Dear Author » Sherry Thomas

REVIEW: His at Night by Sherry Thomas

Jennie — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:00:49 +0000

Dear Ms. Thomas,

A new Sherry Thomas book is an occasion for rejoicing; I’ve given A grades to each of your three previous books. So I had high hopes for His at Night, hopes that were stoked further by the blurb on your website. A hero playing dumb (shades of The Scarlet Pimpernel)? A desperate heroine and a marriage of convenience? Sign me up! The book got off to a slightly rocky start for me, though. More on that in a minute.

Lord Vere meets Elissande Edgerton when the houseparty he’s attending is overrun by a horde of rats. The estate of Elissande’s uncle is nearby the rat-plagued one, and so the hostess asks if Elissande can accommodate her guests while the rodent problem is being resolved.

Elissande isn’t quite sure what to do. Her uncle is away from home, and she’s alone with her frail, opium-addicted aunt. She knows her uncle, who is very private and secretive, would never allow such an invasion of his home, and she is afraid of his wrath. But as she begins to realize that houseguests – titled, wealthy, important houseguests – just might be the key to escaping her uncle’s clutches (and taking her aunt with her), she warms to the idea. She sets her sights on Lord Vere right away; he’s both the most handsome of the newly arrived guests and a marquess.

Unfortunately, Elissande discovers at dinner that night that Vere is also thick as a brick. Like, really, really dumb. So she has to re-calibrate her plans somewhat. She switches her attentions to his younger brother Freddie, an aspiring artist who feels protective of Vere, whose mental deficiencies can be traced to a riding accident that occurred when he was a teenager.

In fact, Vere’s not as dumb as he looks (or acts), and he has an ulterior motive for being in the household. And that is at the root of one of my early issues with the book – Vere’s “secret” was revealed in the opening scene, an exposition-heavy discussion between Vere and his colleagues in a secret crime-fighting unit.

I didn’t quite understand Vere and his aristocratic colleagues – they weren’t spies in the traditional sense, dealing with international espionage. Instead, they appear to be a sort of private (or quasi-government) crime-fighting unit, using their society connections to uncover various domestic crimes ranging from theft to fraud and beyond. What was never explained was why and how the unit was formed. I didn’t understand (or, honestly, buy) the origins of this rather unlikely group.

Beyond that, what struck me strongly was that I would’ve vastly preferred to be introduced to Vere, the happy idiot, and only find out the real story later. I felt that unmasking him in the first scene wasted an opportunity for a very entertaining and dramatic reveal. Perhaps I’m reaching, but I felt a bit like the reader wasn’t being trusted to follow the characters if their true natures weren’t spelled out from the first.

Anyway, Vere is investigating Edmund Douglas, the wealthy owner of a South African diamond mine who is suspected of extorting money from diamond dealers. Elissande is Edmund Douglas’ niece. Douglas’ absence from home and the orchestrated rodent infestation give Vere the opportunity to search the house for evidence, and his facade means that it won’t be suspect if he, say, shows up in a room that he doesn’t belong in.

I had some qualms about Vere (called Penny, short for Spencer, by his family) from the beginning. On the one hand, a hero who is presumed to be a dimbulb is such a rarity in romance that I can’t think of another example of one (I think the closest I can come is the hero of a secondary romance in an old Mary Balogh regency – I’ve forgotten which one). Upon reading the first couple of chapters, I felt conflicted about Vere - on the one hand, he was an interesting and entertaining character, and I could see the opportunity for a juicy story based on his masquerade; on the other hand, the fact that he was deceiving everyone in his life – even his own beloved brother – was more than a bit unsavory to me. The deception of Freddie is – sort of – explained and repented for, but very late in the book. Too late for me not to spend a lot of time thinking about the fact that Penny had for half his life been perpetrating a horrible fraud on his brother, who was blameless and a very sympathetic character.

Elissande also indulges in morally suspect behavior, but her motivations were clearer and more coherent to me from the beginning, and thus she was more sympathetic, even when trying to trap Freddie and then Vere into marriage. She’s imbued with virtue by the suffering she undergoes at the hands of her vicious uncle, by the way that she tries to protect and save her aunt from him, and by her obvious remorse for what she feels she has to do to Vere in order to escape.

Vere and Elissande end up in an arranged marriage after being caught in a compromising position. Vere is angry, but must try to maintain his happy-idiot persona around his wife. Elissande is desperate; regretful that she had to use Vere (and that she’s married to an irritating moron), but quite sure that she did what she had to do. Fairly quickly, Vere finds his mask slipping around Elissande, and she begins to wonder why he is pretending to be something that she strongly suspects he’s not.

This provides some interesting parallels, in that the three main characters – Vere, Elissande and Edmund – each have facades that start to crack in the course of the story. Vere’s facade is of an idiot, of course. Elissande’s facade is of a serene and loving niece (she smiles a lot) and Edmund’s of a concerned husband and uncle. Elissande and her uncle’s interactions are chilling for their menacing undercurrents, all the more because the nature of his monstrousness is left fairly vague. I really did like that aspect of the story.

The last third of the book ramps up the action and throws in some shocking revelations; I’m not sure that I found these revelations entirely necessary or that they advanced the story much. I did like the fact that Elissande and Vere once again paralleled each other in having to accept some hard truths about their pasts. Both are genuinely tortured characters; I am a sucker for a tortured hero or heroine, and if they are both tortured, all the better (especially since it means that one is not solely responsible for “saving” the other, a trope I dislike).

There’s a lot to like in His at Night – appealing characters (my issues with Vere’s deceptions notwithstanding, I did like him), a storyline that moved briskly, and, as always, your delightful prose. What I did not like – or perhaps, it’s more accurate to say, what I found a little less sophisticated and polished than in your previous books – was a certain sensibility: call it a lack of subtlety. There were a number of instances where I felt the characters’ emotions and motivations were spelled out unnecessarily and it struck a bit of a clunky note. One instance occurs in a flashback, when Vere happens to overhear a villain expound on a murder he had committed. The villain then goes on to threaten his listener, a priest, that he must grant him absolution for his crime or the villain will reveal the priest’s homosexuality. There’s a lot wrong with this: the too-convenient expositiony-ness, the fact that the villain really doesn’t seem to get how religious absolution works, the overlooked detail that the villain, on his deathbed, might not have time or opportunity to spread gossip about the sexual orientation of the priest. In another instance, the hero discovers a notebook in which another villain has written a confession of murder in the margins. It reminded me of those James Bond films where the villain, instead of killing Bond when he has the chance, launches into a detailed explanation of his crimes for the enlightenment of the audience. But I think I may have noticed these flaws more than I would’ve from a different author, and ultimately they did not greatly impact my enjoyment of the book.

Ultimately, I did enjoy His at Night very much. My grade for it is B+.

Best regards,

Jennie

This is a mass market from Random House.

REVIEW: His at Night by Sherry Thomas

Sunita — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:00:34 +0000

Here is another new summer reviewer, Sunita, and her take on Sherry Thomas’ release, His at Night.

Dear Ms. Thomas,

When romance novel readers bring up their favorite books, yours are among the first and most frequently cited as exemplary works in current historical romance. Your prose is lyrical and distinctive, your characters are unusual, and I find that your voice has grown increasingly assured with each book. But while I have admired the two previous novels I read (Delicious is still in my TBR), I haven't really loved them. I could see the skill and quality in every page, but I felt distanced from the story and the characters; minor errors jumped out at me, which is a sure sign that I'm not wholly engaged. So I approached His at Night with a bit of trepidation. That trepidation turned out to be entirely misplaced.

You begin your novel by introducing us to your hero. The Marquess of Vere, an undercover agent for the Crown, is investigating Edmund Douglas, a wealthy diamond mine owner who is suspected of extortion. Vere and his confederates take advantage of Douglas’s brief absence from his estate to seek shelter there from a plague of rats which has been set loose in the house they have rented in the vicinity. Douglas’s young and lovely niece, Elissande Edgerton, is somewhat reluctant to invite them to stay, but she acquiesces.

When they first meet, Vere and Elissande are instantly attracted to each other. But Elissande quickly discovers what the Upper Ten Thousand already knows, i.e., by all appearances, Vere is a complete idiot. And Vere in turn realizes that Elissande is using the visit to entrap one of the eligible men of the party into marriage. When Elissande sets her sights on Vere’s brother Freddie, Vere moves to thwart her, only to be caught himself. At the end of their short stay, Vere has gained valuable evidence against Douglas, but he is forced to marry Elissande after being found with her in a highly compromising position.

By the time they journey to London to be married, Vere has realized that Elissande did not entrap him out of ambition but out of desperation and fear, and when they return to the estate to inform Douglas of their marriage, it becomes even clearer to him why she acted as she did. Nevertheless, he is furious at the outcome and in her presence he increasingly behaves less like the idiot the world and his brother believe him to be and more like the brilliant, unhappy, angry man that he really is. Elissande, in turn realizes that Vere wears as much of a mask as she does, and as she comes to know the man behind the mask she blames herself for her deception, which saved her and her aunt from their uncle at the cost of Vere’s freedom.

I don’t want to give away too many spoilers for a suspense plot which is integral both to the storyline and to the relationship between Vere and Elissande. As opposed to novels in which the spy subplot appears to be grafted onto a predictable romantic narrative arc in order to pad out the page length, the mystery in this book is crucial to developing the romance between the hero and the heroine. Vere and Elissande meet and then make decisions which shape their future together because of it, and they learn a great deal about themselves and each other as the mystery is unraveled. Douglas is a superb villain. You expertly convey how terrifying he is without taking him over the top, and the moments of sudden violence administered a real shock as I was reading.

In addition to the principal romance and the mystery, there is a secondary romance that should appeal to readers of Private Arrangements. Vere’s brother Freddie realizes that he has fallen in love with his recently widowed childhood friend, Angelica, but he has no idea whether she loves him and how to find out without jeopardizing their friendship. Their scenes are funny and quite sweet, and they provide a break from the intensity of the scenes between Vere and Elissande, as well as from the villainy of Douglas.

I said at the beginning of this review that I sometimes felt distanced from your heroes and heroines, even when I appreciated them. For me there was no such distance in this book. From the first time we meet Vere and Elissande, we understand how complex their interior lives are. The first few sentences of the book describe the gap between Vere’s appearance and reality:

The Marquess of Vere was a man of few words.

This fact, however, would astonish all but a select few of his numerous friends and acquaintances. The general consensus was that Lord Vere talked. And talked. And talked.

Similarly, the first scene with Elissande, when she is seeing off her uncle, signals the gap between her public and private selves and why it is so important:

Still smiling, she leaned in to kiss him on his cheek, controlling her aversion with an expertise that made her throat tighten.

He required this demonstration of familial warmth before the servants. It was not every man who disguised his evil so well that he fooled his own staff. One heard rumors of Squire Lewis's bum pinching, or Mrs. Stevenson's watering of the beer she provided her servants. But the only sentiment circulated about Mr. Douglas was a uniform admiration for his saintly patience, what with Mrs. Douglas being so frail-’and not altogether right upstairs.

At last he climbed into his carriage. The coachman, hunkered down in his mackintosh, flicked the reins. The wheels scraped wetly against the gravel drive. Elissande waved until the brougham rounded the curve; then she lowered her arm and dropped her smile.

There are other characteristics that emphasize what Vere and Elissande share, such as your choices for their escape fantasies. Vere imagines the perfect companion with a dazzlingly happy smile who takes on whatever role he needs at the time. Elissande seeks comfort from reality by reading from one of the few books she has managed to hide from her uncle, a travelogue of the Island of Capri. When they meet, each sees in the other the embodiment of their sun-filled, happy fantasies, which makes their subsequent disappointments that much more intense. But the fantasies also point to the way in which they will eventually achieve that happiness in reality. Vere and Elissande are damaged in similar ways, but their HEA is not the union of two damaged people. Rather, I believe in it because in spite of that damage, they have managed to remain people who are strong enough to embrace life and to create and share happiness with those they love.

I cannot end a review of a book by Sherry Thomas without talking about your prose. I have not always been swept up by it the way other readers have; I tend to like understated prose styles, and sometimes I found myself admiring your prose as something independent of the story, which diminishes my engagement. But this time I found that the beauty of your writing enhanced the story rather than competing with it. Sometimes it was just a sentence, at other times it was a series of scenes. The scenes of Vere and Elissande on their wedding night, and the scene where she is reciting excerpts from the travelogue to him, were all beautiful and almost heartbreaking in their poignancy. Their first conversation at dinner at Highgate Manor, and then her attempt to mimic his malapropisms during dinner after they were married both made me feel as if I were in the room.

I also liked the way that you integrated the historical context into the story, particularly the railways. Both Vere’s ability to sleep on trains (in contrast to his tendency to have nightmares everywhere else) and the way in which everyone hopped on trains to go from place to place, emphasized that this was a story set at the end of the 19th century, not the beginning.

I have one criticism about the context, and this is something I’ve found to be the case not just in your novels but more generally in historical romances. While I was too caught up in the story to catch possible historical anachronisms, I did notice that these characters were unmoored from other people. What I mean by this is that the geography and the technology of the time felt authentic, but the lack of a dense social network stood out. As a Marquess, Vere never seemed to concern himself with his estate or with an extended family. Even if he was apparently too stupid to run it, no one else seemed to be managing his vast wealth. I’m not talking about sequel bait characters, but rather the kind of world that, for example, Jo Beverley creates, or Georgette Heyer did. When I read historical accounts of the British upper classes of this time, one of the striking features is how intermarried and interconnected they are. People exist as members of families and kin networks more than as atomized individuals. I understand why Elissande’s family is isolated. But Vere and Freddie’s isolation makes less sense to me, especially since one of their initial attractions for Elissande is the power and wealth that their social position brings them.

