I went out and bought this book for myself. *runs around in circles* A while back I blogged about the seeming dearth of werewolf books, at least books that focus on the pack dynamics and the myths of the beast. Another reader suggested I try Christine Warren’s Big Bad Wolf. I admit that the one book I had tried didn’t make me a fan but I was willing to take another chance. I went off to the bookstore that evening and bought the book. I read and finished it that same evening.

Graham Winters is the Alpha of the Silverback Werewolf Clan. He is bored to the point of celibacy with all the hot Otherworld women around him. He doesn’t have any problem getting it up, but no amount of sexual innovation from even the most gorgeous paranormal is floating his boat anymore. Thirteen days ago, he walked away from one super model look alike and now he’s wondering what he’s going to do with himself. (For a werewolf, thirteen days is like a decade).

Then at the same party in which Graham is bemoaning his celibacy and dearth of women to whom he is attracted, he catches a whiff of something delicious; something that makes his beast stand up and howl. The carrier of the scent is Missy Roper, a kindergarten teacher, and friend of his best friend’s new wife. Graham seems to recognize instantly that Missy is his soul mate. The problem is that she’s human and he doesn’t do humans. But the mate bond knows no boundaries and he grabs Missy and carries her off to his lair. Literally. Because Missy is trying to run away from the party and from Graham (she doesn’t really know he wants her), Graham panics and picks her up and doesn’t let her down until they are in his townhome.

Missy is torn. On the one hand she has had a bad, bad crush on Graham forever. On the other hand, Graham hasn’t noticed her at all before. He was the BEST MAN, for god’s sake, while she was the matron of honor at the same wedding. Who really has the strength to withstand the sexual onslaught of your long crush? Not Missy. After Graham has had his bad, sexy way with her, however, Missy is pretty sure she needs to get away. This only serves to confuse and create more panic for Graham.

Missy was a fun heroine. Self deprecating and pretty self aware. She acknowledges that she is kind of the clichéd kindergarten teacher. “After all, someone had to be the frumpy spinster. ” Missy doesn’t suffer from some horrible self esteem issue, but she does think that she’s out of Graham’s league and can’t believe that she’s anything to him but the slut du jour. She questions Graham about his change of heart:

“Just because I teach kindergarten does not make me a simpleton. Don’t like to me, please.”

…

“I’m not lying.” He had to force himself to concentrate on the conversation. “I really am a moron, and I really do think you’re utterly gorgeous and sexy. Didn’t you figure that out when you had me so hard and hot that I devolved into a monosyllabic cretin just because I couldn’t wait to get inside you?” He shook his head. “That’s not the kind of thing I can fake.”

“From what I understand, you don’t have to fake a thing,” she snapped. “You’ve got quite a reputation, Graham. I hear there’s not more than a handful of women you’ve ever met that you haven’t ended up in bed with. So forgive me if I don’t think it’s an accomplishment that I gave an erection.”

Graham, however, knows that Missy is it for him, despite her humanness. It’s not like werewolves live long lives anyway. Because of their tendency for challenges to the death, their impetuosity, and their wrong headed belief in their own invincibility, male werewolves tend to have even shorter life spans than humans. As much as Graham would like to do nothing more than woo Missy (which mostly consists of giving her mind blowing orgasms again and again and…well, you get the picture), he has to deal with his cousin Curtis. Curtis would like to be Alpha but he’s too weak to sustain a physical challenge. Thus Curtis tries to get the Pack to push Graham out by shaking the confidence of the Pack and higher governing Pack bodies; and by suggesting that Graham is not suited to be alpha since he is old (34), childless and trying to make friendly with the Other paranormals.

It is true that Graham is trying to change the philosophy of the Pack by shedding some old, bad Pack philosophies and move the Pack into the modern age. He believes that the Pack will be strengthened by Other specie alliances and that the dated mores of the Pack hurt more than help.

This is a very sexy werewolf story. It reads quick and there’s a satisfying conclusion. But. But, the romance rests too heavily on the mate bond. One minute Graham can’t even remember meeting Missy before and then next her scent is so intoxicating that he cannot live without her. One minute they are shagging each other’s brains out and the next Graham realizes he loves Missy. I didn’t get to see any of the growth in his feelings for Missy. Missy had strong feelings for Graham all along, but we don’t get to see her crush mature into love either. The entire romance takes place over a few days. There simply wasn’t enough attention paid to the emotional connection of the characters. Finally, the last sex scene involved Graham in his shapeshifted form and well, I paged through those quickly. I don’t regret reading this story. As I said in the beginning, the pace of the book was snappy and I was entertained. Overall, though, it lacked substance. C+

Best regards

Jane

This book can be purchased at Amazon. No ebook version of this book. It’s from St. Martin’s Press who either don’t do ebooks or charge $14.00 for it. However, this is apparently a version of it from Ellora’s Cave called Fur Factor.

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While I was reading your new novel, The Heretic Queen, I kept thinking about Shelley’s poem about Ramesses II, “Ozymandias,” especially these lines: `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’ The theme of Shelley’s poem is the impermanence of human power, which is echoed in your novel in the sense that the legacy of these historical figures is both greater and lesser than their actual human-ness.   In The Heretic Queen, for example, there is a somewhat idealized portrayal of Ramesses and his Chief Wife Nefertari, who seem both more and less than is suggested by the mammoth images that still exist to memorialize their contributions to ancient Egypt.   As a novel, The Heretic Queen offers a historically altered but readable story, the strengths of which are also some of its weaknesses.

The historical Pharaoh Ramesses II ruled Egypt for almost 70 years, overseeing one of Egypt’s most prodigious periods of growth and stability during the 19th dynasty.   Red-haired and relatively tall, Ramesses also bore many, many children (estimates top 100) with his many, many consorts (which likely include several of his own daughters) and actively contributed to his larger than life persona in many, many ways.   The Ramesses of The Heretic Queen begins his story at 17, when he becomes co-Regent (co-Pharaoh, basically) with his father, Seti I, and takes his first wife, Iset, a young woman of great beauty and strong ambitions to be chief wife.   Ramesses, however, is also close to Nefertari, princess and niece to Nefertiti, who, at 13, is still somewhat awkward and unsure, despite her obvious adoration of Ramesses, and a political risk as queen because of her heretic heritage.

