty. In Erin McCarthy’s Hot Finish (reviewed here), Suzanne and Ryder’s marriage broke up because of a lack of communication and fear. Suzanne was insecure and married to a celebrity racecar driver whose default setting and “on” setting is laconic, those fears of self worth were heightened. She began to lash out and Ryder, obtuse and unobservant, lacked any meaningful response. The situation exacerbated until neither was happy and they divorced. Two years of being within the same social circle, however, brings the two to the realization that their connection hasn’t been severed, only strained and because of their desire to begin anew, they begin to communicate in ways that they hadn’t before.

Perhaps the modern queen of the marriage in trouble trope is Sherry Thomas. In Not Quite a Husband and PrivateArrangements, Thomas explores long time separations between married couples in the late 19th century. In Private Arrangements, the duke perceived his newly obtained duchess deceived and abused his regard for her. He leaves her and they live apart, literally separated by an ocean, for almost a decade until the duchess petitions for divorce. In Not Quite a Husband, the heroine and hero made an improbable match. She was barren, a surgeon, older. He was a celebrity of sorts, well favored, younger. Yet they were so much in love until the heroine discovered something about the hero that ruined their marriage and they too spent several years physically and emotionally distant.

In both stories, the characters had to learn forgiveness both of themselves and each other. Perhaps the greatest character trait they acquired in separation was tolerance. I asked Sherry Thomas what she thought about the Marriage in Trouble trope:

It is not marriages-in-trouble that interest me so much as disillusionment, which is a major theme in my writing, even when there is not a glimmer of a marriage is sight. We as a society have celebrated falling in love for a long time. But as anyone who’s been in a longterm relationship–the end goal of romance–can testify, the initial infatuation is the easy part. There are probably a few couples who never leave that state of pink hazy happy glow, but for the vast majority of us, it is what we do after the initial infatuation has worn off that determines the longevity of our relationships.

I’m a firm believer that disillusionment is not only something that can be dealt with, but a good thing. It means you look at your beloved not with lust-goggles, but realistically; not as an extension of yourself and your own wants and needs, but as a person in his/her own right. But it is not easy to arrive at that point of zen. Can you deal with another person’s flaws? Can you understand that it is by the same discomfiting process that they are dealing with your flaws? Cuz chances are, no matter whom you end up with, you’ll have to go through these stages.

So I explore these questions in my books, with much huger kinds of disillusionment than folks normally encounter. But the process is the same. Characters who first think of each other as all kinds shiny and perfect realize that holy cow, not only are they not perfect, they are all kinds of problematic. They sulk. They agonize. And then they man/woman up and say, “You know what, you are not perfect–and neither am I. I still love you and want to commit to you and I hope you feel the same way.”

And that makes me happy.

In Beth Andrews’ Feels Like Home, the heroine is a completely different person than who she was when she first met and then married the hero. She had tried to be the perfect southern belle daughter and then the perfect beauty queen wife, but inside she felt empty and powerless and so she left her husband. In the period leading to their reconciliation, the heroine is sorry that she hurt her husband, the hero, but that she didn’t regret leaving him.

Tightening his hold on her, he yanked her to him. She pressed her palms against his chest, and could feel his heart beating strongly. “You left,” he growled, lifting her to her toes. “You. Left.”

“And you can’t forgive me. You want to stay angry, that’s your choice. You want to put the failure of our marriage squarely on my shoulders? I’ll carry that burden, because I did leave. You want honesty?” she cried hotly. “You want the truth? Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was also the best decision of my life.”

The heroine had changed and thus, in order for their marriage to work the second time, the hero had to not only accept the change but fall in love with a different person.

In all marriage in trouble stories, I am looking for the author to convince me that these two individuals that the characters have learned from their past mistakes, grown as individuals, and still love what the person has become. I particular like seeing how an author can bring that couple back together again without a near death experience or reveal of a big secret.

Most romance stories end at the beginning of the happy ever after. The marriage in trouble explores what happens during the ever after. It’s the struggle and hard work that make these stories beautiful, contrary to what Ms. Wilde may think about love, marriage and beauty.

REVIEW: Stand In Wife by Karina Bliss

Jane — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 19:00:17 +0000

Dear Ms. Bliss:

Sometimes I think a reader connects to a writer in ways that can’t quite be articulated. I’ve felt that way about your work for a while so I don’t know how reliable of a recommender of your books that I am. What I connect with is the authenticity of the characters, the fresh take on people not only falling in love but figuring out how they fit together.

This is a story about opposites: vivacious Vivienne Jansen and taciturn, wounded soldier Ross Coltrane.

Vivienne Jansen is an identical twin but she and her sister, Merry, have never been close. Merry has always fit in and Vivienne was just a bit too colorful for the rural New Zealand farming community where she grew up. In fact, Vivienne hated being a twin. She sought out her own group of friends and pursued very different activities than her sister. In her family of three children, she was the least responsible and the most flighty. Vivienne moved away and became a very well known costumer designer for movies. Because she’s disconnected with her family, she rarely comes home. But when Merry calls on her for help, Vivienne flies from New York to New Zealand. Merry has broken her leg while interviewing for a job in a city an hour south and she is afraid that if Charlie finds out she’s thinking about moving away, he’ll sue for full custody. Thus begins the twin swap. Vivienne pretends to be Merry only the swap is only supposed to be for a few days. Through a set of circumstances, Vivienne is forced to pretend to be Merry for much longer of a period of time, negotiating a reconciliation with Charlie and trying to handle the tasks of being a parent to two kids (the older daughter sussing out the fraud right away).

The only thing that matters in Ross Coltrane’s life is getting back into active service with the SAS, an elite branch of the Australian military and his brother Charlie. Unintentionally, perhaps, Ross played a big role in Charlie and Merry’s breakup. After Merry confessed that a man at her work had kissed her, Charlie went straight to Ross who asked him whether the two were in love in anymore and perhaps subtly encouraged Charlie to leave Merry. You can’t blame Ross. His father remarried a bitch of a woman who absolutely treated Ross like dirt. Ross’ view of marriage is a dim one.

Ross susses out the twin swap in fairly short order after experiencing an erotic dream about his supposed sister in law. He’d never felt that way about Merry before but he had been attracted to her twin. In fact, they struck sparks off each other eight years ago at Merry and Charlie’s wedding but Ross turned Vivienne’s invitation down.

Throughout the story, Ross and Merry navigate Charlie and Merry’s problems, talking about what makes a marriage work. They’ve picked sides, of course, but because they are outsiders, they aren’t as defensive as Charlie and Merry would be. When Ross points out that Merry didn’t allow for any mistakes, Vivienne jumps to Merry’s defense but inwardly agrees. Vivienne, herself, has always felt that Merry has impossibly high standards. When Vivienne says that Charlie stopped paying attention to Merry, Ross disagreed but also wondered if Charlie shouldn’t try to exert himself more.

As Vivienne and Ross take up the parts of a fueding married couple, the subtext is their mutual fear of commitment. Ross, in particular, is driven to get revenge for the loss of two of his fellow SAS brothers who died when an IED exploded under a Dumvee he was driving.

“How do you do it, Ross? How do you make peace with death?”

“I don’t. Grief is fuel to get me where I need to be.”

“Which is Afghanistan?”

The same accident injured Ross’ leg to the point that no one but Ross believes he can ever achieve active duty status again. Vivienne has always had a hankering for Ross but, in general, Vivienne doesn’t commit. Primarily because no one has ever expected Vivienne to stick but the twin swap puts Vivienne through a fiery trial of responsibility and commitment. There is a HEA in this book but it’s not a traditional one. But it fit the characters. Plus, these two talk to each other. They argue. They disagree. The way in which they converse is proof to me that their problems won’t be brushed under the carpet. One will always call bullshit on the other.

Ross took off the whistle. “Tell Til I’m sorry. Take over. I thought I could put a lid on this, but I can’t. I can’t.”

“Don’t walk away,” she said. “Only you can fix this with Tilly.”

“I can’t even fix myself,” he said harshly.

Viv took a deep breath. “You know your pity party is getting really old.”

“What?”

“Life’s chosen another path for you, so suck it up and quit blaming my brother and the unit for not letting you play out your revenge fantasies,” she said brutally. “Steve’s and Lee’s deaths were tragic, but using anger to fill the void left by their passing won’t solve anything. Deal with your grief, Ross.”

His gaze met hers. “Who am I if I’m not a soldier?”

She had to dig her hands in the pockets of her sweatpants not to touch him. “You’re still a soldier,” she said crisply. “It’s only your mission that’s changed. Quit serving the Iceman’s ego and serve where you’re needed. And right now, that’s here.”

I genuinely enjoyed reading about Ross and Vivienne. Vivienne was colorful and fun, but she had a big heart and was willing to make herself vulnerable time and again. Ross was dedicated but he also had a wicked and perverse sense of humor. My biggest complaint is that I think there was a little too much going on in this short space. Like Here Comes the Groom, I felt like the story could have used another 10,000 or so words to give us a little more private Ross and Vivienne time. Still, maybe that is because I like the characters so much that I am loathe to let them go. B

Best regards,

Jane

P.S. Harlequin, you have some of the most godawful titles, covers and blurbs in this line. If there is ever a line that is SCREAMING for a makeover, it is this line. It really needs some help. Plus, I wouldn’t be adverse to a little more sexiness to the stories. After all, these are all adults.

REVIEW: Gold Ring of Betrayal by Michelle Reid

Jane — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 16:33:46 +0000

Dear Ms. Reid:

Romance is equated with porn quite often. Porn, of course, is traditionally labeled as a creative activity that has no literary or artistic value other than to stimulate sexual desire. If romance is porn in any way, it is emotional porn in that the romance novel stimulates emotional responses. HPs are like cooked cocaine, or crack, because they are reduced from the pure stuff into a smaller form that has explosive results. The HP is an addictive quantity, but an acquired taste because (and this is particularly true for the older HPs) you have to overlook some objectionable passages to enjoy the feel of it. You live with the bad side effects for the entirely heady emotional enjoyment of partaking a deep draw off the angst bong pipe.

Gold Ring of Betrayal is an quintessential HP for that reason. It’s full of non stop emotional agnst but like many Reid books, the conventions are taken and turned slightly. The heroine was a doormat but turned into a fighter. The hero seems like an overbearing asshole, but he’s driven by his own emotional hangups, ones that he must overcome to achieve the HEA.

Sara married Nicolas Santino after a short but persistent courtship. She was young, gauche, and entirely unprepared for the wealthy and sophisticated company that Nicolas kept. Swept away from London and installed in his Sicilian estate, Sara became essentially a prisoner and a very unhappy one at that. Nicolas deposited her with his father and amongst his friends and almost reveled in her uncomfortable state. He married her because of her innocence and her shyness.