Nevertheless, this is a minor point that didn’t detract much from my immense pleasure in reading your book. We readers of romance go through a lot of books. A few are wallbangers, more are okay but not great, even more are enjoyable, and some are more than that. When I’m reading a book that falls into that fourth and smallest category, I find myself saying “OMG, I can’t believe how good this is” with one part of my brain while the rest of it is saying “shut up and keep reading.” His At Night made me feel that way, and I thank you for that. Needless to say, this is an A read for me.

~Sunita

This is a mass market from Random House.

Top Ten Romances of 2009 by Janine

Janine — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:49 +0000

We will be posting our Top 10 of 2009 this entire week. Today’s list is from Janine. The list is unranked. You can find more of her reviews here.

On the Edge by Ilona Andrews
Bound by Your Touch by Meredith Duran* (review by Jennie)
Written on Your Skin by Meredith Duran* (review by Jennie)
Stillness by Megan Hart, in the anthology Pleasure and Purpose
Determinata by Megan Hart, in the anthology Pleasure and Purpose
Scandal by Carolyn Jewel
The Birthday Present by Alison Richardson (#3 in The Countess Trilogy)
Blood by Sharon Shinn, in anthology Quatrain
Branded by Fire by Nalini Singh
Not Quite a Husband by Sherry Thomas* (review by Jennie)

*Full disclosure from Janine: Meredith Duran and Sherry Thomas are my crit partners and good friends, but since I enjoyed their 2009 books tremendously, I felt it would be a glaring omission not to include those books on my list of favorites.

Top Romance Books of 2009 by Jennie

Jennie — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:13:36 +0000

We will be posting our Top 10 of 2009 this entire week. Today’s list is from Jennie. The list is unranked. You can find more of her reviews here.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (review by Jia)
Bound By Your Touch by Meredith Duran
Written On Your Skin by Meredith Duran
Pleasure And Purpose by Megan Hart (review by Janine)
Scandal by Carolyn Jewel (review by Janine)
Indiscreet by Carolyn Jewel
Smooth Talking Stranger by Lisa Kleypas (review by Joonigrrl or read the haiku review)
Since The Surrender byJulie Anne Long (review by Jane
Not Quite A Husband by Sherry Thomas

Best First Book Nominee: Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas

Guest Reviewer — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:00:57 +0000

Each year, RWA recognizes excellence in romance writing through the RITAs, considered the top honor in the genre. Though awards are presented in a dozen categories, a writer has just one shot in her career to win the Best First Book award. This interview series focuses on the debut authors nominated in that category. Alyson H undertook to bring this idea to Dear Author and completed all the interviews. Alyson is a great interviewer and elicited some fun information. Alyson makes you, the reader, interested in the interviewee. It’s a great skill. Thanks Alyson and I hope the readers of Dear Author enjoy this six part series.

***

Private Arrangements was a huge debut, off like a rocket that made us startle, widen our eyes, and say ooooooh. No doubt publishers would love a formula for whatever combination of elements contributed to the book’s success, but here’s the thing that made all the rest of that stuff matter: Sherry Thomas wrote one fine story. PA is proof of the infinite freshness of the romance genre, and Gigi and Camden, while too true to be “easy,” are characters who stay with you, not just between readings, but also long after you’ve stored the book on your keeper shelf. And as for Sherry’s prose… ooooooh.

**About Private Arrangements…**

Sherry’s note:

May I say up front that, given that PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS has been reviewed here three times and each of my subsequent books twice, I feel a little silly and quite undeserving, taking up real estate on a series that is clearly meant to expose new authors to the Dear Author readership. But I’m extremely grateful to be honored with Rita nominations and just as grateful that Alyson has taken the trouble to craft specific questions for me. So thank you Alyson. Thank you to all the Ja(y)nes for the reviews. And thank you to the DA readership for bearing with me.:-)

A six-word memoir for your protagonists, Gigi and Camden:

I’d forget you if I could.

What were the original “triggers” or inspiration points for this story?

All the Big Mis storylines I’d read growing up, every other hero believing for no reason at all that the sweet, innocent heroine is a Bad Woman. I wanted to have a heroine who really did do something beyond the pale and to explore the aftermath of it.

Your favorite line, moment, or scene in the book:

Scene, Copenhagen, the canal, the boat, the moment I finally understood the story myself. Fave line, from nowhere close to Copenhagen: “She nearly melted into her chair, leaving nothing behind but a whale-boned corset and an assemblage of skirts.”

The Copenhagen scene was a “keeper” moment for me, too–the second one that comes to mind when I think of Private Arrangements. The first is Camden, “engineering” a gown for his sister. Will you talk some about how that detail became part of the novel?

LOL, I love that moment myself, so thank you for bringing it up.

We are at a point in the book where the story of their past has been told, and the story of their present is in a highly fluid state that could go every which way. So I needed a moment of them together, alone, not in bed, and not in contention, when they are relaxed and being themselves. Their train journey from London to Devon provided the perfect opportunity.

Camden brings work for the journey. He has a degree from Ecole Polytechnique, the French equivalent of MIT, and is a trained engineer. So Gigi sees him working on the designs of an internal combustion engine for a horseless carriage and asks him some questions about the design. As the conversation goes on, she reveals to him that she knew his little secret, that engineering-wise there is no task he won’t tackle, including a ballgown for his sister when he was nineteen and the family was too poor to afford proper couture for the sister’s debut.

It was one of those serendipitous ideas that just happen when you are in the middle of writing. It was so easy to see nineteen-year-old Camden, very, very capable and a little cocky, faced with a weeping sister, thinking to himself there is no reason he can’t manage something as commonplace as a girl’s dress, given that he has cut has cut and sewn sails for his model ships since he was a kid. So he attempts it and finds it much more complicated than he had originally anticipated. He can’t make the kind of bodice his sister wants without it falling off her. The solution? He takes apart his mother’s wire bustle and wires the bodice for the sister’s ballgown so that it would hold its shape.

But that is not the end of his problems.

‘I never knew what panic was until the ball was two days away and I still hadn’t figured out how ten yards of skirts should gather and drape under the bustle. All the non-Euclidean geometry in the world couldn’t have dug me out of that hole.”

She thought of the gown, lovingly packed in layers of tissue, one of Claudia’s most prized possessions. I have the best brother in the world, Claudia had said that day, a not-so-subtle reminder that Gigi should get on a transatlantic liner posthaste.

“You did all right in the end.”

“I wired the skirt too,” he said.

They both burst out laughing. The corners of his eyes crinkled in mirth, laugh lines that she’d never seen before–lines that had come from the sun and the salt of the sea, marks of a man in his prime.

He stopped and looked at her. “Your laughter is the same,” he said. “I used to think you all sophisticated and worldly, until you laughed. You still laugh like a little girl getting tickled, all hiccupy and breathless.”

It still hurts a little, when I read this passage, to think of all the time they’d lost. So I suppose the scene did its job in showing the two of them and–the readers–what things could have been be like between them had they not thrown it all away ten years ago.

Why did you pick the name Gigi?

Can I confess I don’t remember precisely? I first started working on the precursor of this story in the previous century–it’s just been too long. Although I do remember that the first version of PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS took place in the 1830s, and Gigi had a grandmother who was a French refugee from the Revolution, a courtesan no less. And when I think of French courtesans, I very soon think of the movie GIGI, in which the eponymous heroine’s courtesan grandmother instructs her in the courtesan-y arts. Perhaps that was why?

The novel has a structure that’s unusual for the genre, alternating between present and past. It’s powerful for a number of reasons, but why did you think the story needed to be told this way?

The first version of PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS was written in linear time, i.e., we meet the H/H as youngsters, see everything unfold, come to the separation about 2/5 of the way in, and then have the rest of the book be the reunion.

My first agent read that manuscript and gave me several reasons why it was be unsaleable. One of the reasons was that she felt the story should start not at the beginning, but at the point of the reunion. I looked at my hundred-some pages of what happened leading up to the separation, said, nope, can’t do it, and set the manuscript aside.

Fast forward five years, I come across the manuscript accidentally and instantly saw how it should be played out, starting at the reunion, with the past gradually revealed to illustrate the behavior and motivation of the H/H in the present.

Of course after PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS was released, there were lots of comments on the dual timeline structure and not everyone cared for it. But having seen the story written both ways, for me without any question the dual timeline is the better way of telling this particular story. I like the depth and texture contrasting the past and present adds to the story, whereas it felt flatter and less interesting done linearly.

What’s the best or most unusual fan mail you received about Private Arrangements?

The most unusual fan mail I received was actually for Delicious, my second book, from a reader who came across a copy on the streetcar. I’m going to say the best fan mail for Private Arrangements was when Eloisa James emailed me and said she wished she’d written the book herself. Eloisa James!

On Publishing…

Private Arrangements is your first published book, but was it really your first book?

It is, except the first version, written six years prior, bears no resemblance whatsoever to the second version, which was the one that finally convinced someone to pay me a buck. :-)

From the decision to write for publication to the “sold” call: How long?

8 years.

How did you find your agent?

Strictly by querying.

Your biggest surprise, pleasant or otherwise, about being a published author:

The happiest surprise of my publishing career so far was when I sold all 48 copies of Delicious at the RWA Literacy Signing in San Francisco last year. I fear book signings as Wicked Witch of the West fears water. I’d steeled myself for a humbling evening, but woot! Over the moon? Heck, I was halfway to Jupiter with elation.

What’s your latest?

Not Quite a Husband, set in the Northwest Frontier of British India in 1897. Road trip. Malaria. War. Simmering sexual tension. And did I mention they used to be married?

On Writing…

Your weirdest or most reliable writing ritual/habit:

None. No rituals. No habits. I can write any time anywhere under any circumstances as long as my children aren’t actively interfering.

Writing advice you’re glad you followed or ignored:

I never know what’s in my characters’ pockets, unless there’s something they plan to kill or fuck with. I.e., I’ve never done a character study. Not that I don’t think it’s valuable, but I just haven’t the slightest idea what these people carry in their pockets.

Three items within arm’s reach when you write:

Laptop, thumb drive, and internet.

Biggest distraction and how you deal with it:

Internet. I don’t deal with it, I live with it.

One of the resolutions you made on your blog a while ago was to “not write 1,000,000 words to get a 100,000-word novel.”Maybe that was hyperbole, but are heavy rewrites just part of your process, or have you been able to teach yourself how to write more “efficiently”?

Well, nothing since has quite matched the epic slog of DELICIOUS, so in some ways I have been improving. But NOT QUITE A HUSBAND did require a 60% rewrite. And the latest historical romance, as yet untitled, is undergoing substantial rewrites already after my editor read the first 30k words. So yes, I have reason to believe heavy rewrites are just part of the process–good thing I don’t get overly attached to my words!

Sigh. I envy those writers who can do a proper detailed outline then stick to it. My outlines are most useful as fish wrap.

You’ve said that though you write romance, you’re not romantic yourself. What, to you, makes a great love scene?

One word: conflict.

In real life, lovemaking should never be about conflict. In fictional life, lovemaking should never NOT be about conflict. And for me, on screen lovemaking is absolutely the best literary device at a romance writer’s disposal to illustrate, sharpen, and heighten conflict between the hero and the heroine.

I will come out and confess. In my teenage years, I read a lot–repeat, a lot–of romances right up to the first love scene and maybe a couple of pages further. Then I’d abandon those books and never go back. When I was writing PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS, I wondered why that was. And realized that the fault often lay in the basic set-up of the story, in that there was not enough conflict between the hero and the heroine, and all the tension basically leaked out after the first love scene. And immediately after the first love scene was usually the point when the skanky villains would show up and/or the focus of the story shifted to the mystery/suspense/treasure hunting subplot.

It should be quite the other way around. The love scene should ratchet up the tension. It should make the readers go “omg, what are they going to do NOW?” and turn the pages even faster. Without this underpinning of emotional conflict, there is no point to a love scene.

I’m going to go even further and say that done perfectly, love scenes serve as turning points in the story. Each should mark a point of no return in the H/H’s emotional arc. If you don’t believe me, read Laura Kinsale’s THE SHADOW AND THE STAR and marvel.

(A small mea culpa here: In general I follow the no conflict, no love scene rule very strictly. But I made an exception at the end of NOT QUITE A HUSBAND, my latest. The H/H had gone through so much in the course of the book that I felt they needed a few scenes of normalcy at the end, a bit of laughter and happiness. And since they hadn’t seen each other in a month leading up to it, guess what they were doing for laughter and happiness? :-D)

As a RITA Nominee…

How did you celebrate the nomination?

I’m not a celebrator, so nothing really.

Wearing or carrying any lucky charms to the awards ceremony?

Haven’t got any. Besides, by the time I arrive at the ceremony, the scores would have been tabulated long ago.

The author who, despite your usual poise and eloquence, would reduce you to a blathering fangirl if you found yourself sitting next to her/him at the ceremony:

Do nominees have to sit together? I would have loved to have Meredith Duran next to me. Her talent certainly leaves me breathless. We sat together at last year’s RITAs and there’s something hardcore about Meredith that induces me to misbehave like a drunk debutante. I hadn’t been so bad in years. We had an absolute blast.

First person you’ll hug/text/call if you win:

Hug agent. And editor, if she can make it. Call family.

A Little More Personal…

Your paying job(s) pre- and post-publication:

I was a suburban housewife pre-publication. I still am. :-)

An author or book you recommend again and again:

Lately, it’s been Eva Ibbotson’s Madensky Square.

A favorite guilty pleasure:

None, where books are concerned. I probably wouldn’t understand guilty pleasure as a concept at all if it weren’t for a certain drop-dead gorgeous actor who hasn’t been nearly as good a thespian. I still go see his movies.

Your own “best first”:

My first mille-feuille (napoleon). Love at first bite with French pastry, my most enduring love affair yet.

***

Private Arrangements also received a nomination for Historical Romance. Winners will be announced at the RWA national conference in July. If you’ve never read about Sherry’s background, head over to the bio and interview links at www.sherrythomas.com and prepare to be fascinated. You’ll also find the blog she keeps with fellow author Meredith Duran.