After a year training at the temple of Hathor, however, under the tutelage of its High Priestess (Woserit) and one of Ramesses’s Viziers (Paser), Nefertari has grown into her beauty and her training in multiple languages and court politics, returning to the palace to catch more than just Ramesses’s eye.   Demonstrating a rashness that characterized the real pharaoh, Ramesses takes Nefertari to wife, clearly intending to make her Chief Wife above the jealous Iset, who has her own advocates in Woserit’s sister Henuttawy (High Priestess of Isis and sister to Seti) and the Vizier Rahotep.   Henuttawy and Rahotep are as ambitious to have Iset made Chief Wife as Woserit and Paser are to have Nefertari in that elevated role; however, they have more ruthlessness and, it appears, the ear of Thebes, which expresses enthusiastic displeasure at the idea of a “heretic queen” ruling Egypt and perhaps bringing more bad luck to the already draught-facing region.

The novel’s main conflicts are structured around the competition between Nefertari and Iset’s chances to become Chief Wife, with one wife characterized as the better match for Ramesses and the other as the better match for a superstitious people.   Where Nefertari is distinguished as a scholar and a diplomat, Iset is distinguished as a great beauty and an accomplished hostess.   Where Nefertari is feared by the people, Iset is embraced, except by Ramesses, whose affections for Nefertari are far deeper and more obvious than his professed love for Iset.   While revealed as more insecure and manipulated than villainous, Iset is clearly the lesser choice for Chief Wife, although Nefertari’s scandalous heritage makes her acceptance as the Pharaoh’s primary wife uncertain.   If Ramesses and Nefertari are to rule Egypt together as they wish, the people will have to embrace Nefertari as they do Iset, and much of the novel’s movement is propelled by the dual campaigns to secure and deter Nefertari’s elevation to Chief Wife.

This element of The Heretic Queen – a tale of dueling wanna-be queens – is recognizable as the narrative engine of Nefertiti, as well, and it is certainly a tried-and-true trope of historical fiction and historical Romance (I would call The Heretic Queen romantic historical fiction).   However, it also presents some problems in this novel, which are exacerbated by the novel’s most profound alteration of history – the assertion of Nefertari’s descent from Nefertiti.   Together, these two aspects of The Heretic Queen make the novel at once immensely readable and substantially problematic.

On the surface, creating the link between Nefertari and Nefertiti seems like a powerful way to build conflict into the story and allow the relationship between Nefertari and Ramesses to grow in measurable ways, as Nefertari becomes more and more essential to her husband’s diplomatic and personal needs.   She speaks virtually every language necessary, accompanies her husband on military campaigns without a second thought (at one point having just given birth to twin sons), is judicious in dealing with citizen petitioners, and has an authentic and passionate love for Ramesses.   As Ramesses and Nefertari try again and again to persuade the people to accept Nefertari, their own bond grows, as does Nefertari’s maturity.   Although she is still younger than 20 by the end of the novel, she is mother to twin sons, compatriot in war and diplomacy, and a trustworthy translator, showing quite a contrast from the besotted but somewhat innocent girl who began the novel with no sense of her place in the palace.

However, in focusing so intensely on Nefertari’s emergent power – and securing her place in history as the object of an apparently devoted Ramesses, if the statues and poems to her memory are any indication – the character of Ramesses is inadvertently weakened.   For example, consider the plotting around Nefertari and Ramesses:

“There are a dozen pretty faces Ramesses might have picked,” Woserit continued.   “He named Iset because his father suggested her, and my brother recommended her due to Henuttawy’s insistence.   But why is my sister so insistent?” she pressed.   “What does she hope to gain?”

I sensed that Woserit knew exactly what Henuttawy wanted and I suddenly felt overwhelmed.

“You have never thought of this?” Woserit demanded.   “This court is going to bury you, Nefertari, and you will join your family in anonymity if you don’t understand these politics.”

This passage occurs relatively early in the novel, offering up the possibility that Ramesses might have some awareness of all the machinations going on to manage his personal and royal lives, but he seems largely clueless.   Later in the novel this becomes more significant, as Nefertari overhears something about Seti’s death that demonstrates an incredibly high level of proficiency in outwitting Ramesses, making it very difficult for me to see in him the makings of a Pharaoh with enough power and stamina to outlive 12 sons and who-knows-how-many risks to his life.   Some of his obliviousness can be attributed to his relative youth, his impetuousness, and his focus on the safety of Egypt’s vast holdings, but not enough to warrant his complete cluelessness.   Unfortunately, when combined with the portrayal of his historically notorious fall into an enemy ambush during the Battle of Kadesh, an instance where even Nefertari admits that “[h]is pride had cost thousands of men,” Ramesses famous rashness seems more like callowness.   Especially when it turns out that the very clever Nefertari ends up discovering the deceit and creating an opportunity to save Ramesses life (and as a side note, I was confused about the timeline during this part of the story, because the battle seemed to occur in the book several years before it occurred in Egyptian history).

Because so much of the novel’s energy goes into creating the obstacles to Nefertari’s elevation to Chief Wife, most of which relate to Rahotep and Henuttawy’s scheming (and all of which, from what I can tell, are straight fiction), Nefertari’s character sometimes strains the limits of credulity.   Within the space of a year she seems to transform from naïve and unruly princess to sultry and focused Chief Wife-in-training, a shift that is undercut by the persistent youthfulness of her narrative voice.   For one of the things that struck me about both Nefertiti and The Heretic Queen is the YA voice of the storytelling, something that heightens the sense of trust the reader has in the narrative voice but also undermines the sophistication a character life Nefertari needs to outwit those who would undermine her.   And while her voice and demeanor do grow during the novel, the narrative tone of the novel does not ever shake the sense of youth with which Nefertari’s fictional presence is infused.