Nicolas made a crucial mistake. He believed that his father would come to love Sara as he, Nicolas, loved Sara. But his father did not. His father hated that Nicolas married a pale English rose instead of a Sicilian girl. His father plotted to get rid of Sara and he was successful. In a nefarious scheme executed by Nicolas’ father, Nicolas came to believe that Sara had taken another man to her bed and he cast her out. When Sara informed Nicolas that she was pregnant, he refused any contact and instead sent his emissary to tell her that she and her child would have his name, his financial support but that the child was not his.

For three years, no contact has passed between Nicolas and Sara. He travels around the world on business and Sara is raising her child but in the meantime, Sara has changed. The crucible of her marriage and the betrayal of Nicolas forged her into a different person. When they meet again, she lashes out at Nicolas (you give no quarter, Nicolas says to her at one time), whereas before she would have hid. She brings forth all the ways in which he failed her in their marriage, marrying her and forgetting her; making her feel as if she was nothing but a vessel for his passion.

This story begins with high emotional agnst and you keep pushing it throughout the entire story, raising the stakes even higher the deeper I went into the story. But what makes this such a memorable story, one that I have returned to several times since I bought it used, is how the story plays out in its resolution. Nicolas has stayed away from Sara because he must know his own frailty in regards to her. When Sara accuses Nicolas’s father of being involved with some dastardly deed toward her and her daughter, Nicolas admits as much:

“How, with your logic, does that make me jump to my father”s bidding?”

Her eyes, bruised and darkened by anxiety, suddenly flickered into a clear and cynical brilliance. “It has brought you here, hasn’t it?” she pointed out. “Made you face a mistake you have been refusing to face for three whole years.”

To her surprise, he laughed”not nicely but scathingly. “If those are my father”s tactics then he has made a grave error of judgement. What’s mine I keep.” His eyes narrowed coldly on her. “And though I will never wish to lay a finger on you myself again in this lifetime I am equally determined that no other man will have the privilege.”

This is a marriage in trouble story doubled down with deception and betrayal and both parties had to come to admit their flaws–Sara in her inability to stand up for herself and Nicolas for never supporting her. Nicolas betrayed their marriage in a million tiny ways; their breakup was inevitable so long as Sara couldn’t stand up to him. I appreciated that Nicolas recognized that the feelings he had for Sara, the innocent, weren’t even close to what developed for Sara, the fighter.

What others may not connect with is Sara’s huge capacity for forgiveness and understanding. Even though Nicolas has treated her abominably, she understands, and conveys to the reader, the horror and emasculation Nicolas feels believing that Sara took another man to her bed. The narrative did a great job of showing the reader why Nicolas believed that Sara had betrayed him physically even when she protested her innocence.

‘Who is this Englishman I hear you’ve befriended?’ he asked her one evening as they were getting ready for bed.

‘Who, Jason?’ she asked. ‘He’s a friend of your father’s, not mine.’

‘That is not how I hear it,’ he said coolly. ‘I would prefer it if my wife did not have her name connected with another man. Break the friendship, Sara,’ he warned. ‘Or watch me break it for you.’

For some time her desire to fight back, if only with Nicolas, had been growing stronger the more pressure Alfredo applied to her nerves. And this once she retaliated, hard and tight. ‘If you can rarely be bothered to be here with me yourself, then I don’t see what right you have to tell me who I can and cannot spend my time with.’

‘I have the right of a husband,’ he arrogantly replied.

‘Is that what you call yourself? I call you the man who occasionally visits my bed! How long have you been away this time, Nicolas?’ she demanded as his eyes flashed a warning. ‘Two, nearly three weeks? What am I supposed to do with myself when you’re not here—hide away in purdah?’ In her mind this was not an argument about Jason Castell, but about their lifestyle in general. ‘If you want to know what I’m doing every single minute of the day then stay around and find out!’

‘I have a business to run!’ he threw back harshly. ‘The same business which pays for all your fine clothes and the luxury surroundings for you to wear them in!’

‘And did I ask for the clothes?’ she challenged. ‘Did I ask for the luxury accommodation? When I fell in love with you I fell in love with the man, not his money! But I rarely see the man, do I?’

‘You’re seeing him now,’ he murmured huskily.

And she was, seeing him in all his golden-skinned, sensually sinewed, naked glory.

But for the first time ever she turned away from the invitation his husky words had offered. ‘We’ve been married for almost a year,’ she said. ‘And I can count on the fingers of one hand how many weeks we’ve actually spent together. This isn’t even my home, it’s your father’s!’ she sighed. ‘And on the rare occasions you do find time to come here your father takes priority.’

‘I refuse to pander to your unnatural jealousy of my relationship with my father,’ he clipped.

‘And I hate living here,’ she told him bluntly. ‘And if you can’t be here more than you are then I want to go home, to London. I want to get a job and work to fill my days. I want a life, Nicolas,’ she appealed to his steadily closing face, ‘that doesn’t revolve around couture shops and beauty parlours and feeling the outsider with all these tight-knit, clannish Sicilians!’

‘A life with an Englishman, perhaps.’

She sighed again, irritably this time. ‘This has nothing to do with Jason.’

‘No?’

‘No!’ she denied. ‘It is to do with you and me and a marriage that isn’t a marriage because you aren’t here enough! It’s to do with me being unhappy here!’ Tears, honest tears, filled her eyes at that point; she could see him blur out of focus as she appealed to him to understand. ‘I can’t go on like this—can’t you see? They—your father, your friends—overwhelm me! I’m frightened when you’re not here!’

An appeal from the heart. It should have cut into him, reminded him of the soft, gentle creature he had originally fallen in love with. The one who had been so timid that she used to cling to him when he’d introduced her to someone he knew, or had reached for his hand if they’d crossed the road, or could be tongue-tied by a painful shyness when teased.

But he was Sicilian. And a Sicilian man was by nature territorial and possessive. And if Sara dismissed Jason Castell from her mind as unimportant Nicolas didn’t. Because she hadn’t voiced all of these complaints before the Englishman’s name had begun cropping up in conversations around the island. She hadn’t dared to argue with him like this before the man had come on the scene.

And she had never turned away from the blatant invitation of his body before the Englishman’s appearance.

All of this was written to show us why Sara understood Nicolas’ pain and why she was so mixed up with love and hate for him and how she could ultimately forgive him. Nicolas, himself, makes a big gesture toward the end because (and this is a spoiler)

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

I love how reading certain passages make your heart clutch in sympathy.

The story ends with sunshine and rainbows for nearly everyone but I felt it fit the story. Where the story could have been stronger was that Nicolas was quite the martyr at the end of the book. While I loved some of the dialogue that came from his martyr-ish state, I (and apparently Sara) were a bit weary of it. For prose purists, there are definitely awkward turns of phrase and even if you are lost in the story, the rough prose might pull you out. Having said that, if a reader is looking for a high angst reading experience, Gold Ring of Betrayal is hard to beat. B+

Best regards,

Jane

This book is released as part of the Harlequin Treasury series, digitally republished books that were formerly released in print only. This month Harlequin has released over 2000 books into the market. At Amazon, it’s easy to find these titles. Simply search the Kindle store with the words Harlequin Treasury. Barnes and Noble isn’t as easy. Readers have reported that they run the search at Amazon, find the title that they want, and then search by title at Barnes and Noble. There is an advanced search function at BN but I haven’t been able to get it to work.

REVIEW: A Few Harlequin Presents for October 2010

Jane — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 19:55:51 +0000

Public Marriage, Private Secrets by Helen Bianchin

Bianchin has a certain trope she likes to write and most of her books are a variation on the theme of two people who married because their families wanted it and they were a good match on paper, who secretly fall in love with each other, but the woman is beset with jealousy because the man is so gorgeous and is usually the victim of some CRAZY stalker woman who drives the woman away until the man comes after her and forces her to see the light. This book is essentially no different. Gianna married RaÃºl Velez-SaldaÃ±a when it was discovered she was pregnant with his baby. Gianna felt like she forced RaÃºl into marriage and her confidence was further shattered when she discovered that he was cheating on her with another woman and she lost her baby. RaÃºl was never cheating on Gianna and when RaÃºl’s mother falls ill, he takes this opportunity to lure Gianna back into his home and his life. The success of these Bianchin stories rests upon how much I like the heroine, whether I think she is a fool or whether the CRAZY other woman made the heroine’s distrust of her husband believable. In this story, I felt like Gianna was initially had good cause for believing the other woman, but she veered toward fool at the end when she decided once and for all she was going to prove whether RaÃºl was innocent, something she could have done four years previous. C-

Goodreads | eHarlequin | Amazon

Innocent Secretary-Accidentally Pregnant by Carol Marinelli

Emma Stephenson got the position as Luca D’Amato’s assistant by not succumbing to his early flirtations. She really needed the job far more than she needed to be in Luca’s bed. As Emma became more and more indispensable to Luca, the frequency of flirting abated. Luca begins to really like Emma, as a person. He enjoys seeing her in the mornings and working with her all day long. Unfortunately this doesn’t reduce Luca’s desire for Emma and he really struggles with suppressing his instinct to ask her out, try to pursue her but he knows if he sleeps with her, he’ll lose the best PA he’s ever had. The reason he can’t have a long term relationship with anyone, including Emma is because his father was a brute, his uncle was a brute and Luca fears that any woman to whom he feels a deep attachment would suffer under his hands. As an HP, I thought this had some meaty agnst. Emma was a great character who not only stood up to Luca but stood up for herself. B-

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His Virgin Acquisition by Maisey Yates

The set up of this book is pretty bad. Laughably bad. Our intrepid heroines proposes marriage to a billionaire on the basis that marriage will make him more money. How? He’s on the verge of acquiring her father’s business, one that she wants to buy but her father refuses to sell to her. The contracts are signed and she will then “inherit” the business through the divorce (you can’t inherit anything in a divorce. Inheritance is bequeathed to you. Assets is a divorce are distributed via court order or order approving a private property settlement). What’s in it for him? She claims that married men earn more money and that in divorce he’ll make more deals as men commiserate with him for getting married to and then rid of a worthless piece of femininity.

WAT? I almost would have rather had one of those “If you don’t marry, I’ll disinherit you” plots.

Worse, Marco, the billionaire hero, is an asshole who basically believes that the world is his platter (and I guess that is somewhat believable in a billionaire but it makes for a distasteful hero). I never believed in Elaine’s savvy business acumen and while she wasn’t entirely a doormat, I still found her character, conceptually, as fatally flawed. In other words, she came off as a nitwit to me. D

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Three more mini reviews tomorrow.