REVIEW: Not Quite a Husband by Sherry Thomas

Jennie — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:00:19 +0000

Dear Ms. Thomas:

I read 18 A-level romances in 2008, an unusually rich year for me. Two of those 18 books were your first two romances, Private Arrangements and Delicious. Needless to say, your books have vaulted to the top of my “most anticipated” list. So I settled down to read Not Quite a Husband with high hopes. I’m happy to say that I was not disappointed.

Bryony Asquith and Leo Marsden have known each other forever, their family estates in rural England being adjacent. Their childhoods were very different, however, and Bryony never paid much attention to Leo, who was four years her junior (a detail I really appreciated because it was unusual and gave their subsequent relations some unexpected dimensions). Bryony finally notices Leo when he returns to London as a young man of about 23, handsome, charming and feted for his mathematical genius and his travels.

Bryony is an odd duck, on the shelf due not just to her advanced age (she’s in her late 20s) but her unusual profession: she is a doctor. In the 1890s, both female doctors and noblewomen practicing a profession were quite unusual. Thus Bryony is doubly alienated.

Jane gives an excellent recap of the plot of Not Quite a Husband, which actually begins after Leo and Bryony have been married (and estranged) for several years in her review. So as not to duplicate Jane’s efforts, I thought I would focus on what worked for me and what didn’t, and why.

First of all, I love your prose. Love, love, love it. One example:

The summer night sky over the Hindu Kush, domed by the Milky Way’s mage light, was infinitely splendid. Strewn against this craggy luminosity, millions of tiny stars shone, a diamond heist gone awry.

Simply gorgeous.

I felt while reading Not Quite a Husband that it was a bit of a departure in some ways from your previous two books. It felt slightly less sophisticated to me, for a couple of reasons. First of all, the genesis of Bryony and Leo’s estrangement is an improbable coincidence that just so happens to place Bryony in the wrong place at the wrong time so she can see something she shouldn’t. This leads to a sort of Big Mis, in that Bryony makes assumptions about Leo (and holds onto them for years) that just aren’t correct, and that could have been cleared up with an honest conversation.

I am not as opposed to the Big Mis convention as some readers, and it can even work for me, especially in cases, such as here, where there are underlying issues that make it plausible. It’s not about Bryony mistaking Leo’s actions; it’s about her fear of being loved and loving in return, and her inability to trust that love will last. Leo’s mistakes are mostly due to immaturity, and to his credit he does try to make things right. It’s just that he doesn’t know how to get through to Bryony. Perhaps it’s that his life has been so easy up until his marriage that he doesn’t remotely understand the emotions that Bryony hides beneath her cold facade. He’s not shallow, but he is far out of his depth with Bryony.

Besides the sort-of Big Mis, there is some activity that I think I’ll spoiler-bar to be on the safe side:

There are several instances of sex being initiated by Leo while Bryony is asleep, and a couple of Bryony initiating sex when Leo is asleep (and in one case delirious with fever, a plotline I think I saw on the soap opera Santa Barbara 20 years ago). I didn’t have any moral qualms about this, but it struck me as sort of over the top and cheesy in the style of 80s-early 90s melodramatic romances (some of which I adore, so that’s not a knock).

Different readers bring different expectations to the table vis a vis “realism”, and the things that I mention did not affect my enjoyment of the book, but they did make me see it as slightly less polished and sophisticated than Private Arrangements or Delicious.

I have felt since your first book that your prose and storytelling are reminiscient of Laura Kinsale (in my eyes, there is hardly a higher compliment). In Not Quite a Husband I found echoes of the best of Mary Balogh, as well – not just in the ability to evoke emotion with slightly sensationalistic plot points but in some sentimental family reunions towards the end.

I really liked Leo and Bryony as characters. Leo is easy to like of course; in a way that almost made me like him less! I guess I could relate to Bryony resenting slightly what a golden child he was, how he seemed to have it all – a brilliant brain, social graces and a loving family. Bryony was quite a bit pricklier, and while in theory I love the idea of a prickly heroine, in practice I don’t always love the execution. But I felt that I understood Bryony’s isolation and fears; my heart hurt for her and that made her HEA that much more satisfying.

I wish I had gotten a better handle on the attraction that medicine held for Bryony. I understood that she had a scientific mind and was interested in anatomy and how the human body worked. But she seemed at several points driven to heal, and while I understood that her work constituted an escape from her life, I didn’t have a sense of whether she was the type of doctor who was capable of showing compassion when it was needed. I would have liked to have seen a little of her bedside manner, to find out if she was brusque and all business (as the general depiction of her personality would’ve suggested) or if perhaps she was able to let her guard down with her patients and pour love into the work she did, since she was at that point unable to express it in other ways.

My only other complaint is the same one I believe I’ve had with your first two books – I wish Not Quite a Husband had been a bit longer. It didn’t feel quite as abrupt as Private Arrangements, whose ending I definitely had issues with because it felt rushed. It’s just that you tell the story so beautifully and I get the sense that it’s publishers’ restrictions, rather than tight storytelling, that dictates the number of pages in your books. That might just be my imagination, though. That said, while I hovered between A and A- grades for Not Quite a Husband, I am going to give it an A; it earned that grade with the emotion it evoked from me.

Best regards,

Jennie

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

REVIEW: Not Quite a Husband by Sherry Thomas

Jane — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:00:33 +0000

Dear Ms. Thomas:

Thank you for sending me a copy of your third book. Not Quite a Husband treats the reader to the same rich and evocative prose that filled the pages of your previous two works. In mentioning new historical authors to be excited about, your name should always mentioned.

Bryony Asquith, the granddaughter of an Earl, was an extraordinary woman who fell in love with an extraordinary man, Quentin Leonidas Marsden, the youngest son of the Earl of Wyden. He was a brilliant mathematical mind who was published and presented at the mathematical society; and she was a surgeon, one of few women practicing medicine, particular one of the few women born of her lineage who actually worked.

While the lede of this review might be their accomplishments, the existence of the accomplisments tell more about the characters than the accomplishments themselves. Bryony chose to be a surgeon not so much because she loved saving people but because it was nearly a necessity for her. Bryony had grown up alone without companionship and in order to survive she withdrew well within herself, drawing a cloak of self sufficiency so tight around her that not even Leo could tear it down.

Leo’s facility with math extended beyond schooling into every aspect of his life. It all came very easy for him. He was an Adonis, witty and beautiful, feted and admired. He published journaled accounts of his travels, read papers at the mathematical society, and generally held the world in the palm of his hand.

Yet one evening, he kissed Bryony in the library of his brother’s home. This kiss and the following flirtation gave Bryony the courage to propose to Leo and Leo, who had been in love with Bryony since forever readily accepted:

And he had taken an unbelievable amount of ribbing for it when he’d announced their engagement to his brothers. Matthew had cabled from Paris and Charlie all the way from Gilgit to say the same thing: Lord Almighty, she was Mary and you were Baby Jesus.

Yet on the eve of their marriage, Leo realized that something was wrong. When he made love to Bryony she resisted all pleasure. She lay there with her hands fisted by her side, refusing even the most tender of kisses. It continued in this vein until Bryony asked for an annulment after a year of misery. She had once dreamed of growing old together:

She had a sudden vision of herself as a wizened old physician, her hands too arthritic to wield a scalpel, her eyes too rheumy to diagnose anything except measles and chicken pox. The wizened old physician would very much like to drink tea next to her wizened old professor, chuckle over the passionate follies of their distant youth, and then go for a walk along the river Cam, holding his paper-dry, liver-spotted hand.

The story actually begins with Leo tracking Bryony down in India to inform her that her father is ill and she is turn return to London forthwith. Bryony doesn’t believe the warnings given that her sister Callista was prone to sending all kinds of telegrams to both Bryony and Leo in hopes of reuniting them. Something changes her mind and Bryony and Leo begin the journey from Rumbur Valley in the Northwest Frontier of India to Nowshera, Imran. The journey is long, arduous and frought with danger and for the first time, Bryony and Leo reveal themselves to each other in ways that were never explored in all their time during childhood, courtship, and marriage.

I’m fascinated with all marriage in trouble stories. They address what happens after the happily ever after. If the courtship books give hope of the finding the perfect mate; then marriage in trouble books give hope that the happiness is truly forever, even in the face of some of the most difficult circumstances.

The reason for their unhappy marriage is not revealed for some time so I’ll not spoil it here, but suffice it to say that the source of the marital strife was real. But the resolution of the marital separation seemed too convenient for me.

When Bryony and Leo first reconvene, their physical relationship almost immediately restarts which seemed odd given that Bryony had barred Leo from her bedroom after their first year of marriage and they had been separated for three years. Another thing that was problematic for me was that it appears that Bryony and Leo’s revelations that nothing in their past should or could keep them apart were induced by traumatic events. In other words, would they have been able to overcome their doubts in each other had it not been for the fact that one or the other could have truly been lost instead of just separated?

I believed in the two as a couple, felt their chemistry, and appreciated the richness of the setting; but I thought the way in which the two resolved their differences seemed to without understandable motivation. I kept asking myself why Bryony, after all this time, would suddenly throw herself at Leo. Why she was ready, emotionally, to put herself in his hands? I didn’t see the process of recovery myself. Was it just by stint of the long separation? Maybe that she was tired of being alone?

I also felt that Bryony did not truly accept responsibility for her own actions. She admitted that she married Leo, in part, to show everyone else how loveable she truly was. His insecurity was fed, in part, by the feeling that he was sometimes more of a show horse and less of a loved one. In truth, Bryony was not pure of intention although that in no way excuses Leo’s actions. However, I felt like there should have been some acknowledgment on Bryony’s part of her own culpability.

Those concerns aside, I still loved the writing. There are so many quotable phrases but one of my favorite was this:

He wanted it, how he’d wanted it, that newlywed idyll they never had, that halcyon of mad corporeal infatuation. If he had it, a year, a month, or even a solid week of it, he could change her, repair the misalignment of their temperaments, and remold their marriage into something lovely and worthwhile.

Instead she banished him altogether. They grew further and further apart. And their marriage dissolved like a pearl in vinegar.

I loved how the prologue and the epilogue were written in the same sort of detached omniscient point of view and acted as true bookends for the story of Bryony and Leo. I also appreciated that you gave us some time enjoying Bryony and Leo in love together, rebinding themselves to each other. Few authors give us the big, dramatic payoff like you. B-

Best regards

Jane

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

Dear Author Recommends for May

Jane — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:55:02 +0000

I’m sorry for my delinquency in posting this. My lame is excuse is real world things interfering with my online fun. Without further ado, here is our May recommendations.

To Beguile a Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt. A beautiful courtesan falls in love with a scarred, tormented lord. Recommended by Jayne.
Gift from the Sea by Anna Schmidt. Enemies turned lovers historical set in early 20th C America. Recommeded by Jayne.
Always a Scoundrel by Suzanne Enoch. True rogue tries to shed his past bad association and help a pratical woman about to be trapped in marriage to a man who takes pleasure in destroying others. Recommended by Jane.
Hard and Fast by Erin McCarthy. Dyslexic stock car racer falls for sociology graduate student. Funny and sexy. Recommended by Jane.
The Madness of Lord Ian McKenzie by Jennifer Ashley. Asperger sufferer seduces a widow who curbs his madness. Recommeded by Robin and Jane.
Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris. Robin says this is one of the best in the series.
Not Quite a Husband by Sherry Thomas. Estranged couple reuintes and rekindles their love after overcoming past betrayals. Recommended by Janine, who by way of disclosure, is Sherry’s critique partner.
The Conqueror by Kris Kennedy. Medieval knight woos barons and landowners to Henry II’s side while plotting to regain his birthright, Everoot, and uproot its current residents including the woman he is falling in love with. Recommended by Jane (it’s on sale for $2.38).

Best of 2008 List: Reviewer Janine

Janine — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:12:29 +0000

Janine was our third “Ja(y)ne” here at Dear Author. She provides beautifully written, well articulated reviews. She has varied tastes and puts an emphasis on well written prose. Janine is a slow, but careful reader:

DELICIOUS by Sherry Thomas*, Grade A
CRY WOLF by Patricia Briggs, Grade A
PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS by Sherry Thomas*, Grade A-/A
WICKED INTENTIONS by Lydia Joyce, Grade A-
“LOS CONVERSOS” by Jesse Sandoval, in the anthology TANGLE, Grade A-
“EMBER” by Bettie Sharpe**, Grade A-
THE EDGE OF IMPROPRIETY by Pam Rosenthal, Grade A-
THE DUKE OF SHADOWS by Meredith Duran*, Grade A-
“REMEMBER” by Astrid Amara, in the anthology TANGLE, Grade A-
YOUR SCANDALOUS WAYS by Loretta Chase, Grade B+/A-
GRIMSPACE by Ann Aguirre, Grade B+/A-
“LORD RONAN’S SHOES” by Astrid Amara, in the anthology TANGLE, Grade B+/A-
QUEEN OF DRAGONS by Shana Abe, Grade B+
“FERAL MACHINES” by Ginn Hale, in the anthology TANGLE, Grade B+
LOVE THE ONE YOU’RE WITH by Emily Giffin, Grade B+
MINE TO POSSESS by Nailini Singh, Grade B+

*Full disclosure from Janine: Meredith Duran and Sherry Thomas are my good friends and critique partners, but since I enjoyed their 2008 books very much, I felt it would be a glaring omission not to include their them on my list of favorites.

**Added by Janine in 2009: Readers should know that I am now exchanging critiques with Bettie Sharpe as well. However, that was not the case when I read “EMBER.”

Best of 2008 List: Reviewer Jennie F

Jennie — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:02:35 +0000

This week we’ll post the “best of 2008″ list for each reviewer. Feel free to use this as a commenting launch pad but also as a way for you to measure your taste against the reviewer’s taste.