As I said earlier, the conflict created by the political machinations around Chief Wife create a very readable story, but one that begs a number of questions about who really had the power in Ramesses court.   In one sense it is always true that there is much more political complexity in a royal court than the official image portrays.   And it is always refreshing to read about the women who were just as capable and ambitious as their male counterparts.   However, when you have a figure who withstood as much as Ramesses, it is clear that he had some winning combination of smarts and ambition, and given the fact that Egyptian Pharaohs were seen as so close to the gods, I kept wondering how realistic it was that the people of Thebes would dare speak out – let alone actively protest, even riot – against Ramesses choice of Nefertari as wife or Chief Wife.   That they were so overtly displeased, almost storming the palace at one point, made me question – again – Ramesses’s effectiveness as supposedly the most powerful Egyptian at that moment in time, and it certainly made me question the fictionalization of Nefertari as Nefertiti’s niece.   And Ramesses’s persistent “don’t worry, we’ll convince them of your wonderfulness” attitude made him seem less devoted to Nefertari than singularly unprepared for the sophisticated demands of his position as Pharaoh.   Consequently, what the story engendered in tender devotion between the two it thwarted in offering the portrayal of a powerful couple.

Although I tend to appreciate as much historical accuracy as possible in historical fiction, I am not opposed to some tweaking, as long as the author has a good purpose and/or comes clean with the changes.   In this case, the changes are duly noted in an author’s note, and so I do not feel it would be fair to hold them against the book for their own sake.   But in terms of the purpose they serve in the novel, I did not feel the changes worked as they were intended.   Also, one note about the rivalry between Iset and Nefertari:   as much as I appreciated the fact that Iset was not portrayed as a one-dimensional villainess (unlike her power-hungry patroness), I am weary of novels that elevate one woman at the expense of another, finding the womano-a-womano hate to undermine the woman power often suggested in the winner of the contest.   I truly look forward to the day when the fictional portrayal one woman’s ascent to power is not conditioned on the degradation, suffering, disempowerment, or vanquishing of another woman, especially when the contest seems to straightforwardly good v. bad, regardless of how convenient or alluring the rivalry may seem.

As a sophomore effort, The Heretic Queen is more confident in its prose, better integrated in the details of Egyptian life, and a definite page-turner.   But the very things that create the novel’s central conflict also undermine the authority of its central couple, making those historical figures who saw themselves as larger than life not merely more human but less cogent than either history or fiction should ideally allow.   C+

~ Janet

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

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2. REVIEW: The Dreamer’s Loom (aka The Dark One) by Michelle L Levigne
3. REVIEW: Queen of the Ocean by Anna C Bowling

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It’s hard to believe that election day is finally here.   For months, nothing has been more prominent in my mind and my reading than this election.   I feel so blessed to not only   have the opportunity to vote, but to have cast my ballot for Obama via mail two weeks ago.   I hope that if you have the right to vote, you exercise it no matter who your candidate is.   Don’t stand on the sidelines this time.   It’s too important.   Please drop a comment below and tell us about your voting experience.   I’ve loved reading those anecdotes on other sites, particularly if you had to wait in line.

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AP is concerned, for example, that based on their past academic relationship, Senator Obama might choose among his appointments a divisive figure such as Larry Lessig – a law professor and leading proponent of diminished copyright rights.

I am a big fan of Lawrence Lessig and diminished copyright rights myself.

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And, now, according to CNN, Joe the Plumber is looking to run for Congress in 2010. Hope his past ducks are in a row.

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I really despise the Patriot Act and the bad law it has generated and I feel like government uses the terrorist excuse to broaden its power over citizens and trample on our rights.   Maybe GBers feel different about this.   Karen?

Edited to add:   I had forgotten to mention the spying on its citizens that the US does as reported by ABC wherein Americans in the Middle East had their phone calls tapped by NSA so that agents could listen to the US citizens having phone sex and other totally benign but private discussions.

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This is why I am glad that famed sex advice giver, Dan Savage, is offering up a contest for those who donate to the cause to stop these constitutional amendments.

The six biggest Savage Love donors to either www.noonprop8.com or www.sayno2.com will see their letters in print, and everyone who makes a donation of at least $25 to either group-’send me your donation confirmation e-mail along with your question-’gets a personal reply from yours truly. The cutoff date for eligible letters is October 16.

Who else wants to give money so that gay and lesbians can be unhappy divorcees?

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Remember when you were a kid and your parent told you to eat your food because there were people starving in (insert your own favorite depressed third world country here)? That is essentially what my post is about. Everyone who lives in a democracy has the responsibility to vote because it is a treasured right that millions around the world do not have. Even worse, these disenfranchised millions are often oppressed, living terrible lives. I just want to share one story of my travels.

In early 2000, Ned and I went to South Korea. During our time there, we visited the DMZ. The Demilitarized Zone is a tract of land that is 155 miles long and approximately 2.5 miles wide. In a sad irony, because this space of land has been unoccupied for over fifty years, it has become a haven for rare wildlife.

To get to the DMZ, you must take a special charter bus. You are not allowed on the bus unless you are dressed appropriately. We were also instructed to bring our passports because no Koreans are allowed to the DMZ zone unless they have special dispensation from the government. (Most of my group were American Koreans so this was particularly important for my group). On the way up, we were given further instructions. No gesturing when out in the open. Listen to the guide at all times. The DMZ is the most heavily armed border in the world. Do not, under any circumstances, do anything to cause an incident.