REVIEW: Seducing the Duchess by Ashley March

Jane — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 19:39:34 +0000

Dear Ms. March:

I know when the review copy first came to my house, I pretty much passed it over. The title, I think, was a bit twee but a month or so ago, I came across the review copy again and learned that this was your debut book. I love debut books so I thought I would give it a try. We have a first page feature on our blog and the idea behind the first page is to have an opening strong enough that the reader will turn the page and eventually want to read/buy the book. Your opening was very strong. The hero enters a gambling den and spies a woman that is “a sing to be indulged in and never repented.” He has spent six months wooing this “beautiful harlot” and has won her, or so the reader is led to believe. By the end of chapter one, the hero has extricated this harlot from the lap of another man and dragged her off to his carriage.

What the reader is quick to learn is that Philip’s harlot is actually his wife, Charlotte, Duchess of Rutherford. Philip, the Duke of Rutherford, grew up next door to the Squire’s kids, Ethan and Charlotte. Ethan fell in love with and tried to run off with Philip’s fiance. Philip obviously felt betrayed and he took the one thing that he knew that Ethan loved and that was Charlotte. He wooed her, married her and made her confess that she loved him only to be told in return that she was married to exact revenge on her brother and that he does not love her. He then abandons her.

Charlotte runs away and tries to get him to petition for divorce by pretending (unfortunately) to be a harlot, sleeping around with various men, bringing scandal down upon the name. Ultimately, Philip decides that enough is enough because he does love her, regrets his actions and is determined to win her over and sets out to seduce her and make her love him again.

In a lame scheme to win her back, Philip says that he will grant her wish for divorce if she assists him in obtaining the hand of his former fiance (the one that Ethan tried to seduce away) and in the process gets Charlotte to a) spend time with him and b) confess what she thinks are the traits of a good husband.

The reason that I said it was lame is because it didn’t feel sophisticated enough of a plot for either the writing or for Philip. It places the two of them in constant contact which is convenient and necessary but I wished that there had been something else to bring them together because how are you going to convince someone to love you while trying to marry you off to someone else? The plot seemed counter intuitive to Philip’s end goal. And the facade is dropped shortly after making the whole idea seem kind of superfluous.

The other thing that really bothered me was that Charlotte was never unfaithful, not really in mind or body. I loved the idea of the scandalous duchess and the fact that in all the years that they were separated, she never once took a lover was a big, big disappointment. To me this bordered on virgin widow territory. To the outside world, and to Philip, she had taken many lovers. She taunts Philip with this knowledge. Yet he doesn’t care so why make her nearly virginal?

There was another scene that harkened to the early days of romances when Charlotte is caught playing cards with all stablemen, groomsmen, and the butler. Even in the Victorian time period, there were distinct class differences, even between the servants themselves.

But I really did love the marriage in trouble story. It wasn’t enough that the two of them loved each other. It wasn’t even enough that they confessed those feelings for each other. It was about respect and honor and commitment and giving up control–all those things that love is supposed to comprise. In some aspects, the romance between Charlotte and Philip is a reminder that love must be a very unselfish act because it makes you intensely vulnerable to the other. B

Best regards,

Jane

REVIEW: Trial by Desire by Courtney Milan

lazaraspaste — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:00:37 +0000

Dear Ms. Milan,

When Jane asked me to review your book Trial by Desire, I was really happy to do so. I had just finished your debut novel, Proof by Seduction, on a plane of all places, and had been intrigued by the secondary relationship in that book. As everyone who reads romance knows, secondary relationships that do not get resolved in the first book invariably find a way of having their own book.

In Proof by Seduction, Ned Carhart attempts to prove something to his cousin, Lord Blakely, and as a result gets both himself and Lady Kathleen into some very hot water. The kind of hot water that leads to a nice, bubbling pot of scandal broth. As per usual, scandal broth’s temperature can only be taken down by the steady application of marriage. Thus, they are forced to do so. Trial by Desire opens three months after that forced marriage has taken place and is told from the point of view of Lady Kathleen, now Mrs. Edward Carhart. She is not, as one would expect, too upset about her untimely marriage. In fact, she rather likes her husband. In fact, she rather wishes he was more into her. She has a plan to seduce him. She's very excited about it. Only Ned disappoints her, breaks her heart really because he's off to China, practically this moment, to do work on behalf of Blakely.

The real meat of the plot begins three years later when Lady Kathleen is walking home from somewhere dressed as a servant. The country road is empty but she's afraid of encountering someone who will recognize her, especially a gentleman. Fate, however, has other plans and sure enough a gentleman rides up. Unlike in life, fiction offers us the delightful assurance that no encounter on the road is meaningless but rather is entirely destined. The gentleman, as one would guess, turns out to be none other than Lady Kathleen’s missing husband, Ned.

If I were to describe this plot, I would say that it is a plot of estranged spouses. Ned has gone from boy to man, as is most often the result of journeys. And Lady Kathleen has suffered the rumor of her husband’s swift removal for the past three years. But this book is so much more than the reconciliation of estranged spouses. It is more than the two protagonist’s getting to know each other as they fall in love, despite the forced marriage. No, this is a book about what makes a hero.

Lady Kathleen has been up to something. In point of fact, she’s been up to something since before her marriage. That something she has been up to is this: she’s been rescuing women from abusive marriages. Now in the past I have read books where heroines are engaged in some similar activity and it is always accompanied by a side of righteousness on the part of the heroine. Lady Kathleen is not righteous, nor sanctimonious, nor silly. She is not engaged in this activity because she is suffering what I like to term adolescent independence. You know about adolescent independence, don’t you? It is something teenagers, college freshmen, and romance heroines suffer from. Namely, in order to prove that they are "mature" and "adult" and "intelligent" they come up with some ass-witted scheme, behave ass-wittedly, and can generally be described as ass-wits. They don’t suffer criticism or critique or the slightest suggestion that perhaps their scheme, as noble as it is, is really a selfish self-indulgence that is about proving something to the world rather than true independence or charity. Lady Kathleen is absolutely, supremely, undoubtedly the opposite of that.

Lady Kathleen is clever. She does it because it is the right thing to do. She does it even though people practically insult her to her face. She is, in many ways, a female Scarlet Pimpernel, shrouded in an armor, a masquerade of silliness and femininity in order that she might get things done as quickly and efficiently as possible. The fact that people underestimate her is what allows her to do what she does.

The trouble comes from the fact that she’s just gone and helped her first noble woman. Unlike the commoners she has helped before, Lady Harcroft’s husband cannot be intimidated by Lady Kathleen’s connections. This is a much more dangerous situation than she has ever been in before. On top of this, Lord and Lady Harcroft are friends of both her husband, absent though he is, and her husband’s cousins, Lord and Lady Blakely.

When Ned returns he knows she has a secret. But Ned is clever, too. He’s clever enough not to assume anything about his wife or the situation he’s come home to. He’s also kind and doesn’t make irrational conclusions. Ned is what I would call a peach, although he is not a typical hero. I would neither describe him as alpha, beta or omega. Ned is just a man. In fact, this is the very thing that Ned struggles with. I don’t think I am revealing anything when I say that Ned’s great monster is his battle with manic-depression or something very much akin to it. This is something that was revealed in your previous novel. However, we get a much more in-depth look at what that depression is like.

I loved many things about your depiction of Ned. One, was that Ned’s depression was not a result of external events-’there was no uber-Freudian explanation for his depression. Usually and bewilderingly in romance, the depression is always a result of one of the following a) childhood trauma or b) war. As a person who has suffered from depression for most of her life, I have to say this is just not how it works. Ned’s depression is just who he is. It just happened to him. It wasn’t caused by any event. It was a result of temperament and disposition. This does not make it any less severe or real. He battles it constantly. It undermines his self-worth and in order to combat it he has created rituals for himself. I love the fact that you do not rely on a simple explanation for his depression nor give it a simple solution. You made it a part of him, something that both he and Lady Kathleen must come to accept.

Second, I love the fact that Ned is worried about his own masculinity. He constantly questions whether or not he’s man enough. His depression has made him feel weak and useless. He wants to be strong and useful. That is why he went to China. Not to repudiate his wife, but because he felt he wasn’t the kind of man she deserved. He questioned whether he was a man at all. When they married he was a skinny young kid, now he’s tall and strong but he still doesn’t feel like that, he still doesn’t know that. Ned tries so hard to be good. He wants to be a hero for Kathleen, but he feels unworthy to the task. He feels unworthy even when he does things just as heroic as St. George, for instance.

The complexity of both Ned’s character and Kathleen’s is what made this book work for me. The richness of your characterizations was refreshing. You never relied on easy answers or cliches. Even the villain was not painted with a one-dimensional hue. You dug deep into your characters and made them real people with real voices. For example, the third thing I loved about Ned is that you did not name his struggles with 20^th century language. You allowed him to think about it as if he were from that period. To explain it to Kathleen in the terms of the time. That is to say, he questioned is own sanity. Hell, even today when we know what depression is and what it can do, depressed people often question their sanity. The fact that both the way in which Ned has to deal with his problem and the limitations of how he can do that, made the plot more vivid than had you given him a simple problem with a simple solution.

Similarly, as I said above, Lady Kathleen never descends into adolescent behavior as some kind of short-hand for her independence, intelligence or sassiness. Instead, she behaves like a mature woman. She has her own insecurities and issues, but you never allow her to descend into petulance. The misunderstandings between Ned and Kathleen are clearly a result of who they are, how they think about the world, and their own images of themselves. They are not contrived to extend the plot. Neither are the sex scenes gratuitous and ill-placed. Rather, they are paced to make sense within the measure of the plot. I think both the pacing and the characters are a testament to the strength of your prose. For example, in this scene when Ned discovers Lady Harcroft:

He would have flinched himself. He understood all too well how her thinking went.

How many times had he wondered that about himself? What if he had been different? If he had been better? If he hadn't been betrayed by his own weaknesses? Those doubts would debilitate him, if he ever gave them full sway. It had taken him years to learn to discard them, to keep going in the face of his own fears. He could imagine all too well how Lady Harcroft must have felt.

Or this passage when Kathleen is trying to talk to Ned about his problem:

He stepped down; she stared out the doorway of the carriage in disbelief. He hadn't-’he really couldn't have packed away the conversation as if it hadn't happened. Kate stood so rapidly, she nearly struck her head against the roof of the carriage. "Ned, you-’you-’"

Her words sputtered out into cold silence. Exhaling, she gathered her skirts and stumbled to the door of the carriage. But he hadn't left her; he'd taken the footman's place, and as she stood at the edge of the steps, he held out his hand to help her alight. His fingers were warm, even through both their gloves.

"I'm good at jokes," he said to her, his voice so quiet she strained to hear it even above the velvet silence of the night. "When we married, I was excellent at playing the buffoon. After all, it's better to have your sins chalked up to tomfoolery than it is to have everyone realize that you occasionally succumb to this cloying thing that is not quite madness." He grinned again, and that expression was so at odds with the seriousness of his tone, that Kate shook her head.