Jennie F is one of our “new-ish” reviewers. She reviews sporadically and has ecletic taste. Her list includes a variety of fiction books, not all of which are romance:

VICTORY OF EAGLES by Naomi Novik, Grade A
THE EDGE OF IMPROPRIETY by Pam Rosenthal, Grade: A
DELICIOUS by Sherry Thomas, Grade A
FROM DEAD TO WORSE by Charlaine Harris, Grade A
PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS by Sherry Thomas, Grade A-
YOUR SCANDALOUS WAYS by Loretta Chase, Grade A-
WHERE SERPENTS SLEEP by C.S. Harris, Grade: B+
DUKE OF SHADOWS by Meredith Duran, Grade B+
LOVE THE ONE YOU’RE WITH by Emily Giffin, Grade: B+
CRY WOLF by Patricia Briggs, Grade B+
POWER PLAY by Deirdre Martin, Grade B+

GUEST REVIEW: Gastronomical Me by M.F.K. Fisher

Jane — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:00:45 +0000

Dear Ms. Fisher,

You are one of the greatest food writers of the 20th century. But I didn’t know it when I first came across you work 2003, completely by chance, in a vacation condo in Corpus Christi. The bookshelf in the condo had a few magazines on coastal living and three books by you. That night, after I’d put my baby to sleep, I sat in the bathroom-’all the other rooms were filled with snoozing relatives-’and read your tightly wound account of a once-superb waiter become alcoholic and dismal, a punch-to-the-stomach tragedy in a dozen pages.

At the end of my three-day stay, I was seriously tempted to take your books home with me. I didn’t. But I never forgot the strange, stark powers of your narrative. So when I saw The Art of Eating, an omnibus collection of five of your best-known books, in early 2007, again accidentally, while looking for a copy of Larousse Gastronomique to help with my research into 19th century French cuisine, I began reading immediately.

Or rather, I began reading The Gastronomical Me, the fourth volume in The Art of Eating and your memoir, immediately, because as much as food history and food anthropology interest me, what I wanted even more were stories from your own life, like the one about the waiter that had stayed with me ever since.

Some books are like wine, flavorful and easy to imbibe. Your memoir is not wine. It is rather like a fierce eau-de-vie, distilled until every sip is fire, and then set on ice-’your cool, spare, unsentimental voice. Because it is so potent, its impact so hard and swift, I did not devour your book, but read it slowly, carefully, in portions of one or two chapters.

The Gastronomical Me begins with this paragraph, as is more or less to be expected, for a memoir with the word "gastronomical" in the title:

The first thing I remember tasting and then wanting to taste again is the grayish-pink fuzz my grandmother skimmed from a spitting kettle of strawberry jam. I suppose I was four.

Food, yes. Yummy food too. But you do not linger on the jam fuzz. There is no pornographic description of its airy texture or its fruity taste, nor any instruction to the ignorant among us how to achieve such delicious fuzz at home. Instead you went on to say:

Women in those days made much more of a ritual of their household duties than they do now. Sometimes it was indistinguishable from a dogged if unconscious martyrdom. There were times for This, and other equally definite times for That. There was one set week a year for "the sewing woman." Of course, there was Spring Cleaning. And there were other periods, almost like festivals in that they disrupted normal life, which were observed no matter what the weather, finances, or health of the family.

Many of them seem odd or even foolish to me now, but probably the whole staid rhythm lent a kind of rich excitement to the housebound flight of time.

Thus the tone of your book is set. It is not really about the food, despite its title. Or rather, it is only about food in the sense that life itself is about food, that we spend so much of our waking hours cooking, eating, feeding-’or hungry. We eat when we are happy. We eat when we are bored. We eat when we are lonely beyond endurance. And we still must eat when the world slowly tilts into violence and madness.

And so it was that the great love affair of your life unspooled against the violence and madness of WWII. You rarely referred to the war directly, but it was there, heavy and ominous. And what matter-of-fact details you chose to write of it stuck into me like knives, especially this brief bit about two Jewish women who lived their lives at sea:

The two most discreet girls on board were what was spoken of quite casually by the officers as "water babies."

They were married, both of them, to men in concentration camps. They seemed to have plenty of money, and for safety and probably from habit they had not set foot on land since they escaped from Germany. Instead, they went back and forth from Europe to America, sometimes for months on a single ship, making one trip as the First Officer’s girl, the next as the Second’s, and so on.

Somehow, your laconic allusion to the strange lives-’and livelihood?-’of these two women affect me more than any books or movies about the Holocaust I’ve ever across. I cannot forget them. I think of them in their endlessly waterbound days, in the seemingly insular security of an oceanliner. I think of the gaiety they project that amuse and attract the ship’s officers. I think of the way they almost believe in the gaiety and the security and the rootlessness of their existence, as if they never had a life in pre-war Germany, never married men who were dead or dying in Dachau.

The way you depict the most life-changing events of your own life, too, has that extraordinarily matter-of-factness about it. On committing yourself to leaving your first husband to be with your second-’the love of your life-’while crossing the Atlantic, you wrote:

Then came a small storm. I found myself standing alone in the cold moonlight, with spray everywhere and my black cape whipping, and my face probably looking a little sick but covering, I am sure, wild and unspeakable thoughts. Suddenly I seemed so ridiculous, so melodramatically Mid-Victorian about my Hopeless Passion, that I blushed with embarrassment, straightened my hair, and went down to the bar.

Chexbres was there, of course. We celebrated, with the first of ten thousand completely enjoyable drinks: I, my release from my own private soap-opera, and he, my God-sent recovery from what was to him an inexplicable case of frigid and sour-pussed ill humor. Everything was all right after that, for as many more years as he was on earth, and I lived secure and blessed for those years too, through many terrors.

But he would die all too soon. You never named his illness. You never told us what he did, what he looked like, where he was from, how you met him, or how he died. You never even used his real name. And it never mattered. I knew you loved him beyond measure because you wrote this:

Chexbres studied the winds, the soil, the way the rains came, and he knew more about how to grow things than the peasants could have learned in a thousand years, in spite of their cruel toiling. He felt truly apologetic about it.

The infinite pride in those words. It was enough.

The days of your happiness had a gleam to them, like sunlight on water. And when Chexbres’s health failed, and you both knew his days were numbered, that happiness lost its pastoral brightness, but acquired an intensity almost like despair.

Again on an ocean crossing, you wrote:

We got up late, and went after bathings and shavings to the Lounge, where we sat in soft chairs by the glass wall and looked out past the people sunning themselves to the blue water. We drank champagne or sometimes beer, slowly, and talked and talked to each other because there was so much to say and so little time to say it.

There was a singular strength to such love. It isolated and protected.

We were past the pain and travail, that was all. We were inviolate.

I believed in that bubble of love. I wanted it to be, as you said, inviolate. But alas, even consuming love could not shield you from everything. On a train crossing from Switzerland into Italy, something happened. There was a broken window with jagged glass, and water all around that window and all over the station-’the aftermath of a successful suicide: an escaped and recaptured political prisoner had chosen to cut his throat on the glass rather than to go back to prison. You wrote:

By the time we got to Milano everything was almost alright again, but for a few minutes the shell cracked. The world seeped in. We were not two ghosts, safe in our own immunity from the pain of living. Chexbres was a man with one leg gone, the other and the two arms soon to go-a small wracked man with snowy hair and eyes large with suffering. And I was a woman condemned, plucked at by demons, watching her true love die too slowly.

-I felt illimitably old, there in the train, knowing that escape was not peace, ever.

That is one of the most heartbreaking passages I’ve ever read. And I was all the more devastated because for much of the rest of the chapter leading up to this shattering moment, you talked only about food, the comfort and familiarity of a good luncheon cooked and served by a galley staff who knew you well. Like you, I never expected that lovely quotidien calm to splinter, to expose your vulnerability so utterly and mercilessly.

At this point, it is incumbent upon me to point out that the entire book is not wrenching to this degree. There are other more amusing interludes, stories that warmed the heart, and even passages of sheer gluttonous delight. It would also be remiss of me not to say something of your trenchant prose, which I love. The book is full of little gems like this:

-like the concert-grand piano in the Ladies’ Salon, painted a rich creamy pink (with mother-of-pearl keys), so that it looked like a monstrous raspberry in the pistachio mousse décor.

And this:

The Hansa was a tidy, plump little ship. There was something comfortable about her, and at the same time subtly coarse and vulgar, like a motherly barmaid married to a duke in an English novel.

I cannot say whether The Gastronomical Me was pessimistic or optimistic. I think it is a true portrayal of life, ordinary and extraordinary turn by turn. It is as you said, in a quote I love so much that I placed it at the very front of Delicious,

When I write about hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth, and the love of it-and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied.

And for that, The Gastronomical Me is, and will always be, one of my favorite books.

Yours sincerely,

Sherry Thomas

This book can be purchased in trade paperback from Amazon or Powells. No ebook format.

REVIEW: Delicious by Sherry Thomas

Jennie — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:00:48 +0000

Dear Ms. Thomas,

When I read your historical romance debut, Private Arrangements, in February of this year, I was enchanted. The note I wrote in my book log reads as follows: “Excellent, excellent debut. Beautifully written and characterized, and quite different from the usual historical romance (especially in allowing a heroine to be less than saintly). My only complaint is it could have been a little longer – the ending felt a bit rushed.”

So, my anticipation level was quite high when I opened Delicious. Happily, I was not disappointed.

The story begins with this irresistible line:

In retrospect people said it was a Cinderella story.

…that line and my experience with your earlier book were enough to signal that I was in for one subversive fairy tale. And who doesn’t love a subversive fairy tale?

In 1892, Bertie Somerset unexpectedly drops dead at his Yorkshire estate. The death comes as a shock to everyone; Bertie was only 38 years old and not known to be in bad health. Among the surprised mourners are Bertie’s notorious cook and erstwhile lover, Verity Durant, and his estranged half-brother, barrister and rising politician Stuart Somerset. Bertie’s tangled and fraught relationships with both Stuart and Verity, and Stuart and Verity’s with each other, form the heart of the plot of Delicious.

I should probably take a moment to note that as with Private Arrangements, Delicious is told partly through flashbacks. Chapters Three, Five, Seven and Nine flash back ten years to 1882, and detail some of Verity’s history with Bertie, as well as her first meeting with Stuart. I recall some readers complaining about the flashbacks in Private Arrangements, a complaint I didn’t agree with. I felt that that book was actually enriched by not being written in a linear fashion. I feel the same way about Delicious – in fact, in the case of this book, I think a linear plot would have detracted from the story a great deal, since the threads that tie these characters together are only gradually revealed in the course of the story.

Stuart is a wonderful hero – the illegitimate son of a nobleman, he has tried to make up for his disreputable origins by becoming a model of rectitude. He is a politician concerned with social justice, but also, like any politician, he’s ambitious, and his chances of rising high indeed look very good. Stuart becomes engaged to a family friend early in the story, a young woman whom he likes and feels will be an asset to his career.

Verity is at first a little harder to get a handle on – she’s a woman with a murky past who has had to recreate herself, and her personality is marked both by sadness over losses she’s never quite gotten over, and at times an impetuousness that would seem to belong to a younger woman. She is definitely an unusual and sympathetic heroine.

Delicious interestingly juxtaposes Verity’s vocation as a cook against Stuart’s, for lack of a better phrase, food issues. Unlike his sybaritic brother, Stuart’s relationship with food is joyless and purely functional, at least until Verity comes back into his life. Stuart’s first taste of Verity’s cooking (a cucumber soup that is, he thinks, “sublime”) is described thusly:

He cared nothing for food. Hadn’t in ages and ages. Food was sustenance, something to keep him alive and healthy, nothing more. A dinner at the Tour d’Argent was no different from a dinner at the lowliest fish-and-chip shop: just dinner.

This was not just dinner. This was as dangerous and unpredictable as the presence of a scantily clad woman in the cell of a monk who’d taken a vow of chastity.

He set down his spoon. Thirty years ago he’d have begged for one more sip.

Twenty years ago he’d have been thrilled to discover that his sense of taste hadn’t permanently atrophied. Ten years ago he might have taken this sudden reawakening of his palate for an augury of wonderful things to come, things he’d wished for with the single-mindedness of a long-buried seed seeking the unbearable beauty of a world drenched in light.

Today he wished only to read his newspaper at dinner without being distracted—or profoundly disturbed—by a bowl of soup.

Food plays an important part in Delicious, and some of the descriptions were mouth-watering enough to make me hungry.

Speaking of mouth-watering – I’ve become one of those jaded romance readers who more often than not ho-hums at love scenes. That said, the love scenes in Delicious were very effective, and yes, hot. Especially the first one, involving Stuart coming upon Verity in his bathtub (the scene was so luscious that I forgave it its contrived set-up).

There is a nice secondary romance between Stuart’s fiancée Lizzy and his secretary, both of whom have hidden depths behind their proper facades.

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate reading a historical romance free of spies, nefarious plots and mustache-twirling villains. The villains in Delicious, such as they are, are merely real, flawed people – selfish and misguided, with their own hurts motivating their bad behavior.

I also have to say, without giving anything away, that I loved both Stuart’s and Verity’s behavior near the end of the book. They were such adults – in the best sense of the word. They behaved with honor, but not the self-sacrificing faux-honor of so many romance heroes and heroines (especially the heroines). They had made those mistakes in the past and learned from them. How refreshing!

My final grade for Delicious is an A. Ms. Thomas, I will be eagerly anticipating your next book; you’re well on your way to being one of my favorite historical romance authors.

Best regards,

Jennie

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format on July 29, 2008.

REVIEW: Delicious by Sherry Thomas

Jayne — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:21:28 +0000

Dear Ms. Thomas,

Book two and all is still well between us. Keep this up and I’ll stay a happy woman and keep writing you nice reviews. I used to think I didn’t care for Victorian era historicals – something about the facial hair of the men and hairstyles of the women – but you’re still luring me into parlor palms and antimacassars.