We were carried via this special charter to the UN Command center. There we were briefed on the history of the DMZ. The DMZ is in a constant state of readiness. There are over two million troops between the forces on the North and South Korean sides. It is believed that there could be aggression from North Korea at anytime. According to Wikipedia “Sporadic outbreaks of violence due to North Korean hostilities killed over 500 South Korean soldiers and 50 U.S. soldiers along the DMZ between 1953 and 1999.”

At one point in the tour, we were ushered to Conference Row. Conference Row is a row of buildings set on the border between North and South Korea. The blue buildings are used by the UN Joint Security Council which is mostly manned by US and South Korean Troops. The grey buildings belong to North Korea. The first grey building in the picture is purported to be a rec room for North Korean soldiers but the US troops swear that there are no recreational activities taking place in the conference row buildings. The second blue building hosts the peace conferences. The microphone cord separates the Northern and Southern sides. Inside this building is the only palce where you can stand on North Korean soil without getting shot. A ROC solider stands at attention and is prepared to physically restrain you should you touch him in anyway or attempt to venture through the back door of the building into North Korea. We noticed that when the ROC soldiers walked, they made a kind of swishing noise. We were told that the soldiers have small metal balls sewn into their pants legs so that when they march, it sounds like there are more of them.

During the entire time a tour is here at the UN Command center, North Korea soldiers come outside to patrol. One soldier will stand motionless in front of this building. The North Koreans watch visitors closely and purportedly have enhanced auditory equipment. They are looking or listening for anything that could be deemed as aggressive to excuse further hostilities.

The Korean War ended in 1953 and the border has been closed ever since. There is a famous bridge here called The Bridge of No Return. It’s a beautiful site, but one that has a tragic story. The Bridge of No Return was used for prisoner exchanges. In 1953, prisoners of the Korean War were brought here and given the opportunity to return to the other side, but once they had crossed that bridge, there was no going back. For many Koreans, this was a terrible choice because there are 7.7 million South Koreans with relatives in North Korea. No mail or telephone contact is maintained across the party

North and South Korea had state sponsored reunions beginning in 2000 when a few select families were reunited. I was told that these reunions were televised in South Korea and that there wasn’t a body on the street during these periods of time. If you have visited the population of congested Seoul, you would find that hard to believe. One story that was told was of a family who had been running for the border. The mother had three children and she was carrying one. Her oldest, a boy, tripped and fell. The soldiers were chasing them and he was caught. His mother took the other two and ran for the border with just one shoe of her oldest. At the reunion, she returned with the shoe that she had kept for almost fifty years. I wasn’t able to find an article to confirm this story but I remember it vividly as it was told to me. (South Koreans are not without their propoganda too).

North Koreans live in poverty. The average monthly salary is $45. The country is cut off from the rest of the world. The people’s situation is dire. The economy is one thirthieth the size of South Korea despite North Korea being rich in natural resources. In the dictatorship, the people have no voice in government. Their freedoms are constrained, both physically and ideologically.

The point of my story is not to have you read a date travelogue accompanied by boring vacation photos but to say that the right to have voice in the way in which one is governed is a precious gift. The U.S. election for the 44th President is less than thirty days away. If you don’t vote, you’ve wasted one of the most precious gifts that you have been afforded as a free person. So vote, because people in North Korea cannot.

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If they are post Earth, what is the likelihood that these governments would be democractic in any way? Wouldn’t it be more likely that future worlds formed after the demise of “earth” would actually reject the way in which the First World countries ran things (i.e., some form of democracy) due to the belief, rightly or wrongly, that the “old” form of running things led to natural resource waste, failure of population control, and so forth?

I guess this should be some form of poll question, but it seems to me that the way in which the government/ruling class of futuristic, or even paranormal or high fantasy, should be addressed in regards to why/how it is different. Lois McMaster Bujold once called the SFF genre as being a political fantasy.   Is that important to you as a reader?

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Via Publishers’ Weekly.

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No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

Net neutrality is the concept that allows unfettered access to the internet. Some people have proposed tiered access to the internet. Companies would pay for its content to be put on a faster bandwidth and companies that didn’t pay, like DearAuthor, would be shunted to the end where it would take a long time to load. Other net neutrality issues is the censorship of content which occurs frequently in non democratic countries like China.

Net neutrality is an important issue for anyone who uses the internet.

Via Ars Technica. Thanks RebeccaJ for bringing this article to our attention.

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Whoever has sexual intercourse or unnatural sexual intercourse with a person having obtained that person’s consent by the use of fraud, concealment or artifice, and who thereby intentionally deceived such person so that a reasonable person would not have consented but for the deception, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for life or any term of years. As used in this statute, ‘fraud’ or ‘artifice’ shall not be construed to mean a promise of future consideration.

As Eugene Volokh states, its probably not the intent of the drafters of the law, but the language essentially makes the elements of the rape by fraud act as follows:

Any time someone has consensual sex (1) having gotten the consent through (a) lying or (b) concealment, and (2) a jury (or perhaps a judge) concludes that “a reasonable person would not have consented but for the deception,” that’s a felony, labeled as a form of rape. Promises (“I’ll marry you”) are excluded, but other statements -’ or silences -’ are not.

I wonder, since it is a sex crime case, whether the offender would have to register as a sex offender.

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First there was the Indiana Censorship Bill that requires any seller of sexually explicit material to register with the Secretary of State. You know, like bookstores that sell romances and such.

Now the Republicans have the opportunity to vote for Tony Zirkle who is in a primary race for a House seat in Northwest Indiana. Apparently, Mr. Zirkle is either none to bright or totally disingenuous. If it’s the former, I don’t think he should be making laws that affect the rest of this country. If it’s the latter, ditto plus ten.

What did Zirkle do? A white supremacist group decides to hold a party commemorating the birthday of Adolf Hitler. Zirkle is one of the speakers. When questioned about this, Zirkle claimed that “”I’ll speak before any group that invites me. . .I’ve spoken on an African-American radio station in Atlanta.” When asked his thoughts about the group, he said “he didn’t know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it.”

and

He also told WIMS radio in Michigan City that he didn’t believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn’t Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.