I think both these passages illustrate what I’m talking about. You do what all good writing should do, that is you reveal the characters not just through description but through dialogue. You allow the prose to carry the story and you trust the prose to create complex characters.

This book is a thoughtful, character driven romance with rich language. Like I said, this book is about what it means to be a hero and the answer is not brawn but brains. A conclusion that is mirrored in the intelligence of your storytelling. A

Lazaraspaste

REVIEW: Hot Finish by Erin McCarthy, an STC Pick

Jane — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:00:29 +0000

Hot Finish is a Save the Contemporary pick. Go here to find out details on how to win an 8 GB iPod Touch.

Dear Ms. McCarthy:

I love this series and I particularly love this book. One reason is because sarcastic, outspoken, irreverent and bossy Suzanne isn’t toned down when she gets her own book. Previously Suzanne was the best friend of the female protagonists in the series. Best friends are allowed to be a little louder, brassier, maybe even more confidently sexy, than the heroines. I was worried that in order to make Suzanne palatable as a main protagonist that she would have to be watered down but, no, the Suzanne that you see in the previous two books is exactly who you see in Hot Finish.

“Do I seem like a woman who knows how to emotionally divorce myself from anything? Imogen, I’m the queen of stuffing shit down so deep I need laproscopic surgery to pull it back out.”

Suzanne Jefferson re-started a wedding consulting business because she is flat out broke and refuses to take money from her ex husband, Ryder Jefferson. Ryder is a top driver for a stock car series (also known as Nascar in my mind but not in the books as that would be a trademark infringement and apparently while teaming up with vulgar but funny actors like Will Ferrell is okay but combining sex and Nascar is not, but I digress) and is serving as the best man to a wedding between fellow driver, Jonas, and a track bunny named Nikki.

Ryder doesn’t really know Jonas but has agreed to serve as best man so Suzanne can make some money. He worries about her, even though they are divorced.

Suzanne and Ryder married seven years ago and five years later, Suzanne walked out of their home and never came back.

She wanted to say something to defuse his anger, to finally, after two years, reach a real level of friendship with him, but she didn’t know how to do that. She never had, and while she cared a hell of a lot about Ryder, the truth was, they didn’t seem to know how to be in each other’s lives.

After two years of separation and divorce, neither has really moved on with their lives and when Suzanne and Ryder find out that their divorce was never finalized, Ryder sees this as an opportunity to reclaim what they had once lost.

I loved Suzanne and what was more important so did Ryder. Everything about Suzanne turned him on: her quick temper, her outspokenness, her adventuresome nature. And through Ryder’s eyes, we see that everything about Suzanne is awesome to him. She can cut him to the quick and get him from zen to insane in a nansecond but the reader knows that Suzanne is the only woman the really does it for him. He thinks she is sexy in her puffy vest and in borrowed sweats, ordering cake, and basically, just by existing.

The thing I got about this book was that everyone is beautiful through the eyes of the one who loves them. Nikki was a money hungry twig, the original Bridezilla but something about her made Jonas, her racecar driver catch, happy.

As with the previous books in this series, the dialogue is awesome.

“If you think this is awkward, you should have been in the car when Nikki was describing Jonas’s penis to us in great detail.”

Ryder felt his skin crawl. ”Damn, am I glad I missed that.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think we heard an ounce of truth, because if you listened to that girl, Strickland is as thick as a jar of pasta sauce and as long as a garden hose, both of which I’m pretty sure are physically impossible. If he was packing the way she claims, he couldn’t climb in the car to drive.”

It’s funny, of course, but it’s also very authentic. I particularly loved the guy parts because they sounded like, well, guys.

Evan popped his head into the open door.

“I can’t believe you losers are leaving.”

“Yeah, well, someone has to take Captain Morgan here home.”

“Let this be a cautionary tale,” Evan said.

“Against rum?   Yeah, I’ll agree with that.”

“Against women.   Nothing but trouble.”

“Thanks for that, we’ll keep in mind when we’re having sex every night and you’re not,” Elec said.   ”Catch you later.”   He put his boot in his brother’s gut and shoved.

The attempts at a guy’s night out that devolves into texting each other’s girlfriends was hilarious.

While other characters from past books make appearances, the story is really about Ryder and Suzanne who’ve never learned how to communicate with each other. Ryder, the more open emotionally of the two, never really understood the depth of Suzanne’s insecurity. Suzanne always felt that Ryder would never have married her if she hadn’t gotten pregnant. Her poor trash upbringing loomed too large in her mind for her to believe that Ryder, a wealthy, good looking man truly loved her. The two push each others buttons, knowing that they shouldn’t say the thing that is actually coming out of their mouths but seemingly helpless to stop it followed by internal recriminations.

He was going to sleep, and he was not going to do a damn thing about his prize boner, no matter how much it was demanding attention. Sullen masturbation was not his style.

Laying in bed staring at the ceiling and feeling sorry for himself was much more his style.

Feeling like a total dumb ass, Ryder stripped down to his briefs and slid underneath his sheets, feeling so surly he consciously skipped brushing his teeth, something he never, ever did. Bad breath would teach her.

The real problem with Suzanne and Ryder is that they weren’t very good at communicating with each other and in the course of the book, they learn (and we readers get to see) them trying to talk to each other more about what they are feeling. Ryder is much better than Suzanne because he comes from a safer and more secure place in his life whereas Suzanne always felt like she wasn’t good enough but he does things off hand, failing to make Suzanne really understand that he cares.

Hot Finish reminds me so much of what I love about contemporary romances. It is modern, of course, but it’s romance stripped down to its essentials: people who love each other trying to figure out how to make it last. B+

Best regards,

Jane

This is a mass market published by Berkley, a division of Penguin. Penguin participates in agency pricing.

REVIEW: Lady Isabella’s Scandalous Marriage by Jennifer Ashley

Jane — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:00:14 +0000

Dear Ms. Ashley:

I really enjoyed The Madness of Lord Ian McKenzie and started reading the sequel featuring a brother of Lord Ian the minute Lady Isabella’s Scandalous Marriage dropped on my doorstep. Lady Isabella met and married Roland Mackenzie on the night of her debutante ball. Mac, as he is called, crashed the party on a dare but the moment he saw her, he had to have her. In true Mackenzie style, he swept her out onto the terrace and convinced her to elope with him.

Her father, Earl of Scranton, disowned her for eloping with Mac, a debauched artist with a dissolute reputation. Isabella’s father was a good judge of character because while Mac did truly love Isabella, he was an alcoholic whose moodiness, debauchery, and frequent, unexplained abandonments drove Isabella to leave the marriage. At the start of the book, Isabella and Mac have been separated for three years. They both love each other deeply but Isabella feels like the pain of living with Mac was simply unbearable. Mac, spurred by his brother Ian’s happiness, is determined to win Isabella back.

At the start of the book, Mac has dried out. He has changed a great deal from the man that Isabella loved and then left. All of his former friends have left him because Mac is simply no fun anymore. He’s not into whoring or drinking or general revelry. His entire passionate focus is on one thing and that is Isabella.

Isabella brings herself into Mac’s sphere in order to inform him that he is being expertly forged by some unknown artist. Mac, who hasn’t painted a decent work since Isabella has left him, is intrigued rather than dismayed. Mac defined himself as an artist but never thought much of his own product. Upon seeing Mac, Isabella is struck by how much she misses him in her bed and in her life but also that he looks like the same Mac – tartan clad, wild eyed, and bad for her.

Because the book starts with a reformed Mac, it was hard to get a grasp on why Isabella, who so clearly loved Mac and who believed that Mac loved her, would not immediately forgive and begin anew. As the story progresses, we get a clearer idea of the painful tragedy that was Isabella’s marriage. There were some very poignant images portrayed toward the end of the story which would have made Isabella’s initial resistance more understandable. (For example, at one point Mac is remembering how he delighted in showing off how he could convince Isabella, a very proper young woman, to engage in scandalous acts which embarrassed her but she did anyway because she loved Mac so much).

I wish we had seen more of Mac’s recovery from alcohol dependence rather than having been presented with a fait accompli but the book is focused on how Mac wins Isabella’s trust post alcohol dependence versus having her see him struggle to recovery and renew their relationship in that way.

Isabella’s inability to trust Mac waged war with her deep affection for him and, well, her lust for him. Everything that the two of them had shared was built upon that first instance of impossible-t0-ignore lust which deepened into love despite the troubles of their marriage. The elopement typified the marriage. It was an act of recklessness and brought them both to their knees, emotionally.

A romance built around two people who really truly love each other from page one and are open about their feelings for one another seems like it would be conflict free but instead it’s fairly heartbreaking. Mac isn’t sure what he can do to convince Isabella he is changed and Isabella feels like she has gotten to a point in her life where the poignancy of the loss of her marriage isn’t killing her emotionally. Mac wants to be in Isabella’s bed but recognizes that lust has never been a problem for them. Both of them struggle with whether being physical with one another is harmful and so each sexual encounter is tinged with a bittersweet emotion and post coitus recriminations.

I’ve always loved a marriage in trouble story and this is a slightly different take on a favorite trope. The suspense plot was a bit ridiculous and I think the story could have easily excluded it without making a bit of difference. I loved revisiting Ian and Beth and the other members of the family. I think you are doing a great job of building interest for the future books without being intrusive about the fact that these brothers are sequel bait, even if they are sequel bait. B-

Best regards,

Jane

REVIEW: The Chief by Monica McCarty

Jane — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 20:00:37 +0000

I swore I reviewed this book before but I couldn’t find it in the archives so if you’ve read this, I apologize for the duplication.

Dear Ms. McCarty:

I tried your debut book and I’m afraid that I haven’t read you since but a friend of mine (can I say it was Angela James?) emailed me and said I might like The Chief. Then she invoked the magic Scottish comparison (magic for me at least). It reminded her of old school Julie Garwood. My fingers couldn’t type in the title and hit the buy button fast enough at that prompt.

I’m happy to say that I enjoyed The Chief and I could see some glimpses of Garwood, but it wasn’t quite the same. Garwood specialized in the clumsy, adorable despite herself heroine and the brooding but long suffering hero. The Chief features a kind heroine hoping for a better life for herself despite her angry, cruel father and the unrest in Scotland; and a brooding hero wanting to stay out of Scottish politics. The Chief equation is really Navy Seals meets Julie Garwood. (This assessment was confirmed by the author’s note at the end of the book and then all the promo pieces which I rarely read before I start a book).

Set against the back drop of the Western Isles of Scotland, The Chief explores the birth of the Highlander warrior myth. In 1305, Scotland was under the brutal boot of Edward I. William Wallace had just been killed in a gruesome fashion and Scotland floundered for leadership. Robert Bruce conspires with Harry Lamberton to create secret army of highly skilled, highly trained warriors who would employ guerrilla like tactics against the English. (The book refers to these as pirate style fighting).