I’ll admit that when I started the book, I wasn’t too sure for a while exactly what was going on. The heroine is a fallen Lady who cooks divinely, yea even unto making English people sit up and notice. I got that. She’s got an illegitimate son but he’s in a good home and being raised to be a gentleman. So far so good. Her employer just keeled over during the soup course and, what’s this?, they’d had an affair and he refused to marry her after she thought he would? And then she remains his cook for 10 years? Even after she had a ‘one night to remember all my days’ with his illegitimate half brother. Oh my. What’s going on here?

And the half brothers who used to be close ended up in the law courts making life miserable for each other? And the Lady cook’s Dowager Duchess Auntie is a vengeful old biddy, hell bent on denying the poor woman a second chance? And the obvious hero of the story is now engaged? And his fiancee is trading barbed snipes with his secretary? I needed to find a mental happy place.

Or did I because despite all this doom and gloom I was smiling and chuckling.

The upper-crust gentlemen of this country were valiant in battle, decent to their inferiors, and passably competent in bed, but they were, almost without exception, helpless before the simplest of domestic tasks-’and proud of it, taking it as a badge of their true gentility.

"Strong spirits only give Cinderella a hangover to go with her heartache," she said, even as she took a swallow of the whiskey. "It makes her terribly cross in the kitchen."

"I thought Cinderella was always gentle and kind and uncomplaining."

"Do you know why?" She looked up at him, her voice suddenly heated. "It’s because these tales have been written by men, men who have never spent so much as an hour in the kitchen. The real Cinderella curses, smokes, and drinks a bit too much. Her feet hurt. Her back hurts. And she’s resentful. She would like her pumpkin coach to run over the Wicked Stepmother. And Prince Toad too, if possible."

And despite the flashbacks – which I didn’t have a problem understanding – I was beginning to find my way around the plot and to root for the characters. Plus you also can condense emotions and situations down to the essence.

Then she put her arms to use. She clutched him to her, as if she were a grasshopper and he the last day of summer, and kissed him back.

At the church she’d mostly had a view of the back of his head, a view that had been further obstructed by an inconveniently placed pillar. He’d sat at the foot of the pulpit, while she’d stood at the very back, in a huddle with the other servants-’the distance between them sixteen rows of pews and the whole structure of the British class system.

I still wasn’t sure how you were going to work out the ‘oh by the way the hero is engaged to someone else’ angle as I recalled from watching “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” years ago that broken engagements could be very costly and damaging to reputations. Then there was the fact that for half the book, the hero still hadn’t realized that the woman he’d loved for 10 years was right under his nose and I was getting more than just a little bit impatient with all the close calls, convenient handkerchiefs, masks supplied by the hero no less and improbable bathroom encounters.

And…and…how could Stuart have been legitimized? Was that possible then? Because Fairleigh Park had to be entailed or else Stuart would have got it when his father died since everything but entailed stuff was left to him. I am confused.

I think foodies will swoon with joy as they read about the delectable creations Verity and her minions create.

The conversation that had reached a steady hum as the soups were brought in faltered abruptly when the first spoonfuls reached unsuspecting lips. Potage imperatrice was a thickened bouillon. Potage Fontanges was, if one must be blunt about it, a soup made from pureed peas. But the looks of amazement on his guests’ faces would have one believe that they’d been given sips from the Fountain of Youth.

She’d outdone herself. He didn’t know how it was possible, but the flavors of the soups were more fierce and more seductive than anything he’d ever tasted. He was robbed of speech, almost of thoughts altogether. The only thing left to him was a hot, brutal grief-’and a relentless wish that that it didn’t need to end this way, swift, merciless, final.

His guests’ silence was the one small mercy of the evening. Beside him the dowager duchess ate carefully, soundlessly, the expression on her face half way between pain and bliss.

Toward the end of the course, the conversation tentatively resumed. No one spoke of the food-’the experience was too strange, too unnerving for a roomful of good, solid Englishmen and women who’d never had their attention commandeered by mere dinner. Instead, they murmured distractedly of the weather and the deteriorating congestion of the roads.

That fledgling conversation ground to a halt each time a new course landed on the table. The hush that descended was half astounded, half reverent. There were startled gasps when the pÃ¢té chaud came around. Even something as mundane as an ice to clear the palate between the courses received solemn, undivided attention.

By the time Mme. Durant’s variation of the bombe glacée arrived on the table, layered, in deference to the weather, not with ice creams, but with vanilla custard, chestnut cream, and chocolate mousse, all the good breeding and restraint represented at Stuart’s table were barely enough to hold back his guests from launching themselves face-first into their desserts.

However, when I read this, I did tear up and unlike Verity, I didn’t for one minute doubt Stuart would come through like a champ.

"I understand everything," he said slowly. "And I accept it as a price I’m willing to pay."

"You do not understand." The dowager duchess stomped the floor with the walking stick. "Your wife, and consequently yourself, will be shunned everywhere. Doors will close in your face. Opportunities will flee before you. Your life, as you know it, will be finished. "

"No, madam, my life will have finally begun. I do not need the blessing of the Liberal establishment to practice law. I do not need the approval of Society to keep Fairleigh Park. And I will gladly be shunned on her behalf."

Tears came again, hot and sweet. This was how a prince slew dragons for his princess.

"You are mad, Mr. Somerset." The dowager duchess’s voice trembled.

"I have loved her from the moment I first saw her, madam. She has left me and I have left her. And now we are at last together, nothing, save death, will part us again. Not you. Not the Liberal establishment. Not the opinion of every last man, woman, and child in England." He bowed. "If you will excuse me, I’ve been away from her far too long this day already."

For that I’m willing to accept that this is a Cinderella story and a little more fable than possible reality, that the Dowager intends to resurrect her niece from the grave, that the world will happily welcome said Lady back into the bosom of High Society and that Verity and Stuart expect people to eat off that dining room table after what they’ve done on it. B

~Jayne

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format on July 29, 2008.

Dear Author Recommends for April

Jane — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:00:33 +0000

Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews. Both Jane and Jia would recommend this sophomore effort by newcomer, Ilona Andrews. The “Magic” series features a smart mouthed, sword wielding Kate Daniels who helps to enforce the law in an alternate universe Atlanta. For the crossover genre reader (i.e., the romance reader that likes to cross the genre aisles), Curran, the Beast Lord of the Pack of Atlanta, plays the alpha male who likes to tweak Kate’s chain. Jia particularly likes “how their relationship is unfolding slowly, developing over the course of what I hope will be several books. It makes things more believable considering the two people involved: the Beast Lord of the Pack and the lifelong loner with a dangerous heritage.”

First You Run by Roxanne St. Claire is recommended by Jane as a fast paced road romance featuring a hot Austrialian bodyguard and a Mayan scholar. The suspense revolves around the end of the world theory that some believe is predicted by the Mayan long calendar. So you get a bit of historical facts, a bit of suspense, a bit of sexy loving. How do you not want to read that?

Sex, Straight Up by Kathleen O’Reilly is recommended by Jayne (and Jane). O’Reilly does the near impossible and makes accountants sexy! Sex Straight Up is the second in a series of books about the O’Sullivan brothers. Daniel O’Sullivan lost his wife in the 9-11 tragedy and hasn’t been able to move past her death until he meets art curator, Catherine. Being with Catherine makes Daniel forget for the first time in years but Catherine isn’t quite sure that she can compete with the specter of Daniel’s former love. O’Reilly’s stories often feature two people who are moving at different speeds in the relationship. The suspense is whether one can wait long enough for the other to come to the realization that the love that they’ve been longing for is here and now. Sex, Straight Up is a sweet and sexy story.

Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas is an universally recommended book by the Dear Author crew. Thomas’ debut book tells the story of Gigi who connives to get all her heart desires only to lose it for 10 years and Camden who is so full of pride and so fearful of losing control that he waits 10 years to seek out the one woman who makes him crazy. Gigi, after 10 years of amicable separation, decides to petition for divorce. Camden returns to demand an heir. Set in the late Victorian period, Thomas makes wonderful use of the changing mores of society.

Unlawful Contact by Pamela Clare is a more serious action romantic suspense story one that Clare went extra lengths to achieve a very realistic feel to the story. The hero, Marc “Hunt” Hunter, is in prison for killing a federal officer. When reporter, Sophie Alton, comes to see him, he sees an opportunity to escape and does so, taking Sophie as his hostage. In order to gain some empathy for those in the prison system, on both sides of the gated metal prison doors, Clare asked to spend a night in jail. She was booked, searched, and incarcerated. I think that experience paid off because Hunt’s desperate desire for freedom was tangible. I don’t generally like captivity narratives but this one worked for me.

All of the above recommended reads can be bought through Dear Author’s Amazon Store.

Manga Recommendations from Jan.

Ayano Yamane’s A Foreign Love Affair. She’s the author of The Crimson Spell, which I reviewed previously. This book is a lighter one about an Italian cruise-ship captain and a young Japanese gangster on his ship, complete in one volume.
Yaya Sakuragi’s Tea for Two. Her artwork is a little odd, but I love her characters for the depth of their emotions. This story is a comedy about a well brought up young man who is a master at the tea ceremony, and a rather uncouth young man who joins the tea club at school because his sister made him. They’re very sweet together. This is the first volume of a longer series that’s currently at 5 books in Japan.
Cipher Vol 11, from a shoujo series. This series is reviewed here and the Volume 11 is the next to the last volume.

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

REVIEW: Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas

Janet — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:00:40 +0000

Dear Ms. Thomas:

I know your debut book, Private Arrangements, has already been reviewed well here and elsewhere, so I don’t know if I can add anything new to the chorus, but this book made such a positive impression on me, especially in your crafting of the heroine, Gigi, that I wanted to review it simply to articulate my appreciation for such supple and nuanced characterizations.

Philippa Gilberte Rowland is a young woman with no particular confidence in her womanly charms but a strong and practical faith in the appeal of her considerable fortune. Saved in a most bizarre fashion from marriage to a dissolute duke, Gigi becomes quickly captivated by the duke’s young cousin, Camden Saybrook, who may be at least one death away from the dukedom but who is intelligent, handsome, and as immediately taken with Gigi as she is with him. Between the strong mutual attraction, however, lies a promise Camden has made to another woman, an incredibly shy beauty who continued to waffle on a final decision to marry Camden, despite his honorable intentions to wait her out. Gigi is not so patient, however, and despite Camden’s refusal of her proposal, she ultimately schemes to bring Camden’s attraction more directly into alignment with her intent to marry. It is a ruse Camden discovers before the wedding, and his anger morphs into a plan to humiliate Gigi without sacrificing his access to her considerable fortune. Thus, after one night of wedded life, Gigi and Camden are separated for a decade, still married but fully estranged. When Camden arrives at Gigi’s doorstep demanding an heir in exchange for the divorce she is now seeking, all the unsettled emotion between them flares, bringing the civility of ten years’ separation to a quick, blessed end.

Here’s how impressed I was with Private Arrangements: for most of the book I forgot I was reading a Romance. That statement is not to be construed as an insult to the genre; obviously I choose Romance because of its unique generic characteristics. But many of my favorite books in the genre are those that categorically identify as genre but also transcend it in particular ways. Private Arrangements is such a book for me, crafted very definitely within the overall pattern of Romance but in such a way that it feels as if the story and the characters could stand independent of genre classification. In other words, it feels to me, as a reader, that the characters demanded this particular story rather than the other way around.

For me it all starts with Gigi. Here is no false intellect, no half-hearted schemer. Gigi does not recognize her own beauty or innate sexuality, but she is very confident in her industriousness and understanding of money. Composed of an incredibly strong will, she is a complicated young woman who allows her mother’s ambition to become hers, but largely, one suspects, because she shares her mother’s practical world view and determined nature. When Gigi meets Camden’s intended, for example, she is immediately repelled by the young woman’s indecisive nature and overall uncertainty. That disgust convinces her conscience in the plan she eventually effects to win Camden’s hand, although it does not fully eclipse Gigi’s sincere feelings for Camden and a hidden desire for his true affection. Gigi understands that – as a wealthy woman — she is a certain type of prey, and responds by trying to be a smarter predator, ruthless but not unfeeling. It would be nice to have personal happiness, but she tries to convince herself that it doesn’t have to be packaged in romantic love. Until Camden awakens Gigi’s romantic side, that is.

Camden is a handsome and engaging young man who has single-handedly kept his family from financial ruin, and, like Gigi, understands the importance of wealth and the value of hard work. As a man who will someday assume the dukedom, though, he has far more social options than Gigi. The true power of Camden’s position becomes apparent after he discovers Gigi’s deception and cultivates a plan he believes is grounded in honor rather than the same impetuous immaturity that drove Gigi to her desperate machinations. Despite his strong feelings toward Gigi, many of which reside beneath the flies of his trousers, Camden convinces himself that Gigi deserves whatever he chooses to bestow on her. That Camden cannot see a blow to his pride for what it is, and cannot, subsequently, embrace the maturity he sees Gigi lacking, initially puts the course of their relationship in his hands (which makes sense in that her sin is in trying to steer it all by herself). That we can see these things is a large part of what makes Private Arrangements so compelling. Here we have two very imperfect, very independent characters who are more alike than different, and who are both victims of youthful immaturity and passion-driven mistakes.

The early chapters of the novel proceed as a dual unfolding of Gigi and Camden’s relationship, past and present. The strategy works well, helping build the emotional tension in the couple’s current estrangement by slowly revealing the events leading up to it, including the incredibly strong connection between Gigi and Camden at the beginning of their relationship. I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to be on Camden’s side of the argument, but very early on my sympathies are engaged with Gigi, first because I want her to subvert her mother’s ruthless ambition for that coronet of strawberry leaves (marriage to a duke) and then because I believe that Camden’s revenge is so much immature cruelty. Yes, Gigi does something terrible, but no more terrible than what Camden does to her, and frankly, I thought his actions even more selfish (I mean, at least Gigi was driven by love, however twisted her plan). Anyway, the side-by-side storytelling invests me quickly in the prospect of Camden and Gigi’s reconciliation, despite his apparent disgust for her and her insistence that she really wants to marry the steadfast young man who currently seeks her hand.