Nevermind the visual clues like the big picture of Hitler or the swastikas. If Zirkle wins, I’ll have to wonder if his opponent was Bill Napoli. Who’s worse?

Via Respectful Insolence.

Edited to add: Have decided that Zirkle is a dangerous kook. South Bend newspaper reported his views on segregation. Sounds like after a congressional study, Zirkle would like to herd us all into different communal camps.

He went on to tell the Kokomo Perspective, "While we are brainwashed with respect to integration and forcing everyone to be together and basically all arguments to the contrary are silenced, historically it’s very often been the case that you have to segregate and apartheid people to stop the continual war."

….

"I don’t have enough facts to support it," Zirkle said of his proposal, speaking with The Tribune. "I think it would need a congressional study to see if I support it. It may mean the cost of transferring people is too high."

On the other hand, he said, maybe it could also save the costs of the crime rate -’ and reduce claims of racial profiling. Granted, he said, it could take a century for the move to really fall in place.

So how would you divvy up Hispanics?

You can pretty much lump them in with whites, he says.

What about black Latinos whose black roots go back several generations in Latin America? And what about the ever-growing number of mixed races?

"You’d have to let people declare what culture they want to be living in," Zirkle said.

I’d like to live in whatever culture that Zirkle has denounced and rejected.

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3. Part Two: What the NY Publishers Are Doing Wrong with Ebooks

As a fan of your Stephanie Plum series (and as a reader who masochistically enjoys being tortured by the unresolved love triangle), I have been slowly reading your early category Romances as they are re-released. Naughty Neighbor was released recently on Fictionwise for a 100% micropay rebate, making it an instant purchase for me. And of the four or so early Romances of yours I have read, Naughty Neighbor is my favorite so far. Its strengths – snappy dialogue, snappish hero and heroine, a slightly outlandish mystery to be solved – are those I enjoy in your later work, and its weaknesses – inelegant transitions to the actual romance and discomfort around romantic sentimentalism – make me glad you chose to shift away from straight Romance in your later writing.

Louisa Brannigan has recently celebrated her thirtieth birthday and is focused on career success as pres secretary to an up and coming U.S. Senator. She lives in a modest suburban house that has been converted into two apartments, and Louisa is on the bottom floor. Which would be wonderful if it weren’t for her upstairs neighbor, award-winning screenwriter Pete Streeter, whose intermittent presence is an irritation to Louisa on every level – from the fumes of fried onions that come through the air ducts to settle in her apartment to his middle-of-the-night phone calls that inexplicably ring on her own phone, as well. Pete finds Louisa equally annoying, especially when she has the nerve to come after the paper he steals off her front porch, especially after she has woken him up yet again with her 5:30 a.m. alarm. Both Pete and Louisa are on their last nerve – Pete because of the unexpected danger he has found himself in while doing research for a new screenplay, and Louisa because of her high-stress job. But neither of them realizes, yet, that they have far more in common than their well-developed mutual annoyance.

Unbeknownst to both Pete and Louisa, the senator she works for has some mysterious connection to the threats Pete has been receiving, and when some of the thugs sent to “warn” Pete mistake Louisa’s modest black compact car for Pete’s black Porsche, and Louisa unexpectedly loses her job, the two are forced into a reluctant partnership to unravel a mysterious conspiracy involving political favors, insurance fraud, drugs, and a pig farm. In the process, Pete and Louisa reluctantly begin to yield to the inevitable attraction between them.

Physically speaking, Louisa reminds me a lot of Stephanie Plum – longish curly brown hair, blue eyes, 5’6,” loves Boston cream doughnuts – but she is much more focused and conscious in planning out her life. Although she is relationship-challenged, Louisa is hardly desperate, which makes her attraction to Pete so surprising to her. After all, she knows herself pretty well, understanding that she is “aggressive” but not “assertive,” not particularly good at confrontation despite her strong will and sharp focus. Hollywood-man Pete comes across as nothing she would find appealing, beyond, of course, his “movie star handsome” looks (a proto-Morelli type, with a bad-boy past and sexual appetite perpetually in starvation mode), surprisingly-developed culinary skills, and that appealing whiff of sex and danger she gets off of him every time they are in close proximity.

Pete is equally surprised at the strength of his attraction, as Louisa has previously been little more than an early morning irritation (he can hear everything in her apartment, too, including her lowering her zipper, as he snidely informs her) and mild entertainment (when he overhears her phone conversations with her mother). But he is nonetheless drawn to her “flawless milk-white skin, a snippy little nose, a short fuse, and a large chunk of stubborn.” He realizes that her personality “lean[s] toward the volatile” and he likes it. The suppressed romantic in him is simultaneously turned on by her spirit and frustrated that she won’t let him play macho-protector man.

What worked best for me in Naughty Neighbor is the fast-paced banter between Pete and Louisa and the slightly loony schemes they concoct to unravel the mystery behind Louisa’s firing and the threats against Pete. For example, I loved the scene in which they need to come up with a way to search the house of another senator:

[Pete] turned the wattage up on the smile. “I’m in Washington doing a new screenplay, and like I said, I’ve been out scouting locations. I wonder if we could come in for a minute?”",
“Ommigod, you want to use this house in a movie? I can’t believe it. That would be like so excellent.”
“There might even be a small part in it for you,” Pete said.
Louisa made a gagging sound behind him.
“What’s wrong with her?” the girl asked. “Why is she making those megagross sounds?”
“She’s pregnant,” Pete told her. “She has morning sickness all day long. It’s really pretty disgusting. Try to ignore her.”
Louisa kicked him in the back of the leg, and he took a blind swipe at her, catching her on the shoulder, knocking her off balance.
“Whoa,” the teenager said. “Very alpha.”