Harry Lamberton is sent off to do Bruce’s recruiting. This story does not romanticize Bruce but rather characterizes him as an opportunist who was more interested in defeating John Comyn than the British. Lamberton and the others want Tormod MacLeod to lead this group and train these warriors. MacLeod’s legend is stories and while they acknowledge it is likely exaggerated, Bruce points out that “myth can be every bit as powerful as truth.”

Tor, as he is called, has no interest in training these warriors. Away from the borderland, the folks in the Isles have been able to remain mostly apolitical almost of a necessity for there are more internecine fighting than they know what to do with. Clan X is fighting against Clan Y and marginally suffering a truce with Clan W so that the two can ban against Clan Z.

Angus Og MacDonad, King of the Isles, dangles the comely marriage bait of the daughters of Sir Andrew Fraser in front of Tor but he isn’t biting. Fraser, imprisoned for years by the English, must have this alliance to crush the English. He threatens and drugs his daughter, Christina, into setting a trap for Tor. Christina wants to be married, wants to have a home away from her father, and looks upon Tor as a white knight when he inadvertently saves her from some brutes outside the walls of the keep.

Christina has been reading illicit copies of Lancelot and Guenivere’s stories and begins to create a little fantasy around Tor. She feels guilty at trapping Tor but is helpless. She is but a woman in a dangerous and physical man’s world.

Tor and Christina’s life together could have started out very poor based on this deception but the story does not rest upon that easy convention. Instead, Tor understands Christina is a pawn and does not blame Christina for her role. The conflict between Tor and Christina is one of duty over pleasure. As Christina begins to bring softness and liveliness to Tor’s austere keep, Tor becomes increasingly conflicted. Even though he enjoys his physical coupling with Christina, he sleeps each night with his clansmen in the great hall.

Tor’s devotion to his clan stems from seeing his enemies kill his father, rape and kill his mother and virtually destroy his clan. His entire purpose in life has been to become strong enough to prevent harm to his people. Even spending one night with Christina seems to threaten this. Tor is unable to create a balance between his need for Christina and his welcomed duty to the clan. The more that he feels for Christina, the more that he pulls away. Christina, of course, is bewildered and hurt by Tor. She’s not one to belabor her situation, however, and tries to make the best out of her situation. What makes this even more interesting was that Tor knew that Christina wanted more, maybe even loved him, and he had to resist any emotional softening as well.

I really enjoyed this “marriage in trouble” storyline and thought that the focus on a very natural conflict helped to offset part of the corniness of the story. The creation of the special forces team for Robert the Bruce seemed too steeped in modern day ceremony complete with nicknames for each operative, the corny name for the group and the ceremony. Tor was not a very romantic person and the nicknames, ceremony and name for the group seemed at odds with his practical nature. I could see those things coming from Christina but not from Tor. At one point, I wondered if the Scribe Virgin would make an appearance.

Interestingly, the Author’s Note added a huge sense of realism to the story but without the corniness. Having said that, I’m completely on board with the Highlander Guard books. B

Best regards,

Jane

This book is published by Ballantine, a division of Random House and NOT a member of the Agency Five.

REVIEW: Along Came a Husband by Helen Brenna

Jane — Mon, 31 May 2010 19:00:28 +0000

Dear Ms. Brenna:

Sometimes the hardest reviews to write are the ones about books that are totally competent yet somehow failed to reach me as a reader and this is one of those reviews. The writing was competent. There was a sense of urgency that kept the story moving. The core of the book centered around reunited lovers with a dash of marriage in trouble – both tropes that I dearly love. The characters had reasonable justifications for their actions but I guess, in the end, I found them fairly emotionally immature and not ready for a life together.

Missy Charms runs a gift shop on Mirabelle Island. One stormy night she opens her door to find a man with a gunshot wound. He turns out to be her supposedly dead husband, Jonas Abel. Jonas and Missy met and married quickly and then repented nearly every day thereafter. Jonas, an FBI agent, spent most of his waking time working and spent very little time with Missy. Missy felt abandoned and sought to fill the gap by working outside the home. Jonas had a deep seeded insecurity about providing for Missy and her job hunting fed that insecurity. At a very low point in her life, Missy needed Jonas and he was working and so she decided to leave him.

Jonas took the rejection hard and agreed to go deep undercover for the FBI, faking his death and disappearing for four years only to show up wounded at Missy’s home in Mirabelle. Together again, Jonas and Missy begin to question their separation and the fact that in the four year absence neither has found another to love.

The characters are thoughtfully developed. Their actions in keeping with the identities created for them, yet, the images that they both projected were those who were very childish. Jonas is surprised that Missy mourned him. I found this rather incredible because even if you divorce it doesn’t mean you don’t care for that person anymore. Jonas acted quite precipitously in faking his own death and completely removing himself from Missy’s life.

Unfortunately, his cover is blown and his life is in danger and he’s not sure who to trust. His superiors at the FBI might be dirty and Jonas flees to one place where he thinks no one can find him.

Part of Jonas’ insecurity was based on the fact that Missy lied to him when they met and kept a fairly significant fact of her past from him until only shortly before their marriage. There were real and serious issues that separated Jonas and Missy and I thought you did a great job of conveying those. I was less convinced that either Jonas or Missy had learned or grown from their mistakes. There really wasn’t any internal recognition of what went wrong in their marriage. Rather than being insightful, Missy and Jonas both had to be told by someone else what was wrong with their marriage. It seemed like a deux ex machina, in fact. I would have liked to see Missy or Jonas recognize in their time apart what had gone wrong with their marriage and how to fix it.

I guess in the end, I found Jonas and Missy quite juveline in their actions at the end of the book marked the beginning of their maturation rather than the end of it. Jonas just started to awaken that perhaps it was his own self esteem issues and neanderthal mindset that contributed to Missy’s unhappiness. Missy began to realize that her selfishness had inflicted quite a bit of hurt on those around her. Yet even when faced with a few home truths, neither Jonas nor Missy really did anything with that knowledge. And by that I mean, that I didn’t feel like either of them learned anything until the end, nothing in the four tyears that separated them and I didn’t have confidence that this was a couple that would be able to hold it together during a crisis.

The ending wraps everything up neatly with all the previous issues swept aside as if both Jonas and Missy had suddenly become adults yet I never saw the process only the end result. I felt like you did a great job showing the flaws in the characters but I didn’t feel like they learned or grew. C+

Best regards,

Jane

REVIEW: Billionaire’s Bride of Innocence by Miranda Lee

Jane — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:45:24 +0000

Dear Ms. Lee:

The previous two books in the series have told us some awful things about James, the hero in Billionaire’s Bride of Innocence. James was desperate to have a family and when his super model girlfriend could not deliver the goods, so to speak, he divorced her, impregnated a nice young woman, and married the nice young pregnant woman. Yes, James is a classy guy. But he’s a billionaire who wants children. Doesn’t that really absolve him of all sins?

Megan, James’ docile sweet, innocent wife, loses the baby. In the hospital, she overhears James’ two friends, Hugh and Russell, speculating as to whether the marriage will stay together now that James has lost the one thing that he wanted. Hugh is incensed that James impregnated and then married Megan in the first place, knowing that James did not love her. Megan is distraught over this news and basically moves into the pool house, refusing to allow James touch her.

James is upset because, well, he wants to be a dad and how can he get her with child again unless they have sex?

Becoming a dad was what James wanted most in the world these days, but it was almost impossible if your wife never let you make love to her.

James sympathised with Megan. He really did. But running away from life was no answer. You had to face up to things, then move on.

Of course, Megan was an extremely soft, shy, vulnerable girl. That was why he’d chosen her.

Megan is torn, though, because she loves James and even the revelation that he is just using her as a baby making machine doesn’t quite kill off that love. Further, Megan is helplessly attracted to James so that when he suggests a second honeymoon for the two of them, she readily agrees. Not only does she readily agree to go and have island sex with him, she seeks out the help of her friend, Nicole, to get a full makeover. She is to become the sexier, more outgoing Megan in order to better appeal to James.

Yes, Megan has no pride. Or backbone. Or sense of self worth. Her entire life is wrapped up in James and even though there is a tiny period at the end where Megan decides that maybe she is better off without James it doesn’t last long enough to convince me that Megan will be anything but an appendage to James.

James is both appalled and titallated by the new Megan. He was a bit bored with their pre miscarriage sex. Megan was usch an innocent and James felt constrained in trying out his dirty ways with her. What are James’ deep secrets? Well, he apparently likes to do it in other positions than the missionary and he ties her wrists to the headboard at one time. Oh, James, your kink is so intimidating! Thank goodness James is a billionaire because how else would a woman ever want to stay with him? Actually, Megan was frustrated with the loving that James was doling out. It was a bit too tame for her as well, but she didn’t say anything to James and she lacked the confidence to initiate anything.

Very little emotional energy is spent contemplating the miscarriage. James just wants to start boning Megan again so he can make more little babies. Megan can’t stop thinking about how much she longs for James’ body even though he has no love for her. It’s probably fair to say that he little affection for her either, other than she was a suitable baby making vessel.

I’m not certain what disgusted me more. Megan’s inability to value herself and her persistence in continuing to abase herself to try to gain James’ love or James for being a grade A bastard. I loved it when he accuses Megan of being deceitful when he finds her birth control pills because for a man whose baby making is at the forefront, birth control pills are akin to the devil’s drug. I vacillated between wanting to punch James in the face or shake Megan till her teeth fell out. It’s not a failure of a book, the writing is too competent. I can give it a D because I am sorry I read it.

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased at eHarlequin.com or in eHarlequin.com“>ebook format from Harlequin only until November 1.

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 Harlequin Affiliate link earns us an affiliate fee if you purchase a book through the link 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.

REVIEW: The Santangeli Marriage by Sara Craven

Jane — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 17:00:14 +0000

Dear Ms. Craven:

I’m never sure what to expect from you. On the whole, you are one of my favorite HP authors but from time to time, your stories send me over the cliff. I wasn’t sure how I was going to respond to this one.

The Santangeli Marriage begins with a scene from the hero’s point of view which is rare for an HP. Most HPs are told from the female point of view and in this manner builds suspense, uncertainty, and agnst over the outcome of the relationship, or at least the tumultuous path to the inevitable outcome.

Lorenzo Santangeli is struck with how precious life is when his father suffers a minor heart attack. Guillermo takes this emotionally vulnerable moment to press Lorenzo on the issue of his eight month separation from his wife Marisa and the need for a son and heir. Lorenzo admits that the parting with Marisa was bitter and not without regrets. Lorenzo tells his father

“If stupidity were all, I could live with it,” Renzo said with quiet bitterness. ”But I was also unkind. And I cannot forgive myself for that.”