The most complicated thing about Private Arrangements is the characters themselves, and in the grand tradition of Judith Ivory’s Black Silk, the trick is in making two somewhat selfish, conflicted, and difficult individuals fit in a successful romantic engagement. Gigi may have been humbled by Camden’s long-ago rejection of her, but she is still independent and intensely focused on her business pursuits. Camden claims disgust with Gigi, but he is clearly resentful of his own overwhelming feelings for her, something I suspect drove him powerfully in his original punishment. That he is so obviously still besotted makes me root for him over the perfectly lovely but even-tempered Freddie, but his persistent blindness to his own need for control (disguised as honor) makes me want to smack him upside the head. A man who would sit contentedly waiting for a beautiful but penniless girl to finally decide she wanted to marry him – when she could barely stand the most casual of human interactions, let alone intimate contact – is a man who strikes me as unsettled by some of the implications of his own passionate nature. I both love and hate this about Camden, because while it reveals the depth of that passion (and Gigi needs someone who can match her in this respect), it also demonstrates the stamina of his prideful idiocy (in sacrificing ten years of marriage all the while capitalizing on loans he received based on his marriage to Gigi).

As Gigi and Camden renew their attachment, the novel does slip into somewhat familiar Romance terrain, especially with Gigi’s martyred attempt at honor in choosing to go through with her engagement to Freddie despite Camden’s articulated desire to start their relationship over. It is the one move in the novel that feels artificial and somewhat inconsistent with the idea of honor Gigi claims for herself. Despite that stumble, though, the novel proceeds on the strength of these two flawed characters, the lack of technology facilitating quick remedies (this relationship could only proceed the way it did because there were no cell phones, rapid transit, and other innovations facilitating instant communication and connection), and a unique narrative voice.

Whether it’s the “defoliated willows,” that look “like naked old spinsters, all thin and droopy,” or “the somber melancholy of a high-born woman who could only afford to have a parlor maid come in every other day, who moved in the dark after sunset to save on candle wax,” there is a lean elegance to the prose. Gigi’s passion for Camden is expressed as much in the way she long ago designed her home to reflect his tastes as it is in the repeated attempts she makes to win his affection back after he abandons her. Camden’s sensitivity is expressed in the youthful gift he makes to Gigi of a Corgi puppy named Croseus (knowing how much she wants one) and in his effort (he’s a mechanical engineer) to make his sister a ball gown during the lean family times before he meets Gigi. There is an incredible amount of detail furnished in the prose – the way the rooms and the clothing looks, the smells and sights of the various settings — and yet it is not overly ornate or excessive, and the nuances of the characters are communicated indirectly. The sensuality, while not expressed with clinical exactitude, is potent and abiding.

Despite the faltering of the later part of the book, the unexpected romance between Gigi’s hard-edged mother and the reclusive Duke down the road buoys this section of the novel, largely because Victoria Rowland is just as eccentric as her daughter, and the reluctant Duke just as enigmatically aloof as Camden, providing a lovely mirror for that other very complex pairing. The relationship humanizes Victoria in ways that finalize her status as more than a genre-element (the scheming mamma against whom the romantic daughter must rebel, blah, blah, blah) and provides a much-needed respite from the inanity plaguing Gigi and Camden’s relationship at that point in the book. Plus it’s great fun to watch Victoria struggle to maintain her famous composure (the scene with the kitten was wonderfully rendered and skillfully revisited later). With Gigi and Camden almost fully revealed by this point in the book, the parallel unveiling of Victoria as so much more than the scheming mother reminds us that every character has the potential to be an interesting person in the hands of someone who cares and is interested in crafting them as such.

Private Arrangements is not a perfect novel. I felt at times that the passion between Gigi and Camden was more prominent than their emotional connection, especially during their reconciliation. I was a bit surprised at Camden’s insistent disgust with Gigi given what we eventually find out about his actions in Copenhagen several years earlier (although I can chalk it up to his incredible sense of pride). And of course there is the later relationship conflict, which arrives as a dull thud in an otherwise delicate production. But the book has so many moments that struck a perfect pitch for me that the overall effect is really sublime, and the wonderfully romantic ending reminded me fondly of one of the final scenes in Black Silk, making me aware of how often I ignore or forget the endings of Romance novels. In this book, though, the ending was vivid and reflective of the very best in these two colorful characters. Overall, I feel that the strengths of Private Arrangements are strengths of talent and craftsmanship and will therefore persist across books. The particular strengths of this one make it difficult for me to grade it less than an A-.

~ Janet

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

My First Sale by Sherry Thomas: Love in the Ruins of Home Improvement

Jane — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:00:04 +0000

Sherry Thomas came to my attention last year when the buzz began about her remarkable debut novel. I had the pleasure of meeting her at RWA in Dallas. Her writing is big and exuberant and I find her a welcome addition to our romance genre family. I hope you all check her out for yourself. You can read an excerpt of Private Arrangements on her website.

If you won a book in the contest that we ran, I had a delay in getting the books out but I did mail them priority mail. I am so sorry about the delay though.

This is Thomas’ promotional book trailer. You have to wait for the credits.

***

In a way, Private Arrangements is my first story. It started all the way back in 1998, when I was a young, overwhelmed stay-at-home mother. One day, during my son’s nap time, I read a new book by an old favorite author. I hated the book–it was beyond stupid. And the thought popped into my head that surely I could write a better book than that.

I became excited about the idea. I did have a college degree, but it was in one of those useless fields (economics, pah) that needed a graduate degree, preferably a Ph.D., to be of any cash flow value. The costs of my working outside the home-’childcare, professional wardrobe, additional taxes-’almost negated the economic benefits of doing so. But but but, if I could write romance novels sitting at home and make a little money doing it, it would be the perfect solution for me.

(Yeah, you read it right. I would fall in love with writing later but I’d started solely for monetary reasons. And no, I’d never had any prior fiction writing instruction or experience. Ah, the naive arrogance of the young.)

Now I had the gleam in my eye, but no concrete story. All the historical romances I’d read up to that point always either had an epic storyline, Ã la Rosemary Rogers, or some sort of murder, intrigue, or suspense. And plotting, I knew from the very beginning, was not my strong suit.

Then came that fortuitous moment in a Barnes & Noble. I picked up my first Susan Johnson book, and not just any Susan Johnson book, but Wicked, which, after the initial setup, was almost entirely sex. I love the book and I absolutely adored the fact that it had very little external plot. I could do that, I thought.

(I was so influenced by Susan Johnson in those early days that the first version of Private Arrangements had an onscreen love scene between the hero and another woman-’which was often the way we were introduced to a Susan Johnson hero.)

Not sure at what precise moment the bones of PA coalesced out of the chaos: that of a young woman whose marriage was doomed when she decided to have the young man she adored by means fair or foul. But I do remember that I wanted something different. I’d read a lot of historical romances in which the hero believed the heroine to have done something awful when she was as innocent as a daisy. What if she really did do something beyond the pale, then what would happen?

I finished writing that first version in the summer of 2000. Right away I consulted Publisher’s Marketplace and sent off queries to some of NYC’s finest literary representatives. Nobody wanted it, though one agent did very nicely call me and tell me that I had talent, but she wouldn’t be able to sell the story as it was.

Fast forward to August of 2005, not the most spirited time in my long slog toward publication. I’d finished several more manuscripts and grown gray and sere waiting for The Call. Okay, maybe not quite. But the failure of my epic martial arts action adventure love story to win agents and influence editors did deal a heavy blow. I was still writing, having gone back to my romance roots and started a couple of new manuscripts, but in each of those new manuscripts I’d also come to a point where I wasn’t sure what to do anymore.

That was when the home improvement started. We had relatives coming from overseas to visit. Our house was twenty years old and criminally neglected during our six-year tenure, and we couldn’t possibly welcome esteemed guests with the abode in such obvious dilapidation.

To this day I don’t know why we decided to paint the walls and change the floors ourselves. I’m handy enough, but there was just so much work, I was in a state of fatigue-induced despair, certain the work would never, ever be finished. In the midst of all this, trying to make room in the mess, I moved some papers and came across a hard copy of Private Arrangements, which had been quietly feeding bookworms in a cardboard box for five years-’incomplete on top of it, because often when I needed to print something, I’d pull a page out and use the back side of the paper.

(I owe DA favorite Kathleen O’Reilly a big thank-you here. I run an entirely paperless operation; I never, ever print out any of my manuscripts. Through various computer upheavals, I’d lost the e-files for PA. And the hard copy existed solely because Kathleen, who still lived in Austin in 2000, had kindly read it for a critique.)

I thought I’d turned my back on PA forever. I certainly had no intention of ever resurrecting a crappy first manuscript. But for some reason, on that crazy-busy, dead-tired day, I sat down on the carpet, read a few pages, and then a few more. Something struck me. Awkward execution aside, I was still as taken as ever with the fundamental story itself, that of a terrible decision and its aftermath.

I started banging out a new version even before we finished the home improvement (the colors we’d picked for the walls, as it turned out, were so awesomely ugly that we had to have it professionally repainted a year later). I chucked everything from the original manuscript, except the names of the characters and their basic backgrounds, moved the time period sixty years to the turn-of-the-century, and re-built the story from scratch. No more long road trip through Austria that was nothing but me scratching my "Sound of Music" itch. No more coincidental reunion of the hero and heroine-’this time she files for divorce to marry a nice younger man, and he descends in a fell swoop and sneers "not so fast, bitch." Well, you get my drift.

As I worked on the new version, I geared up for my third round of agent search. This time I wanted a newer, hungrier agent. Kristin Nelson had been on my radar for a while, because she represents SF romance-’which I’ve always wanted to write but which a lot of romance agents don’t do. Then I discovered Miss Snark. And Miss Snark couldn’t say enough good things about Ms. Nelson. From a practical standpoint, not only did Kristin take e-queries-’less postage, woot!-’but she did not require a synopsis at any stage of the query process. For someone who hates synopsis writing with the passion of a thousand suns, that really clinched the deal for me. She was my dream agent, and I would not query anyone else until she’d turned me down.

I sent off my e-query to Kristin on April 19, 2006. The book wasn’t yet complete at that point. That’s usually a no-no, but I needed a sense of urgency to finish the damn story: I’d hit a slump, and I was due back in grad school in July-’my second child would start kindergarten in the fall and I figured it was high time for me to get a useful degree and contribute to the family coffer.

(A big heartfelt smooch to my husband, who never, ever, not once asked me to get off my butt and do something more remunerative in the eight years leading up to that first contract, not even when the economy was scary and he really would have appreciated the security of a second income.)

The request for a partial came three weeks later. I don’t know when the full request came-’accidentally deleted that e-mail in all the excitement-’but I remember that for once my steady nerves failed me and I had my husband read the e-mail for me to see whether it was a full request or a "Thank you but no thank you."

It was a full request. And the manuscript was still unfinished. I went into a writing frenzy.

On Monday June 19, I sent off the full manuscript–as an e-mail attachment, per Kristin’s instruction. I settled down to wait that six to eight weeks it usually took to hear back on a full–and finally composed the official good-bye letter to my former agent, from whom I hadn’t heard in two-and-half years.

The certified termination letter went out on Friday June 23. The next day, I took the elder kidlet to Lowe’s to buy some timber. I’d been reading about Square Foot Gardening, which required some box-building. And as brown as my thumb was, I was enthused enough to give it a try.

My cell phone rang just as I arrived home. It was Kristin Nelson, who’d read and loved the story, calling to offer representation. I think I blurted out, "Omigod, I just hauled home a load of timber."

She laughed and asked if it was some Texas thing. I probably bleated some more nonsense before we got around to the important things. She sent an editorial letter. I revised the manuscript and sent it back just before I started my classes on July 10th.

Kristin sent the manuscript out on submission on Tuesday July 11. I think my stars were aligned for that month, for two days later we had our first firm offer. This led to an accelerated process whereby Kristin called all the other editors who had the manuscript and told them to read fast and get back to her by the following Monday.

She e-mailed me the next Monday-’she’d called but I abandoned my cell phone home most days-’and let me know that there were five houses interested in PA. The next day I took my cell phone to school, set it to vibrate, and left it on my desk. As soon as it buzzed, I rushed out of the classroom.

We had a very strong pre-empt from Bantam. Kristin was thrilled. She decided to ask for some more dough. I was still in a daze from when the first offer came. I went home and talked to my husband. Over the years, I’d always hoped that I’d one day get the Madeline Hunter treatment: She was brought out beautifully by a skillful and supportive publisher. And lo and behold, the publisher name I see on the spine of my copy of By Arrangement that I held up to show Dear Hubby was none other than-’you guessed it-’Bantam. It was meant to be.

Next morning Kristin called. Bantam had agreed to her terms and we had ourselves a deal. Since then, I have most definitely received the Madeline Hunter treatment, from the beautiful covers, to the lavish ARCs distributed at RWA Dallas, to the bookseller outreach on behalf of Private Arrangements.

This piece is written before PA releases, so I don’t know yet how well it will do in the marketplace. But what a ride it has been. I will always be grateful to Kristin and Caitlin Alexander, my editor and fairy godmother at Bantam, for taking such good care of me and I hope to work with them, in joy and pleasure, for many years to come.

(The timber, however, is still languishing in the garage.)

REVIEW: Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas

Jane — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:00:28 +0000

Dear Ms. Thomas:

I first learned about you when Sybil sent me a link to your excerpt (this is a link to your blog because your website? It is gone!). It was enticing but your book wasn’t due out for months and months so I tried to put it out of my mind. But then my friend, Janine, mentioned that she was your critique partner and that she loved your book and maybe she could wheedle a copy out of you to read.

As you know, I stayed up late to read it. As is my normal course when I love a book, I begin emailing everyone I can to share the love which, in the case of early books, is like the author. I remember that I read this into the early morning hours and even forgot to set up a post for the blog for the morning.