At one point Louisa accidentally locks herself out of her apartment while checking on a bird who flew into her window, and Pete finds her outside in the cold without a coat, unable to break into the house without setting off a newly installed alarm system:

“You don’t suppose the bird was prophetic, do you?” she asked Streeter. “I mean, it couldn’t possibly be the word of God, making a statement to the effect of bashing one’s head against a brick wall, or trying to fly to unrealistic heights, could it?”
“What kind of bird was it?”
“A little gray bird.”
“Definitely not the word of God. God uses big birds to send messages. Condors and eagles. Maybe an occasional albatross. Your little gray bird probably forgot to put his contacts in when he got up this morning.”

For the most part, the attraction between Louisa and Pete is realistic and completely enjoyable to read, in large part because the sparring works for these two stubborn, slightly volatile personalities, helping to build and sustain a sense of intimacy between them.

What didn’t work as well for me were the deeper aspects of their relationship, or I should say, the speed with which Pete and Louisa seem to fall in luuuv. Part of this, I think, is the downside of short novels, but it also strikes me as consistent with a writing style that has evolved into one that articulates a very ambivalent relationship to sentimentality and a slower pace of romantic commitment. In, Naughty Neighbor, though, less than one day is all that’s necessary to take Pete from thinking of Louisa as a relatively pretty “fruitcake” to having “an intense, irrational craving to see more of” her. By the third chapter he’s already falling for her, and while Pete is revealed to be a bit of a closet romantic, for a guy who has never been in love and has been acquainted with many women, the speed of his descent just feels awkward to me, not romantic. I suspect it took him a bit longer to bond with his cat, Spike, who Pete thinks of as his best friend.

Also, I kept wondering how it was that these two had never laid eyes on each other when they had both lived there for an indeterminate time. Despite the fact that Pete travels extensively, they know enough about each other from the inadvertent eavesdropping that it seems they would have run into each other before the time period of the story. Of course the fact that I was trying to figure this out in the middle of the book indicates my inability to suspend disbelief when it came to the “almost immediately in love” part of their relationship development.

Louisa struggles a bit more actively with her emotions, in part because she is trying to avoid Pete’s fast hands (he has a unique talent for unhooking and entirely removing Louisa’s front closure bras without her knowing), and that feels a bit more realistic. Overall, I don’t think more pages would have solved the problem, because I suspect that the humor and the quirkiness of the characters would wear out its welcome, canceling out the benefit of having the romance play out more leisurely.

Consequently, while this book is labeled and structured as a more traditional Romance, its strengths for me were more strongly characteristic of romantic comedy and light mystery. However, for those readers who dislike the love triangle in the Stephanie Plum series, a book like Naughty Neighbor may work much better for them. I really liked the fact that Louisa is less desirous of commitment than Pete is, and that she isn’t simply looking for a man to solve her problems. The Washington, D.C. setting was different – in a good way. I liked Louisa’s slightly nutty family and Pete’s eccentric friend Kurt, because these characters help contextualize Pete and Louisa as characters and at least in Kurt’s case, help advance the mystery plot. While I felt that some things about this book foreshadow the Plum series, it provides enough distinction to be entertaining as a separate creation. For a relatively short book, Naughty Neighbor was a substantially entertaining B read.

~ Janet

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

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2. REVIEW: Naughty But Nice by Jill Shalvis
3. REVIEW: The Rules of Gentility by Janet Mullany

For me, reading The Secret to Seduction, was like having a glass of champagne. First the effervescent joy of being introduced to your characters through the liquid clarity of your voice, then the warmth of being immersed in the sensations and emotions that those characters grow to feel, and finally the blissful buzz of the happy ending.

I put off reading this book a while because, though I’d very much enjoyed Beauty and the Spy and liked Ways to be Wicked, I’d heard from a couple of disappointed readers, and even Jayne, though she enjoyed the book and recommended it, was a bit less enthusiastic than I’d hoped.

Silly me. I should know by now that opinions can vary widely, and that, though I have a lot of respect for Jayne’s, it rarely lines up perfectly with mine. I’m so glad I finally picked up the The Secret to Seduction, because for me, it was a delight from start to finish.

Sabrina Fairleigh, the adopted daughter of a vicar, is in love with her father’s curate, Geoffrey Gillray. So when her friend Mary suggests that Sabrina accompany her to a house party at the home of Geoffrey’s cousin Rhys, the earl of Rawden, which Geoffrey will also be attending, Sabrina jumps at the chance. Sabrina wants to become a missionary, and she knows that Geoffrey will be asking his cousin for money with which to finance a mission. She hopes that when the earl of Rawden grants Geoffrey’s request, Geoffrey will ask for her hand in marriage.

Meanwhile, Rhys Gillray, the earl of Rawden and famous poet known as The Libertine, is suffering from boredom and ennui. He is experiencing writer’s block and even the temperamental tiffs of his mistress, the opera singer Sophia Licari, have become less exciting than they used to be. At the bottom of Rhys’ lifestyle is the need to escape guilt for his past misdeeds. Neither Rhys nor Sabrina is aware that that same past connects them, and that Rhys wronged Sabrina before he ever met her.

Therefore, when Sabrina expresses sympathy for those people who are so unfortunate as to be at the mercy of animal passions, Rhys is just bored enough to decide to prove to her that she is just as capable of passion as he or any of his other houseguests.

But what begins as a casual game to Rhys turns into a dangerous whirlpool as he and Sabrina are swept up in their burgeoning attraction to one another, and eventually, they are caught in a compromising position and forced to marry where neither of them wants to. While Rhys and Sabrina reluctantly begin to fall in love, Sabrina’s biological sisters from whom she was separated as a child, Susannah and Sylvie, come closer to finding Sabrina, and the secret from Rhys’ past threatens to tear the newlyweds apart.

The setting (Regency) and setup (rake and virgin) of The Secret to Seduction are as familiar as they get. And if I’ve read one book in which the hero sets out to awaken the heroine to prove a point or in which a couple is caught in an embrace and forced to marry, I don’t know how many I’ve read.