The decision to show Renzo’s point of view was vital in selling the remainder of the story for his actions toward Marisa continue to be unkind but not without provocation.

Marisa had a beau whom she thought she would marry when her aunt came to her with the news that she would be marrying Lorenzo Santangeli, the son of her mother’s best friend. When Marisa’s parents died, Santangeli’s undertook to provide financial care for her. This financial assistance supported Marisa and her cousins who became her guardians. Marisa’s marriage to Renzo would allow Marisa’s cousins to live in relative comfort for the remainder of their days.

While Marisa probably wouldn’t have married to save Cousin Julia, failure to marry Renzo would mean that handicapped Harry would not have the necessary care that he needed to live a decent life. Marisa put aside her beau reluctantly but harbored deep resentment toward Renzo. This led her to humiliate him in front of his family and to create a deep rift between them as the marriage continued.

Renzo did not help the matters. His pride was deeply wounded on his wedding day and his bride’s cutting words and seeming lack of desire for him, cut him even further. He reacted poorly and at one point the couple share a heartless sexual coupling. This leads to misunderstandings, personal recriminations, and ultimately separation with Renzo in Italy and Marisa returning to London.

This marriage in trouble story takes pains to show both parties equally at fault for the failure of the relationship. Renzo is aloof and holds his pride above affection. Marisa stabs angrily with her words creating further gulfs between the two with her defensiveness and insecurities.

Much of the story is told in flashbacks, unfolding the time leading up to their marriage and their separation. It is clear that the two love each other because without that emotion, could they have ever wrought such pain one upon the other?

For an HP, this one is pretty good with some caveats. The emotionless sex scene made me feel uncomfortable. Renzo has a mistress while Marisa and he are separated but as Marisa had left him, refused to open his letters, or respond to his phone calls, but instead made it clear that she wanted no contact at all, Renzo’s activity with another woman seemed understandable. However, I know that these can be deal breakers for some readers. The story delivered exactly what you would expect from a good Harlequin Presents and that is an emotional, angsty read. It also gets a thumbs up for the lack of a baby filled epilogue or ending. B

Best regards

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market from an independent bookstore in mid-June or ebook format from the Harlequin right now because Harlequin sells all its category books in digital form one month before the release date.

REVIEW: A Christmas Wedding by Tracy Wolff

Jane — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:00:13 +0000

Dear Ms. Wolff:

Your book came to my attention due to the numerous and varied nominations of it for our DABWAHA tournament. I’m a big lover of good series books so I just had to pick it up. A Christmas Wedding is a Harlequin Superromance and not usually a series from which I choose books, but this certainly fell under a non traditional romance and one I don’t think I would have picked out without the nominations/recommendations.

The tag line on th cover is “Because happily ever after is just the beginning” and the story itself is about the very rocky marriage of Desiree Hawthorne and Jesse Rainwater. Desiree and Jesse are preparing for the Christmas wedding of their beloved daughter when Jesse informs Desiree that he wants a divorce. Desiree knows that things have been strained between them for months, but for some reason she thought that their twenty seven year marriage would last forever. She certainly didn’t expect that Jesse would ever ask her for a divorce, particularly on the eve of the wedding.

Desiree hasn’t loved anyone else since she first laid eyes on Jesse when she was 16 and he came to work as a trainer for her father at the Triple H, their horse ranch in central Texas. Jesse was 31 at the time and had already made a name for himself in racing circles. With his help, Triple H became synonymous with winners but the holy grail of racing, The Triple Crown, always eluded them.

Much of the story is told in flashbacks, recounting their stormy courtship, their marriage and ultimately where their marriage began to fall apart. When Desiree’s father Big John died and she inherited the ranch, and everyone waited for her to fail. She was obsessed with the ranch and bringing the Triple Crown home. Her obsession with the ranch eventually drives a wedge between her and her eldest child who doesn’t want to run Triple H; her and her husband, the trainer; and everyone close to her.

Desiree sees everyone waiting for her to fail whereas Jesse sees everyone in awe of her and what she has built. The situation between Jesse and Desiree came to a head when Jesse, who started his own stable of horses on the side called Cherokee Dreaming, enters a horse from Cherokee Dreaming in the last leg of the Triple Crown to compete directly against a horse from Triple H. There was no question that Triple H would have won the Belmont with its horse, Born Lucky, had it not been for the Cherokee Dreaming horse. Desiree saw this as the ultimate betrayal and Jesse, who didn’t believe his horse would have won, failed to communicate with Desiree about his intentions. Angry, hurtful words were exchanged and the already rocky marriage full of lack of communication and competing desires was rent asunder. Jesse moved out of the house.

Desiree, though, realizes that nothing is more important than Jesse, than her family, and she tries to go about in her full speed ahead, no quarter given, no quarter taken, manner to obtain her happy ever after ending. The problem is she fails to communicate her plans to Jesse and when a new trainer is hired to take Jesse’s place, without his knowledge, Jesse feels that any tendril of feeling the two of them shared is gone.

This is a true marriage in trouble story with very flawed partners. Desiree might come off as unlikeable at times because she was so determined to fulfill Big John’s unreasonable expectations of her. After all, Big John had never won a Triple Crown during his tenure as the head of Triple H. Desiree had her own unreasonable expectations for her eldest son. Through the eyes of others, including Jesse, Desiree treats Jesse more like an employee and not a true partner. Desiree’s feelings weren’t so easily explained. Jesse is full of his own insecurities that prevented him from taking action to achieve a better balance in his life. Always believing that he wasn’t worthy of Desiree, Jesse could never bring himself to leave her or take action to make himself a greater partner in Triple H. Instead he goes off and creates a side interest which makes Desiree believe that Jesse has more interest in his own endeavors.

A couple of things bothered me. First was the use of Desiree’s journal to cross the bridge of non communication between Jesse and Desiree. Second, the story is told through the use of flashbacks, newspaper articles, and journals and to some extent I felt disconnected at times during the segues from the present to the past and back again.

There is also a kind of epic Danielle Steele style flavor to the book, particularly with the matriarchal overtones, but it was a lovely marriage in trouble story and lives up to its’ cover tag line. Desiree and Jesse had a tumultuous relationship but one that was characterized by a fierce physical attraction. Even though Desiree and Jesse are older characters (and honestly I am usually not interested in reading these older romances), the two of them were as vibrant and sexy as any couple in their twenties, thirties, or forties. Their ages were the last thing that matted to me in this book. B

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or at the Harlequin DABWAHA.com store for 30% off.

REVIEW: The Holiday Inn Anthology by Farrah Rochon, Stefanie Worth and Phyllis Bourne Williams

Jayne — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:00:05 +0000

Dear Ladies,

I’m often leery of trying anthologies. Generally there’s one author I want to read, a few I’ll deal with and at least one I automatically skip. Or, behind door number two, there’s one story I’ll love, one or two that are readable and one that’s just awful. So, imagine my delight when three unknown to me authors manage to entertain me, make me laugh, make me nod my head in sympathy for their characters and leave me with a smile on my face when I’ve finished the book.

“A Change of Heart” By Farrah Rochon – Chandra and Derek had started their marriage passionately in love. Together for twenty years, they’d weathered good times and bad as Derek worked hard to build his business from scratch to local empire while Chandra stayed at home to raise their now two college age children. Can they find the love they once had underneath the current bitterness while a storm rages at the Colorado ski resort Chandra picked for what she’s sure is their last Christmas together?

“Can You Believe” by Stefanie Worth – Fallon and Naymond have just barely started their married life together but already stresses are tearing at the seams. While Fallon is supportive of her husband’s dream of a singing career, right now she’s buckling under the demands of being the only breadwinner in the family while Naymond competes on the weekly TV show “Chart Toppers” for a recording contract. On the way to meeting him for a getaway weekend, she runs into a semi-famous TV psychic who offers her a glimpse at what could be her future. Will it be a glimpse of what could be or what will be? And how will she and Naymond deal with what they find over the weekend?

“By New Year’s Day” by Phyllis Bourne Williams – Devon and Eva Masters are headed for a trip to New Hampshire away from their demanding children in Miami. Since his retirement a year ago, Devon has been disgusted by the way three of their four adult children seem to take advantage of his wife. It’s time they grew up and Eva cut the apron strings but he’s having trouble getting her to do that. In Eva’s mind, she’s just being a good mother. Will they be able to work out the different ways they see their children and find time for the couple they used to be?

All three are very nicely done stories of married couples dealing with the issues that have caused estrangement or drifting in their marriages. And this tackles with one of the main problems I generally have with anthologies and that is a believable HEA in so short a format. These stories were long enough that I felt I got a deep enough glimpse of each couple to get interested enough in them to cheer them on to happiness. The portrayals of each hero and heroine were balanced and incisive. I could see both sides of their issues and no one person was shown as the “bad” or at fault person in each marriage.

The issues causing the conflict were believable and important enough to cause the feelings of trouble without being insolvable. Two couples had been married for over 20 years and were dealing with long term things while one were basically newlyweds trying to overcome money, time and fame stresses. The fact that none of the marriages had progressed beyond the fixable stage also helped me believe in their HEA endings.

I like that all three stories end with the people still working on what they need to in order to overcome what divided them. Marriages are constant work and while I’d love to think that long term behavior changes can happen overnight, the image of these couples continuing to resolve the problems they’ve admitted to makes more sense. And I do get the feeling with all of them that they will continue to do whatever it takes to save the love they still feel for each other.

And so, brava ladies for a job well done. Each story garners a B from me and the collection as a whole is one I can recommend for people looking for a Christmas anthology by three fine authors.

~Jayne

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format(Sony and Kindle were the only formats I could find).

California Supreme Court Rules Same Sex Marriage Constitutional

Jane — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:17:44 +0000

Today the California Supreme Court’s decision dropped on the constitutionality of a same sex marriage ban. Specifically, the court addressed this question:

The question we must address is whether, under these circumstances, the failure to designate the official relationship of same-sex couples as marriage violates the California Constitution.

The Court found that the “right to marry is a basic, constitutionally protected civil right -’ "a
fundamental right of free men [and women]” without regard to sexual orientation and that the Legislature cannot limit it.

In light of the fundamental nature of the substantive rights embodied in the right to marry -’ and their central importance to an individual’s opportunity to live a happy, meaningful, and satisfying life as a full member of society -’ the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all individuals and couples, without regard to their sexual orientation.