Gigi is a very rich young girl who wants to marry well. Through a series of incidents, Camden Saybrook becomes Marquis of Tremaine. Camden has promised himself to a distant cousin, Theodora Von Schweppenburg. Gigi sets her sights on Camden because he is not only the heir to a dukedom but he is someone she is fiercely attracted to. Gigi is drawn to Camden’s decency and intelligence. Camden to Gigi’s vibrancy and lust for life.

These two are very young and act their age, meaning often impetuously and without thinking. Gigi schemes to get Camden to marry her. Camden finds out about her deceit and is devastated. This leads to years of separation.

Camden returns ten years later to respond to Gigi’s demand for a divorce. He agrees to the divorce on the condition she try for one year to give him an heir. It is fairly common trope in romance but the uniqueness is that Camden’s desire for reconciliation is transparent to the reader as is Gigi’s own feelings even though neither would admit it. Why else would Camden demand conjugal rights. Why else is Gigi’s home decorated in exactly the way Camden had dreamed as a young man it would be down to the very last Monet painting. Oh, the literary irony.

The backstory, or the years of separation, is told in flashback so that we do not have extended periods of time while the characters are apart on the pages. The reworking of the reunited lovers theme in this book was masterfully done. The flashbacks added depth and poignancy to Camden and Gigi’s past. It showed that neither had really given up their love for the other even if that love became deeply suppressed in their subconscious. The backstory showed real growth of the characters, their flaws, their strengths, and truly embodies the romance genre concept that true love conquers all.

The use of language in the book is wonderful as it helps to set the stage both in dialogue and description. Take, for example, this parry between Camden and Gigi when Camden returns to England to exercise his conjugal rights.

“You have a choice,” he said amicably.”We can resolve it privately.Or we can have sworn testimonies from these gentlemen.You know every word they utter would be in all the papers.”

She blanched.Freddie was her very own human miracle, steadfast and loyal, loving her enough to willingly take part in all the hassle and ugliness of a divorce.But would he still love her when all her former lovers had testified to their affairs on public record?

“Why are you doing this?”Her voice rose.She took a deep breath to calm herself.Any emotion she displayed before Tremaine was a show of weakness.”I had my solicitors send you a dozen letters.You never responded.We could have had this marriage annulled with some dignity, without having to go through this circus.”

“And here I thought my lack of response adequately conveyed what I thought of your idea.”

“I offered you one hundred thousand pounds!”

“I’m worth twenty times that.But even if I hadn’t a sou, that’s not quite enough for me to stand before Her Majesty’s magistrate and swear that I’d never touched you.We both know perfectly well that I shagged you to a fare-thee-well.”

I loved the frankness, the rawness of language that was used combined with the elegance or almost poetic phrasing. “I…wasted a river of sperm masturbating to these fantasies.” Then there is the description of Camden’s early response to Gigi and his struggle with his honor:

He’d turned down every last one of those offers, with tact and dignity when possible, and ingenuity otherwise.A man of honor did not profess love for one woman while welcoming a host of others into his bed.

It wasn’t easy, but it was doable.Being busy helped.Having no moral or philosophical opposition to solitary releases helped.Immersing himself in his chosen field helped–thermodynamic equations and advanced calculus tended to keep one’s mind off breasts and buttocks.

But nothing helped now.He was busy all day long, seeing to the beast of an estate that was Twelve Pillars, yet thoughts of Miss Rowland clamored every other minute.Whatever he did in the privacy of his bedchamber only created more fantasies of her to agitate him the next day.Thoughts of her breasts and buttocks–not to mention her morosely hungry eyes and her heavy, cool spill of hair– rendered him slow and bungling before simple quadratic equations, and utterly impotent in the face of integrals of logarithms.

And yet if it were only a case of simple, rampant lust.That would be perfectly understandable in the case of a young man of robust appetites who stubbornly refused to surrender his virginity.But he wanted more than just to touch her.He wanted to know her.

The book stumbled for me toward the last third when I felt the conflict between Gigi and Camden was artificially extended. But because I was so invested by this time in Gigi and Camden’s journey, I could not stop reading even though I questioned the why of the situation. I suppose you could make the argument that this conflict was borne, in part, out of the fears which were fostered by the long separation.

There was an interesting dichotomy that was used with a sort of mirroring effect (probably a literary term for this, but I don’t know what it is). In their youth, Gigi played the hubris role and Camden the honor. In the 10 year reconciliation, Camden seemed to be the one to act with hubris and Gigi, with honor, because was it really honorable for Camden to act as he did, to continually punish Gigi for making him fall in love with her? And wasn’t honorable for Gigi to push for a divorce and reclaim a life with one she thought she loved. And it seemed hubris on Camden’s part to push for an heir, to exercise his long dead conjugal rights. I thought that role reversal; the power struggle was uniquely played out.

I appreciated particularly that you made great use of the late 1900s 1800s, a time of incredible change in both the fledling America and within Great Britian. At times I had to keep reminding myself of the period of the book because I have been so steeped in regencies that some of the phrases sounded modern. (There was a reference to the Statute of Liberty and in googling, I realized that the Statute of Liberty was indeed given by France in 1885).

When I think about the story, I think most about the ending which was glorious. It was big, dramatic, and romantic. And I think it serves as emblematic for the entire story. There is a sense of grandness in the language, the setting, and the way that the story is told. In some sense, it is a true retro (meaning a revisiting of the past) romance because it brings to bring to mind the big grandiose romances of the past. Gigi and Camden are very passionate people and their gestures are big, particularly in their devises to get what they want out of life.

I am excited about the state of historicals because if this is the type of story that we readers can expect on a regular basis, the historical may once again be the queen of romances. (If you can’t tell, historicals are my favorite romance sub genre).

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market on March 25, 2008. I assume that there will be an ebook version.

***

In the first of what will be a big giveaway month here at Dear Author, I am early blogging about this book because the publisher is graciously giving us 20! early copies of this book to be shared with the Dear Author readership. The catch is that you must post about the book at some public place, whether it is a message board, forum or blog and you must send me the link. We’ll choose one review to repost at Dear Author on the day of the release of the book. This contest will run until Friday, 12 am CST, and any commenter who leaves a comment to this review will be considered in a random drawing.

Edited to add: When I say “post about the book”, I mean just a post that I read this book and I liked it, I didn’t like it, it’s coming out March 25, 2008. No need for a formal review or anything like that.

GUEST REVIEW: Ember and Like a Thief by Bettie Sharpe

Guest Reviewer — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:00:49 +0000

This special guest review is from author Sherry Thomas. You’ll want to read the entire thing down to the end because Sherry and I are sponsoring a pay it forward Bettie Sharpe giveaway. You see, Bettie Sharpe gave away a fantastic retelling of the Cinderella story. Only we got it in drips and drabs, one installment a week on the blog of Dionne Galace.

But it was so good that I think everyone was salivating for Bettie’s release from Samhain. I suspect that Bettie is bound for New York. You heard it here first. (okay, maybe not here first since I think any number of people said that on Dionne’s blog).

***

Dear Ms. Sharpe,

Brace yourself. I’m going to French-kiss you-’I’m talking about serious, messy, slobbering tonguing-’and I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop at just that.

I’ve railed on my blog that although romance is largely a genre by women for women, there is a lack of memorable heroines that almost rivals that of Hollywood action flicks. This is, of course, one picky woman’s opinion. But I don’t think I’m at all alone in it. Romance, in its current state, is men-centered, full of matches between larger-than-life heroes and very nice but no-more-than-life-size heroines.

While I can enjoy that match-up as well as anyone, being a very nice, no-more-than-life-sized suburban soccer mom in real life, I’ve come to realize that deep in my heart, I don’t want to be a good girl and never have. My fantasy is to be the baddest motherfucking woman that ever lived, like Queen Elizabeth I, a woman who wields tremendous power with ease and surety and harshness when necessary, and who yet is respected, admired, and even loved. And if QE1 had had a worthy man to warm her bed nightly, why then, the fantasy would be complete.

You write my fantasies–my complete fantasies.

There is no other way to put it. I don’t know how you do it. It is as if you heard all the vague moaning and rattling in my head, laughed, and said "No, sweetie, pie, this is what you fucking want."

And like the limp and sore but oh-so-happy heroine in a ménage story who’d just experienced the man-sandwich for the very first time, all I can say is, "Fuck me again, Bettie."

Oh, I guess readers would want a synopsis or two here. This is Bettie’s own introduction to Ember.

Everyone loves Prince Charming. They have to-’he’s cursed. Every man must respect him. Every woman must desire him. One look, and all is lost.

Ember would rather carve out a piece of her soul than be enslaved by passions not her own. She turns to the dark arts to save her heart and becomes the one woman in the kingdom able to resist the Prince’s Charm.

Poor girl. If Ember had spent less time studying magic and more time studying human nature, she might have guessed that a man who gets everything and everyone he wants will come to want the one woman he cannot have.

Charm is a curse. Love is a fire. This story is no fairytale.

Ember is Tanith Lee on acid. It’s the bestest, baddest take on the Cinderella story and turns every last familiar element on its head with a "Ha!" and a fuck-you. One of my favorite such moments happens at the meeting of Ember and the Stepmother.

She paused when she saw me, and I couldn’t blame her. I knew what I looked like-’my cold expression, my red hair and freckled skin, my angry black eyes smoldering like hot coals. Her eyes flicked to the torches flanking our door, noting, I am sure, the way the flames yearned toward me though the wind urged them in the opposite direction.

Her face tightened beneath its faÃ§ade of paint. Her white-powdered hand wavered on the verge of greeting me. In that moment, she realized my father’s tales of an innocent, biddable daughter were spun from the same wishful imagination that had let him believe her to be a noblewoman, and to believe the two hard-eyed whores (scarcely a decade her junior) who peered out of the carriage behind her were her daughters.

"Step-mamÃ¡!" I greeted her, taking her shoulders and kissing her powdered cheeks.

My lips came away white with a mixture of lead and lard, but it was worth it for the expression of surprise that crossed her face. When my father wasn’t looking, I wiped my mouth on the cuff of my velvet sleeve.

And it gets even better when the Stepmother and the Stepsisters, frightened of Ember’s power, tells her they would leave.

"Leave?" I said. "But my father needs a wife. The Old Wives say sheep dogs are descended from wolves, and the best thief takers were once thieves, themselves. You know how gullible my father can be, for you gulled him. Who better to look after him than one who knows his weaknesses?"

My new stepmother opened her mouth to protest, but the fire flared in anger at her interruption. She snapped her jaw closed and let me speak.

"Sylvia’s potion must be made and taken by the month. The price of my help, dear Stepmother, is that you stay."

"But I saw your sour face at the sight of us. You don’t like courtesans."

I laughed and every flame in the room danced with joy at the sound of it. "You mistake me, Sister. Whores are the better part of my business. A witch who shuns the custom of whores and courtesans will be a pauper. No. I dislike liars and cheats. I dislike deceivers and dissemblers.

"Now that the air is clear between us, I like you just fine. My father needs a wife, and as long as you care for him and do not cuckold him with other men, we shall get along as well as he imagined."

As I had predicted, we got along quite well.

Ember is a witch, not a nice one, but a true one, with a fundamental sense of fairness you could only hope that anyone wielding a large amount of power would possess. She is what she is, she loves as she is, and her love is as full of flaws and fascinating and dangerous as herself. She is, without a doubt, one of the best heroines (protagonists) I’ve ever read, anywhere. And the prince, he is every asshole Prince Charming you’ve ever wanted to bring to heel, and then some. And he comes to heel in the most satisfying way here.

And by the way, Ember is a free story. It was first serialized at Bam’s blog. And now available to be read online or downloaded in pdf at your website. How can anyone beat that?. An A+, for the orgasmic reading experience it was.

Like a Thief in the Night is not free, but that’s fine. I was very happy to pay my $3.50 ($3.15 in fact) for it, so as not have to go through ten long weeks, counting down the days till the next Thursday to read the next installment.

The blurb:

She’s a heartless assassin; he’s an immortal thief. In another life, they would have been lovers. In this one, he’s her target and she’s his prize.

Somebody would have a fit reading this story. It’s sex, violence, more sex, more violence, even more sex, and even more violence. And such language as would have fainted an entire population of Victorian ladies and exhausted the world’s supply of smelling salt. In Ember, the word "cunt" was thrown about like firecrackers at Chinese New Year. In Thief, you even used the word "twat". I believe I choked on my dinner at that and read on with even greater glee.

I love that Arden is a heartless assassin, truly a bad, bad, bad girl–and omg she likes sex too, looks for it, in fact, when she’s not killing. And I love that she’s finally come up against a man she can’t kill. And he’s caught her and is holding her in a super-secret, super-inescapable location. Mandatory sex, anyone?

I love the way Arden sees herself.

And how screwed up was she to check out the man who had stripped her naked and tied her to a chair in his basement? The answer to that question was all too obvious. She killed people for a living; she was a very sick girl. She would just have to add this newfound taste for high-stake bondage to her already long list of kinks.

And does she have kinks ever. Let me just say that though I’m not such an innocent girl at heart, this story had a good several "Holy shit!" moments for me, as in "I can’t fucking believe Bettie Sharpe wrote that"-’but in a good way, cuz I am obviously developing a taste for kink and sick and all that good shit.

Oh, and did I mention that it’s a pretty decent love story too?

Is it perfect? No. I would have liked for you to have explored the relationship more at length. And I thought the SF/fantasy aspects were slightly pat, in the sense that they made things too easy for our protagonists at certain points. But perfection is such a pale, silly standard before the force and vitality of your writing. A-

Your talent burns like a star gone supernova. I love your lean, potent prose. I love your bad-to-the-core and yet still-worth-loving characters. And I love your take-no-prisoner voice.

And I love how I feel when I read you: like someone finally understands me, understands the rotten, crazy, bad, bad, bad girl that I am at heart and loves me all the same. The. Best. Fantasy. EVA!

And because I love it so, and because you first instilled the idea of pay-it-forward in me, I’m going to buy three more copies of Like a Thief in the Night and give them away to three commenters to this post. Jane’s Note: I liked this book too and would be willing to chip in 3 more books

Let the fun begin. And I look forward to a long, and illustrious career from you, young lady.