There were a few missteps in the book, too. Sabrina’s adoptive brothers and Rhys’ surviving sister (his mother and other sister died when he was young) are mentioned so briefly that I wondered what the point was in mentioning them at all. Susannah, Sylvie and their husbands get very close to finding Sabrina at one point, and then it takes them a lot longer to resume their search than it seems to me it should. At age thirty, Rhys is a war hero, a successful, sought after poet, a man who restored his family’s fabulous fortune, an earl, and gorgeous too — it seems a bit much even for a romance hero. Also, he is not shown attempting to write much or hobnobbing with other poets, so that aspect of his character feels weak.

And although I’m far from an expert on the Regency, I have my doubts as to the historical accuracy of some details — for example, would a marriage between an earl and a woman of unknown birth really have been accepted by society? And once married, would it be acceptable for Sabrina, now a countess, and for Susannah, a viscountess, to associate with their brother-in-law, Tom Shaughnessy, who was born in the gutter and once owned a bawdy theater?

Given all this, how and why do I still love The Secret to Seduction? Let me count the ways:

I. The Voice

Much has been said lately about the value of a strong writing voice. For me, few books illustrate this as well as yours do. You have a voice to turn a choir of angels envious. When I read your books, I can almost feel it twining around me like a vine that then puts forth beautiful blossoms. To illustrate, here is a paragraph of description from page five:

But only little patches of snow remained, scattered across the green like lacy handkerchiefs. The wan early sunlight was gaining in strength, and the bare birch trees crowding the sides of the road shone nearly metallic in it, making Sabrina blink as they flew past the carriage. She wondered, idly, why trees didn’t become woolly in winter, like cats and cattle, but instead dropped all of their leaves and went bare.

In just three sentences, there’s so much to dazzle me. The metaphor of the snow scattered like lacy handkerchiefs. The imagery in the adjectives and verbs. Instead of trees just being on the road side, they are crowding it. They don’t just shine; they shine “nearly metallic.” And rather than describing the carriage as going past the trees, it is the other way around, the trees that “flew” (another great verb) past the carriage. There is also a lovely rhythm and cadence to the words, and some nifty sound effects, like the alliteration of “woolly in winter” and “cats and cattle.” Finally there is the wonderful contrasting of the trees to the animals, which grow fur in winter rather than shed.

Except for the rare jarring metaphor, yours is the kind of writing style that can cast a spell over me and carry me away from the stress of my daily life as few things can.

But this paragraph isn’t just great description, it’s also great characterization, because it reveals so much about Sabrina. Her youthful sense of wonder, her being awake to the world around her (wonderfully reinforced with her blinking), and her whimsy and sense of humor all come through in just three sentences. And that brings me to the next thing I loved about your book.

II. The Characters

Let me start with in an unlikely place — with the villain and side characters. It is very unusual to come across genre fiction that gives such careful attention to them as you do. Oftentimes, in many of the books I read, the villain or the other woman or the hero’s friend can seem more like afterthoughts, devices to create conflict or move the plot in a certain direction, than like living breathing people. That isn’t the case in The Secret to Seduction. Here, even minor characters can reveal hidden dimensions, something that charms me more than I can say.

As I’ve indicated before, Sabrina and Rhys fall into types, the young, virginal heroine and the jaded rake. What makes me interested in them, however, is the way that you give individual flaws and vulnerabilities that makes these characters feel fresh to me. I’ve already enumerated Sabrina’s humor, whimsy and alertness. Let me add that she is also more sensual, proud and temperamental than she wants to admit at first, and more clever and insightful than Rhys wants to own up to.

In some ways, The Secret to Seduction reads almost like a coming of age story, one about Sabrina’s awakening — to passion, to life, to the vulnerability that love can bring as well as to the happiness that it makes possible.

Rhys too, is very proud, and for him a lot of that pride is bound up in the fact that his venerable family lost almost everything when Rhys was very young. The family name and image are of utmost importance to Rhys because he lost his parents and one sister when he was quite young. Unlike Sabrina, Rhys knows the pain of loss and therefore fears to fall in love, especially when he realizes how his past connects him to Sabrina. He carries a heavy weight of guilt that he seeks to escape, and I, like Jayne, was glad that his past transgression wasn’t a minor one.

Additionally, I loved that like Sabrina, he too was clever and insightful. Both Rhys and Sabrina see deeper into the other than the other wants them to. And so, they uncover each other in layers, not just physically, as Rhys awakens Sabrina’s senses and comes to feel more alive than he has in years, but also emotionally and psychologically. Which brings me to the next thing I loved.

III. The Chemistry

There is a certain magical alchemy that can exist in fiction just as it can in real life, and just as it is difficult to explain the whys and wherefores of its presence in our world, it can be tough for me to put my finger on why, it is exactly, that I do or don’t feel sparks between a pair of lovers in a book.

Maybe it is the way that Rhys and Sabrina can peer into one another’s souls. Maybe it is their humorous exchanges of dialogue. Maybe it is that they share the same strengths — including deep familial loyalty, intelligence and sensuality and vulnerability. Maybe it is that they have their flaws — pride and temper –in common, too, as I’ve already mentioned. It could be any or all of these things together that make me feel that they belong together despite the very different lives they lead before they meet, and make me want to see them find happiness together.

IV. The Conflict

Another of the things I loved in this book was that even after they are very attracted to one another and things get pretty intimate between them, Rhys and Sabrina are still quite reluctant to marry each other. They realize that chemistry isn’t everything, and that they may not have enough in common. Their marriage starts off on unsteady footing because they both feel trapped to some degree.

Likewise, I loved Rhys’ determination to lead a separate life from Sabrina. I know Jayne felt that some of his actions in the book’s middle section made her less sympathetic to him, but I really enjoyed the way these actions made me feel his conflicted emotions toward his marriage to Sabrina more intensely. So often in romances rakes settle down with a speed and commitment that seems unlikely to me, given their past. This was not the case here, and that made the book more compelling to me than many other rake reformation stories.