The majority goes on to state (in this 121 page majority opinion):

In light of this recognition, sections 1 and 7 of article I of the California Constitution cannot properly be interpreted to withhold from gay individuals the same basic civil right of personal autonomy and liberty (including the right to establish, with the person of one’s choice, an officially recognized and sanctioned family) that the California Constitution affords to heterosexual individuals. The privacy and due process provisions of our state Constitution -’ in declaring that "[a]ll people . . . have [the] inalienable right[] [of] privacy" (art. I, § 1) and that no person may be deprived of "liberty" without due process of law (art. I, § 7) -’ do not purport to reserve to persons of a particular sexual orientation the substantive protection afforded by those provisions. In light of the evolution of our state’s understanding concerning the equal dignity and respect to which all persons are entitled without regard to their sexual orientation, it is not appropriate to interpret these provisions in a way that, as a practical matter, excludes gay individuals from the protective reach of such basic civil rights.

Let the gay and lesbian marriage of convenience/marriage in trouble stories begin!

REVIEW: Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas

Jayne — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:00:33 +0000

Dear Mrs. Thomas,

By now I’m sure you’ve heard the accolades from other review sites of how this title might herald The Return to Great Historicals of yesteryear. How it takes a Victorian setting plus two well thought out lead characters and mixes them to yield a scrumptious book for those of us tired of yet one more Regency set historical much less those who’ve given up on historicals at all. True, it’s flush with Dukes or near Dukes but I’ll forgive you those since you don’t inflict a nobleman spy on me. I’ll allow much authors who resist that worn out and threadbare plot.

Gigi and Camden are not perfect people. Far from them. Gigi is almost breathtaking in her pursuit of a man she, in her budding youth, feels is the perfect man for her. One Duke has slipped through her fingers at the last minute by slipping off a four story building after a night of drinking. She’s not about to let his cousin do the same. Much less when he’s so wonderful a man. His long-standing bespoken arrangement with a spineless young European aristocrat is too tepid to be allowed and an obstacle she quickly removes.

Camden is sucked into the intense allure of a woman not thought to be beautiful yet breathtaking to him anyway. Her concentration on him, her delighted responses to his courtship started once he recovers from the brief shock of learning his betrothed has married another, her obviously barely banked sensuous nature are heady nectar to him. Which makes the revelation of her scheming plan all the more cutting to him. Rage crystallizes into a cold hearted revenge taken the day after their wedding night.

After ten years of separation and several affairs on both sides, they’ve settled into a two continent marriage that suits them both. White hot anger has banked into cool disdain as each proceeds to get on with life. That is until Gigi decides to petition for divorce and Camden arrives back in England to make life hell for her with a private arrangement before he’ll agree to her request.

I don’t do cartwheels of rapture over prose but must agree with Janine that the descriptions, word choice and writing style of “Private Arrangements” are among the best I’ve seen in quite a while. Even tone deaf readers will probably enjoy reading this book. Historical fans will like the use of anything-other-than-a-Regency setting. It seems that Victorian set books are tentatively on their way to becoming the new venue of choice. I hope they don’t overwhelm the market place and become blase. I did think that while the setting is well done, there were few elements that really nailed the book down to any certain year. Perhaps that’s just because the last quarter of the 19th century seems fairly generic with the exception of the new divorce laws and automobiles.

I mentioned that Gigi and Camden are flawed but don’t get me wrong, I liked that. It allows them to grow and mature into people who can finally appreciate the other for everything and all that they are. It’s something that they couldn’t have done when they married and doubtfully done at points throughout their separation. Camden had to finally admit that Gigi was right about the fact that he and his betrothed weren’t suited and she had to understand on a visceral level that what she did was wrong.

So, why the B+ grade after paragraphs of praise? The final separation between Gigi and Camden along with the reasons Gigi gives that set it in motion seemed ‘off’ to me. Here are two people who finally seem to be communicating honestly with each other, to have worked out their differences, to be headed towards that final blissful clinch and she brings out what I can only think of as a tepid, lukewarm barrier that doesn’t match her take-no-prisoners approach to life. It comes off as a contrived plot device and is jarring when placed against the rest of the story.

I didn’t let this one disappointment ruin my overall feelings for the book. There is so much to enjoy about the whole that I look back on my reading experience with a great deal of pleasure and am anticipating what you’ll offer us next. B+

~Jayne

CONVERSATIONAL REVIEW: Tempted by Megan Hart

Janine — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:00:30 +0000

Janine: My friend Jennie F. and I had so much fun doing a conversational review of Jane Lockwood’s Forbidden Shores that we decided to do it again. Lo and behold, the subject of this discussion is also a novel about an erotic entanglement that involves two men and a woman! This time, it’s Megan Hart’s Tempted.

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.

REVIEW: An Affair Before Christmas by Eloisa James

Janet — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:15:03 +0000

Dear Ms. James:

An Affair Before Christmas is the first book of yours I read, and I did so without knowing where it is in your canon or how it relates to any other books (now I know that is it second in your Desperate Duchesses series). The title of the series reflects a heroine-centric focus I appreciate, and the obvious overlap of characters from book to book creates a community sense that appeals to me. Both of these elements make me glad I tried An Affair Before Christmas, and even though the book didn’t wow me, I will likely read the next in the series to find out what happens to the secondary characters.

Before I go any further, I will warn anyone who dislikes spoilers that this review depends on a few of them.

When we first meet Poppy and Fletch, they are a young couple, engaged and hopeful and celebrating Christmas in Paris where they met and fell in love. We're not yet privy to Poppy's marital aspirations, but we discover that Fletch is anxiously awaiting his wedding night and the chance "to worship Poppy’s body, taste the sweet salt of her sweat, kiss away her tears of joy after he brought her to the ultimate happiness." It is a "French-inflected lust" Fletch feels for his "little Poppy," and he is especially anxious because despite Poppy's sensuous beauty (Fletch imagines she will be more delectable than a truffle), she is not particularly welcoming of his tongue in her mouth or anything more earthy that Fletch would like to try with her — no doubt to bring her to that "ultimate happiness.”

So it is no surprise to the reader that four years later, when the novel opens properly on the life of the Duke and Duchess of Fletcher, their marriage is troubled by incompatible expectations and a lack of communication. Both Fletch and Poppy are troubled, Fletch by the lack of passion his wife shows in the bedroom (and his inability to bring her to that much imagined rapture) and Poppy by an inability to understand her husband’s simmering resentment, dwindling interest, and startling transformation into one of the most sensually beautiful noblemen in England – a man who “prowls” rather than walks, and who leaves his hair unpowdered because “when he pulled his hair from its ribbon, unruly locks tumbling to his shoulders gave the impression that he just rose from a bed in which he had been well pleasured.” Poppy, on the other hand, is as exquisite and fragile-looking as any china doll, petticoated and panniered, her hair a veritable tower of bows and feathers and intricate coils of flaxen tresses. These affectations reflect the masquerade of their marriage, which is mutually unmasked when Fletcher publicly humiliates Poppy at a ball, catalyzing a separation that only one of them seems anxious to mend.

The anxious one is Fletch, which might seem a bit counter-intuitive, until we find out a bit more about Poppy and all the steps that brought her into a marriage with Fletch. Or at least the one giant step, namely the push her controlling, ambitious, and rigidly unpleasant mother gave her from birth in the direction of any eligible duke. Practically from the cradle Poppy was conditioned to marry a duke, with absolutely no instruction in the actual art of marriage beyond securing her position as duchess. The cruel Lady Flora also ordered her daughter to “suffer” the “indignities” of sex for the purpose of an heir and freely expressed revulsion to anything resembling physical intimacy and sexual pleasure. Consequently, Poppy grows up repressing her own interests and following her mother’s example in sexual remoteness, learning to appease a parent who would resort to hysterics and even physical assault when her word was questioned or circumvented. So poor Fletch, with his idealistic vision of bringing his lovely young wife to rapture, was frustrated instead, confused and hurt, yet unable to bring himself to seek out another woman as mistress. It’s Poppy he wants to love and please.

But the separation has shaken something loose in Poppy (not her hair, unfortunately), and for the first time in her life she feels free from the expectations of either a husband or a parent:

What she felt was weary. Tired of people who disapproved, people who were impossible to please, people who made her feel inadequate. Stupid. That was the one clear thought she had in her head. She didn’t want to be screamed at by her mother. And she didn’t want to see that closed, disgusted look on Fletch’s face ever again, even if that meant she never saw him again.

She tries to talk to Fletcher, but like everything else in their relationship, the exchange merely reflects their different paradigms for marriage. Poppy has tried to please Fletch by “submitting” to his wishes in the bedroom, and Fletch views her efforts as a rejection or sorts. Tired of disappointing Fletch, unable to appease him as she has learned to do with her mother, Poppy leaves Fletch and moves in with the slightly scandalous Duchess of Beaumont, able finally to indulge her real first love – Naturalism.

I have a soft spot for “marriage in trouble” scenarios, because marriage provides a convenient frame for the more prickly emotional and physical levels of intimacy. And although I rolled my eyes in the prologue at the idea of one more sexually inhibited heroine, I understood that the sexual incongruity in Fletch and Poppy’s relationship was symbolic for mismatched expectations. I similarly hoped that Poppy’s love of Naturalism would complement the relationship conflict; however, it created one of my biggest problems with the book.

Poppy isn’t just a hobbyist when it comes to her Naturalist tendencies; she writes letters to various scholars advising them of opposing opinions and questioning some of their conclusions. Which, in my book (har har), means she’s a scholar by nature, even if she had to hide her father’s Naturalist texts under her bed and her interest from virtually everyone. Loosed from the hold of her marriage, Poppy is free to exercise publicly what she has been nurturing in private: her love of all things, well, natural. Which brings me back to the issue of her marriage and the question of her blind subservience to her mother’s harsh advice, both about dress and sex.

While I suspect I was supposed to enjoy the irony of Poppy’s interest in Naturalism and ignorance of socially-ordered relationships between humans, instead I found her inability to think past her mother’s words unrealistic. Not that I expected her to take Fletch’s pre-wedding advice and consult the Duchess of Beaumont on the custom of romantic kissing. But why wouldn’t a woman so deeply inclined to puzzle through the natural habits and customs of animals spend so much time wondering why she was a disappointment to her husband and not conducting some sort of research, even if it was casual observation of others or exercising her well-developed talent for acquiring and hiding contraband books? Even the “real” reason for some of her sexual remoteness seemed a perfect subject of inquiry for the naturally curious Poppy, and the fact that she never really pursued an investigation struck me as strange. Especially because Poppy is obviously using her natural insight and analytical skills on Fletch before they are married:

Lady Poppy was a practical little soul, at the heart. She could see that her husband’s easygoing manners and sweet eyes masked a sturdy determination to get his own way. One only had to look at his wind-swept locks to see that. Never a touch of powder!

And when they do finally find their groove, Poppy treats Fletch’s body to her own scientific exploration, and “[b]eing a naturalist, she accompanied her little experiments with a stream of commentary.” I just was not able to reconcile Poppy the tenacious and insightful Naturalist with Poppy the miserably confused and ignorant wife.

Because I could not fully embrace Poppy’s characterization, I also could not fully understand her love for Fletch, whose adolescent desire to please his wife sexually was so obviously much more about him than about Poppy. And as amusing as that was, I did not see such a profound change in Fletch, whose honorable (and perhaps unfashionable) refusal to take a mistress could not fully eclipse the way he continued to see their relationship in primarily sexual terms. Sure he suffers through the museums of natural history and the lectures at the Royal Society with Poppy. Yes he shows a moment of real insight when he realizes that Poppy feels overwhelmed sexually and works to earn her trust by promising her a life without sex. But I never felt he got past seeing his “little Poppy” as a reflection of his own masculinity; in fact, he almost seems disappointed when she finally starts responding because he cannot understand why it happened:

Well, what was it? How could it be the same woman he’d made love to for years? What happened to her?
It made him feel uneasy, as if the ground had shifted under his feet. Only last year she would lie before him like a chilled piece of molded butter, and now she was melting and shrieking… and it wasn’t anything he did, either.

And when they are finally reconciled, and Poppy tells him that she doesn’t deserve him, Fletcher responds with this: “I feel the same way. The way you respond to me while making love-” By the end of the novel, despite the fact that he recognized his wife’s value in editing his wildly popular speeches in the House of Lords, I’m not sure how far he has gotten past his initial estimation of her: Little Poppy was the sweetest girl in the world, but she was devilishly hard to kiss. She may no longer be hard to kiss, but I wonder how easily Fletch understands his scholarly wife. Her mother he seems to understand, though, although her characterization didn’t seem particularly subtle or complex, and I did enjoy the nice twist he serves that seriously twisted character.

While the main romance did not totally succeed for me, I did like the ensemble-feel of An Affair Before Christmas, especially the situation of Jemma, the Duchess of Beaumont, and Charlotte Tatlock’s interesting dilemma. Although at times the writing felt a bit forced, when the characters relaxed into real dialogue, I fell right into the rhythm of the prose and enjoyed a number of small descriptive moments, like Jemma’s characterization of Fletch as “tediously beautiful,” what with “the way he slouches through a room, burning with something or other.” I also loved one scene in which Fletch and Poppy share a revelation about her hair that advances the emotional intimacy of their relationship; had there been more thoughtful moments like that I might have been better sold on the characterizations and the True Love.

I do not know if An Affair Before Christmas is classic Eloisa James or not. Despite what didn’t work for me, though, I had enough interest in the writing, the dialogue, and some of the secondary characters to try the next book in the series and perhaps a backlist title, as well. For this book, though, the highs and lows of my reading experience average out to the middle ground of a C.

~Janet

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

REVIEW: Mad Dash by Patricia Gaffney

Janet — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 20:00:28 +0000

Dear Ms. Gaffney,

Your newest novel, Mad Dash, brought home how much I miss your voice in Romance. The thoughtfulness and delicacy of your prose, the sense of fullness and vitality you portray in the fictional worlds of your novels, remind me why I began reading that genre in the first place: because the wondrous complexity of emotionally intimate relationships is endlessly compelling. All of the novels of yours I have read –" and this is my first foray into your "women's fiction–? work –" express this truth in both emotionally and intellectually satisfying ways.

Mad Dash is no exception, and perhaps it even proves the rule. Told primarily through the alternating perspectives of Dash and Andrew Bateman, the novel tracks Dash's 20-year itch, her restless unease in a life made comfortable but no longer satisfying after the death of her mother and the departure of her only child, daughter Chloe, to college. In Dash's dramatic reconstruction of her own life, she was the center of her mother's universe –" as Chloe is in Dash's –" and once the twin stars in Dash's world depart, Dash feels she's lost a significant measure of her identity. Like many women, Dash measures herself by the regard of others. ling a friend what drew her to her husband, Dash confesses: "'Oh, I don’t know. Well, he was cute. And sort of courtly, I thought. Knightly. And I could tell he liked me–"I always like people who like me.'" Describing Andrew, Dash consistently refers to him as her "rock,–? and like most rocks of substantive weight, Andrew is a fixed point in Dash's madly active emotional world. Where Dash is impulsive, Andrew is reflective. Where Dash craves constant stimulation, Andrew likes quiet. While Dash has a high tolerance for chaos, Andrew craves order.

All of which is fine, better than fine, actually, until Dash loses her emotional bearings, and Andrew's grounding only makes her feel bored and tied down: The sandwich generation: I’m so tired of that expression. In the last nine months, both halves of my sandwich have been pried off and eaten. I’m the soft, squishy center, exposed, unprotected. Unsafe, that’s the word. Like Bambi after the hunters left. All I have now is Andrew to protect me. Which, of course, he can't, at least not in the way Dash perceives her own need. No one can, really, but Dash cannot yet see that because she's in pain and nursing her discontent. Add one half-frozen puppy on the doorstep, Andrew's indifferent assumption that the dog will be taken to the pound, and a vacation cabin in Virginia, and Dash fashions her own remedy of sorts: she takes off with the puppy and flees to the cabin.

Everything passes in a sort of hazy languor for a while, especially as Andrew tries to comprehend what has happened. Dash's flights are not new to him (I'm tempted to call them 'Dash's flights of fancy,' because as a photographer, Dash tends to stage her life the same way she does a photograph). In fact, right before their wedding, Dash told Andrew she couldn't marry him and ran away to her mother's house, freaked out by Andrews's new haircut, which reminded her of his emotionally punishing father, who did not approve of Dash. When Andrew showed up at his future mother in law's house, she told him a story that he couldn't understand but we do: Dash is a woman whose need for independence is just as strong as her need for protection and reassurance, and the paradox generates quite a bit of emotional drama. All these years later, Andrew is still somewhat perplexed by Dash, but he's also tired, and so he doesn't go after her; instead, he stays home and straightens the house, nurses his own frustration, and indulges his hypochondriac tendencies. It's not until the couple tries therapy with a rather unconventional counselor that the temporary respite of the separation becomes something more:

It’s been a game until now. I was dancing on a thin edge, but part of me liked it because I knew I had a safety net. I could call the game off any time and skip back to safety–"Andrew’s infinitely tolerant arms would be wide open. Now he’s taken himself away. "I feel more like myself," he said. So I was diluting him, my needs were camouflaging him; without me he’s the pure, unretouched image. Well, if it’s true, it’s true. Neither of us was telling stories in Fogelman’s office.

Once the underlying discontents in the relationship are articulated, so begins the real emotional revelations for Andrew and Dash, and for the reader, as well.

At one level, the story of Dash and Andrew's twenty-year marriage seems so ordinary. Although both are older than I am, and at a different place in their life together, I recognize them, understand them, and find them to be portrayed with a real emotional and psychological authenticity. They make sense to me, and so do most of their choices and reactions. Dash is that woman who can egg you on to the most outrageous fun; she's infectiously optimistic, dynamic, emotional in her relationships, and fun to watch. She's also self-centered and bossy in the way of one who wants the best for you but may not know what that is. Because she constructs her sense of well-being from the outside in, she's unpredictable and can be needy, despite her convincing front of independence. And what she resents in Andrew –" his somewhat static predictability –" is also the very thing she needs, something that both comforts and frustrates her.

Andrew, on the other hand, seems a somewhat complacent academic, unwilling to put himself out far enough to move from associate to full professor and give up teaching to become chair of the History Department at Mason-Dixon College. Although very sensitive, he tends to experience emotions indirectly –" through the personal journals his students write, for example. Quiet and superficially staid, Andrew is actually complex and multi-layered, a Jefferson scholar who does not seem to have recognized how perfect an allegory of his own life his study of Jefferson is. The son of an insensitive tyrant, Andrew has spent his life deliberately pursuing a different direction (even refusing to become a lawyer like his father, much to the old man's disappointment), not defiant so much as cautious, focused, and conscientious. He cannot, for example, embrace the New Historicism that trained a harsh light on Jefferson's racial hypocrisy without contextualizing his contradictions and focusing on his contributions to American democracy:

"He was definitely a racist–"he believed blacks were inferior to whites. Truly believed it. But you’d have to, wouldn’t you, to make a man your slave? I don’t know if he was a hypocrite. He warned against the ‘amalgamation’ of the races, and he had children with Sally Hemings, his slave. "How am I expected to defend that? I can’t. When I try, I hate the words I have to use, even though they’re true–"he lived a life of his times, he can’t be judged by ours, in every other respect his principles were irreproachable, he was born too soon …"

Like Andrew, Jefferson suffered from migraines; unlike Andrew, he had a close relationship with his father. And because Andrew believes that he would have to sell Jefferson out to advance as a scholar –" become a "Founding Father basher–? –" Andrew holds himself back, unwilling to negotiate yet one more rocky harbor, already feeling thrashed against the disapproval of his father and the vivid impact of his wife's larger than life personality. A gifted teacher, Andrew has eschewed the responsibilities of leadership for self-contained neutrality. Dash's departure finally awakens him to the fact that she isn't the only one with unsettled emotional business: "If you know a man well enough, you can forgive him for almost anything. Don’t you think so? Not that a historian’s job is to forgive. But a man’s might be." Both Dash and Andrew have lessons to learn about forgiveness and self-acceptance. Both must understand that they are more agents than victims of their emotional paralysis, and each must discover how to be more flexible and available to each other. And they must forgive themselves, as well as each other.

From the beginning of their acquaintance, Dash and Andrew have joked about having nothing in common. It's not true, of course, but the excitement of the superficial differences between them creates a necessary friction against the difficulty of making a successful life together. What starts as a simple defense of a half frozen puppy –" [a] pinch hitter in the ball game of [Dash's] discontent –" becomes an emotional reckoning for two people who have grown a bit selfish in the "game–? of marriage. As Dash notes, Sometimes prolonging even bad things, painful things, is better than getting them all nice and neat and settled. Which turns out to be true, although not for the reasons Dash believes.

Mad Dash is really quite an extraordinary book about an ordinary marriage. I understood why Dash and Andrew were together in the first place and why they felt broken. I was appreciative of the hard work they each had ahead of them to make things right and grateful that they were each thoughtful and intelligent enough to move forward without the help of some awkward and intrusive deus ex machina. In the same way that the "bad . . ., painful things–? are human-made, so are the remedies and the healing process. The real beauty of this book is that it is so poignantly, so essentially human.

While Dash's narrative is generally compelling and entertaining, it is difficult to portray a delightfully self-centered character without annoying the reader with that quality, and a few times I found myself detach from Dash's monologues. There are also two secondary relationships in the novel, alternative romantic possibilities that felt more like convenient set-ups than natural occurrences, and they felt forced to me. While I understood how they helped to facilitate Andrew and Dash's growth, they didn't have enough emotional resonance and characteristic logic to work for me. By and large, though, I was completely seduced by both Dash and Andrew, unabashedly rooting for their individual happiness, and hopeful for their future together. A-

~Janet