Sabrina’s realization that attempting to build a marriage with Rhys might lead nowhere but to heartache gives her conflicted feelings, too, as do the moments when she comes to understand how important it is to Rhys that she behave like a countess rather than a village girl. And when Rhys’s secret finally comes to light, the conflict between the couple becomes even more intense.

All of this is just a long way of saying, perhaps, that after reading a lot of books in which there is nothing serious to keep the hero and heroine apart, it was great to read something like this, where the characters’ mixed emotions were very real and kept me jolted awake and turning the pages to see how things would be resolved.

V. The Way it Made Me Feel

Just as I felt when I read Beauty and the Spy, I’m astonished that a book can sparkle with so much freshness when it follows so many conventions so closely. All I know is that against all odds, this book almost made me forget that I’d ever encountered those familiar aspects before.

As a reviewer, I try to give weight to originality of plots or to books that go unexpected directions. Here the originality of the language, the charm of the characters, the magic of the chemistry between them and the strength of the conflict that threatens to tear them apart were all enough to enchant me so much that, if the plot was not so new, I hardly noticed or cared. I was so entertained, involved and happy that little else mattered.

I’ve tried to lay out my thoughts on how exactly the spell your writing weaves works as clearly and in as much detail as I can; tried to work out for myself and for our readers the secrets of this particular seduction. And though I’ve written what just might be the lengthiest review this blog has seen, I’m still don’t think I’ve got it all figured out. But now I’ve come to that QED we readers rely on in the end: that joyous emotional response that goes to my head like champagne. Proof positive that I’ve just read a keeper. A-.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased in paper form at amazon or in ebook form at Books on Board or Fictionwise.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Secret of Seduction by Julie Anne Long
2. REVIEW: Between Mom and Jo by Julie Anne Peters
3. REVIEW: Beyond Seduction by Stephanie Laurens

Having heard such good things about your other books, I felt it was about time I gave you a try. I did worry that since this was the last book in a trilogy, I might end up lost or overloaded with backstory. Happily this turned out not to be the case. Yet, despite enjoying aspects of this book, I was left with a less than overwhelmed feeling for it.

Miss Sabrina Fairleigh, the adopted daughter of a vicar, hopes that the country party to which her married friend Lady Mary Capstraw takes her will turn out to be the answer to her prayers. Sabrina has been inching towards an understanding with her father’s curate Mr Geoffrey Gillray and since the owner of the estate at which the party will be held is Geoffrey’s cousin, she hopes their mutual desire to bring Enlightenment to the natives of some far away land will be facilitated by a gift from the Earl. She does note the irony of the rakish Lord being the one to help bring religion to the heathens (after all he is known as The Libertine in tonish circles because of his sensuous poetry and long list of conquests) but once Geoffrey feels he has something to offer to her, she’s sure he’ll offer for her.

Rhys Gillray, Earl of Rawden is bored already in the rustic setting of his recently reacquired country seat, La Montange. The property represents everything to him, though. All the hard work he underwent to buy it and all its exquisite contents back from those who purchased it after his father’s financial ruin and the dark secret of the manner in which he gained the money to begin his almost two decades long climb back the height of Regency society. He is amused at his dissolute cousin’s current position as a country curate and immediately susses out the fact that Geoffrey is hiding from creditors and wants money only to finance his return to a lavish lifestyle. The beautiful vicar’s daughter’s attempts to charm him might offer a cure for his ennui if only to prove to her that she is just as susceptible to passion as the next woman.

But Rhys never intended to get caught kissing the lovely Sabrina. However, faced with his friends and her father, there was nothing for him to do but reluctantly offer for her. Oh well, he had to marry sometime anyway so he’ll just enjoy his Married Rights while in the country and scoot back off to London to the delights of town when he feels like it. Sabrina soon learns that being a Countess is much less work than she’s accustomed to as the daughter of a busy vicar and sets out to find things to fill her days alone. Though sometimes those things, such as inspecting the roofs of estate tenants, don’t meet with the approval of the housekeeper and result in letters to Rhys which bring him back earlier than he anticipated. And so they begin to get to know each other, and care for each other, all the while never anticipating the fact that the past is rapidly catching up with both of them in a way that could tear them apart forever.

Beauty and the Spy and Ways to be Wicked are the first two books in this trilogy. I give you kudos for filling me in enough to know what’s gone on in the past without info dumping in this book. It’s a tricky thing to manage. However, there were times when this storyline tended to get a bit lost for a few hundred pages. And the resolution to Sabrina’s past seemed a bit too easily discovered. I also applaud the fact that when the roadblock to ultimate happiness for Rhys and Sabrina is revealed, it’s a doozy and not something that two minutes worth of conversation would quickly wrap up. Nor is it brushed under the carpet by either party and resolved in a week. It cut deeply, hurt badly and needs the time you give it for all parties to move on. Thank you.

Rhys starts out as a typical rake enticed against his will by the Innocent Heroine. This plotline is nicely done but, alas, offers little in the way of newness to the dozens I’ve read before. Sabrina is more refreshing in that she’s more honest with herself and Rhys about her reactions to him then I’ve seen written in other books but she’s not a total blast of fresh air either. And the callous way in which Rhys leaves Sabrina over and over doesn’t make me feel much love for him and makes the book’s middle sag. I will say that the manner in which you handled their reunion, especially in terms of who facilitates it and how that person manages it, was delightful to read. Straight talking and blunt observations cut off the usual shilly-shallying that litter so many romance novels.

I enjoyed my first time at bat with you, especially your use of language. I wasn’t lost in the trilogy story arc though I felt the arc sometimes got misplaced during the course of this story. The HEA for Sabrina and Rhys is well deserved and realistically achieved though their characters sometimes sank into slightly same old-same old territory. Altogether this is a nice book but it’s not a great one. B-

~Jayne

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