Sincerely,

Sherry Thomas

P.S. And I just love that my spellchecker had no suggestions to offer when it came to the word "motherfucking".

Very Important Notice: I would like readers of this blog to know that my normal writing voice is as serene, radiant, and unsullied as a Renaissance Madonna. The tone of this post is entirely Bettie Sharpe’s corrupt influence. Oh, fuck me again already, Bettie.

DUELING REVIEW: Black Ice by Anne Stuart

Janine — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 09:00:50 +0000

Dear Ms. Stuart,

Black Ice is my favorite of all your books — the ones I’ve read, that is. You have a huge backlist and I have not come anywhere near reading them all, but I’ve read several of your most popular titles, including A Rose at Midnight, To Love a Dark Lord, Moonrise, Nightfall, Ritual Sins, three more books in your Ice series and others as well. I have enjoyed some of them more than others, but not until Black Ice came along did one of them blow me out of the water.

Twenty-three year old Chloe Underwood is a translator of children’s books living in Paris and longing for a little more sex and violence in her reading material. Little does Chloe know that she’s about to get more of both, but it won’t be in the pages of a book.

Chloe’s British roommate Sylvia is a fellow translator who had lined up a side job for herself, translating for some business people over the weekend in a chateau. At the last minute, Sylvia’s wealthy lover invites her to spend the weekend in his company. Sylvia’s dearest hope is to marry for money, but in the meantime, she can’t afford to lose her job. So Sylvia pleads with Chloe to take the weekend translating gig in her place, and Chloe reluctantly agrees. When a limo comes to pick up Sylvia, Chloe, with a suitcase full of Sylvia’s glamorous clothes, gets into it, little realizing the impact this action will have on her life.

Meanwhile, an operative whose real name is not revealed until later in the book has spent over two years establishing an identity as an arms dealer named Bastien Toussaint. Bastien, as he is referred to, works for a shadowy organization known as the Committee. At the Committee’s behest, Bastien has infiltrated an international cartel of arms dealers — the business people Chloe will be translating for. Bastien is ruthless enough that he will do whatever the job requires of him, or so he believes.

When Chloe arrives at the chateau, she makes the mistake of letting the cartel members, who claim to be food importers, believe that she speaks only French and English. In reality, she knows several other languages as well, and can understand them when they speak Italian or German. Bastien quickly deduces this, and also notices that Chloe’s clothes don’t fit her that well. The two things make him suspect her of being an operative sent to the meeting to kill someone — perhaps even himself.

Chloe, of course, is entirely innocent, but she is still in grave danger. Gradually the members of the cartel grow more suspicious of her, and they have no compunction about killing her. Chloe can feel menace emanating from some of the cartel members, but the situation she is in is so outlandish that rather than trust her nagging instincts, she tells herself that she is being paranoid.

The organization Bastien works for, though purportedly in business to save the world, is as ruthless and brutal as it needs to be in pursuit of that goal. And though Bastien believes he is every inch the bastard he needs to be to get that job done, his thoughts from his very first appearance in the book reveal that he is not quite as sanguine about every aspect of that job as the Committee expects him to be.

Pondering the fact that chateau staff members are carrying semiautomatics under their loose clothing that may very well be weapons that he himself provided, Bastien thinks that “It would be damned funny if one of them killed him.” Later on, speculating about Chloe’s purpose in coming to the chateau, he muses:

Had she come for him, or for someone else? Was the Committee checking up on his performance? It was always possible — he hadn’t bothered to hide the fact that he was weary beyond belief, no longer giving a damn. Life or death seemed minor distinctions to him, but once you went to work for the Committee they never let you go. He’d be killed, and probably sooner rather than later. Mademoiselle Underwood, with her shy eyes and soft mouth, might be just the one to do it.

And there was only one question. Would he let her?

Those are the earliest, but by no means the last, signs that Bastien has a death wish. After years of performing his job superbly, he is starting to get erratic.

Since he is playing the role of a married womanizer, Bastien can act on the attraction between Chloe and himself. He comes on to her and suggests that they have sex, but Chloe, conscious of his wedding ring as well as feeling that he is out of her league, declines.

Eventually the other cartel members become suspicious enough of Chloe that Bastien is expected to interrogate her, find out how much she knows, and then either kill her or allow another of them to do so. And so Bastien is faced with a choice — to continue taking lives in the name of saving the world, or to save one life, Chloe’s, and in doing so, save what’s left of his own soul.

Bastien makes his choice, but not before Chloe suffers at his hands, so that by the time he rescues her and they go on the run, Chloe hates and distrusts him. Eventually she realizes that her life depends on Bastien and his proficiency at the very skills that disturb her so much. She must grapple with just how much to trust someone that has done the things Bastien has done, and with what else she might be feeling for him.

Black Ice is not a perfect book; for one thing, there are some annoying discrepancies, such as the fact that Bastien’s age is given as both 32 and 34, and his aunt’s name is first referred to as Celeste and then as Cecile. Contradictory information is also given about the location of Chloe’s passport.

Also, even after six or seven readings, I’m still not clear on why the cartel members would want to bring in an outside translator rather than training one of their trusted employees to do that job. If they had a good reason for that, I think it should have been provided in the book.

But there is so much that I love about this novel. One of the wonderful things about Black Ice is that it isn’t just a book with a dark hero, it’s a book with a dark world; many of the secondary characters are violent or corrupt, to such a degree that reading it is like entering another dimension. I loved that world because it created countless moral ambiguities and dilemmas for the main characters.

There’s some wonderful dialogue in the book, and one of my favorite bits comes when Chloe figures out that Bastien is not who he claims to be:

She stared at him, a cold, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Can you tell me one thing? Are you part of the good guys or the bad guys?”

“Trust me,” he said wearily, “there’s not much difference.”

This little exchange encapsulates one of the things I love so much about the book: that though very violent, it is also about how violence can, after a while, make us not as different from those we fight as we want to be. In the process of battling ruthless killers with violence, Bastien and his organization became ruthless too, until they were little better from those they wanted to save the world from.

I love the moral complexity of that, and of the fact that rather than idealizing people in violent professions in this book, you made me question the heavy cost of collateral damage, the morality of the people who accept it as necessary, and even more so, the morality of our asking others to do that kind of dirty work for the rest of us.

I know that some readers, including my fellow blogger Jayne, feel that Chloe, in her innocence, is not a good match for Bastien, and on my first reading of Black Ice, I did feel that she wasn’t as interesting as she could have been. But since I still loved the book enough to read it several times after that (including three rereads right after I finished it), I’ve gotten to know Chloe better in my rereadings and come to like her very much just as she is.

I am now more in agreement with the writer of the Publisher’s Weekly starred review of this book, who described the characterization in Black Ice as brilliant. I feel that Chloe’s innocence serves an important function; her reactions to the shocking violence that unfolds around her reminds the reader that violence should shock us, that each individual life has a value. Whether death claims a friend, an enemy or a stranger, Chloe is shaken because she is sensitive to violence, and that serves to sensitize the reader, as well as the desensitized Bastien.

I also think that Janet, another of my fellow bloggers, was onto something when she once said that Chloe also serves as a mirror that reflects Bastien’s long-suppressed desires and that she therefore has to be neutral, or in her case, clueless. I agree with that; I think that Bastien’s questioning of whether Chloe is innocent or deadly may be his way of examining himself. As Janet said, it’s his own degraded self that Bastien sees when he discovers Chloe’s innocence, and that is what prompts him to act to save her.

Third, there is also a normalcy to Chloe that, in the midst of all the surreal violence, grounds the story. A heroine whose personality and background was more like Bastien’s would have made this book relentlessly dark, and would have deprived it of a window into the safe and secure world we all take for granted.

Chloe has some wonderful lines in the book, such as when she wonders if she is her growing attraction to Bastien is a sign of Stockholm Syndrome, when she compares Bastien to a highwayman in a poem, and when she thinks of Bastien that “He was a monster, not even human. But he was her monster, keeping her safe, and she was past the point of caring.”

The evolution of Chloe and Bastien’s relationship is fascinating because even as Bastien becomes less accepting of the world he inhabits and of the dark side of himself, Chloe, as she grows more familiar with the world in which Bastien lives, condemns him less and less.

Just as I love seeing Chloe contend with who Bastien is and what her attraction to him means, I love seeing Bastien struggle with Chloe’s growing importance to him. If Chloe serves as the book’s moral center, Bastien is on a kind of see-saw in his thoughts and emotions, alternating between wanting to save Chloe and wanting to stop feeling responsible for her so that he can get back to focusing on his job.

There’s a gap between the blunt way Bastien forces Chloe to confront certain unpleasant truths and even threatens her at times, and the way he protects her over and over that makes him absolutely fascinating to me. He is pulled in three different directions, one by his training to obey the Committee and his tendency to look out for his own skin, another by his weariness and his death wish, and a third by his need to for once save a life.

It’s this combination of ruthless competence, weary vulnerability, and the almost quixotic need to save one American girl that makes Bastien such a layered and complex character. His internal conflict works perfectly because in trying to get Chloe out of the cartel and the Committee’s reach, Bastien is trying to get himself out of their reach, too.

The emergence of love from such a place, and between two individuals who would normally never have sought each other out, is a big part of what makes this book so romantic to me. There are sections in the book, particularly in its final third, which are as moving as anything I’ve read in a romantic suspense. Bastien has a speech in one scene in a hotel that, coming from a man who is so emotionally shut down, has to go down as one of the most romantic speeches I’ve ever read.

I don’t want to close this review without saying a few words about how much I enjoyed the Paris setting (Why, or why, aren’t more contemporary romances set outside the United States?), the wonderful use of snow and ice both for atmosphere and as a kind of metaphor for death, and the lean, terse writing. I think that in this case the spare tone is perfect for such an action-driven story, and I love the way (especially evident in the chapter endings) you conjure a mood with so few words.

For me, Black Ice remains a bona fide keeper, and I give it an A.

Sincerely,

Janine

****

Dear Janine,

I know your tastes in books don’t precisely align with those of your blogging partners. However, they very much align with mine, sometimes to an amazing degree. We often love the same authors. And often, out of ten or fifteen books that a favorite author has written, we’d luurrve the exact same three or four.

You read more widely than I do, to my lasting benefit. Upon your recommendations I’ve discovered, with great joy, the books of Sharon Shinn and Shana AbÃƒÆ’Ã‚ ©. Megan Hart and Pam Rosenthal are on top of my TBR list because of your enthusiasm for them.

Yet once in a while, a book comes along that illustrates just how individual reading is, even for two people who come as close to being two peas in a pod as we do, in terms of what we demand and desire in a book. Four years ago, we had a passionate difference of opinion over Laura Kinsale’s Shadow Heart, an imperfect book that I loved deeply and that you, as much as you wanted to, didn’t.

This time, that book is Black Ice.

Having not the least compunction about setting a book aside as soon as my interest wanes for whatever reason, I start many more books than I finish. And usually, if I finish a book, it’s an automatic A–”it’s no mean feat holding my attention, as I’m both fastidious and lazy as a reader.

I finished Black Ice on the day I started it, but it’s not a keeper for me.

There is much to recommend. Stuart writes a muscular prose that is perfectly suited to her fast-paced, danger-laced story. You’d warned me that the first 100 pages or so might feel slow. They didn’t feel slow to me. The pace was tight. The scenes both illustrated character and propelled the story forward.

The background of the Committee and the cartel was sketchy. But hey, I adored Mr. and Mrs. Smith , so that didn’t bother me. Chloe was simply that girl at that place at that time. But that in itself didn’t bother me either–”I loved the romantic thread in The Bourne Identity in which the heroine was exactly that girl at that place at that time. It didn’t even bother me that Chloe was a sweet puppy of a heroine–”and I’ve spent most of my adult life writing various incarnations of the anti-heroine.

I agree that it is essential that Chloe be helpless and innocent, in order to trigger what remained of Bastien’s conscience, i.e., at this stage, Chloe is less a character than a plot device to tilt him over from mere weariness into action.

This is where my first problem came. I didn’t buy Bastien’s death wish. We were told about it–”in the paragraph you quoted in your review–”but I never felt it viscerally. Bastien had not messed up anything. He was doing everything he was supposed to. The impression I received was less a man who wanted to die than a man in need of a good, long vacation–”like how the accountant in me thinks longingly of the simple, concrete pleasures of 1065 tax returns when I couldn’t hack another day of character motivation. I would have been much better convinced had there first been a smaller crisis from which he pulled back and didn’t act and was psychologically devastated by it, thus precipitating his change of heart when faced with the next crisis, rather than have him jump in all of a sudden, when Chloe’s life was threatened.

Two, I wish I’d felt more of their initial attraction. For Chloe to be a catalyst on such a scale, I needed a lightning strike of an attraction, rather than the fairly typical one I got.

Three, while I support the theory that a darker heroine would not have worked here, couldn’t we at least have a stronger one, if not at the beginning, then by the end?

This book is overwhelmingly Bastien’s book, and I can understand that, because he is as dark, interesting, and layered a character as you said he is. But that Chloe is no match for him at all is something that does bother me. A lot.

I didn’t expect or need Chloe to turn into a kickass heroine. But I had to see a great deal more of gravitas and strength of character from her in order to believe that she could form the moral center of this relationship with this enormously complicated man. I needed to see not just tender care from Bastien’s part toward her, but respect, a ton of respect. And to believe Bastien would respect her, I had to respect her.

I liked Chloe, but my respect for her never rose above lukewarm, as she alternated between growing wiser and taking WTF action. And then, during the final confrontation, whenlargely because she was acting irrationally, he had to tie her up to shove her into a crawl space to save her, rather than tell her that was what she needs to do and trust that she was mature enough to understand that was the only way for her to be safe and for him to do his job in getting rid of the bad guys, I mentally bonked my forehead on the nearest sharp object and lost whatever respect I had for her and most of my belief that this relationship could work long-term.

I think this book would have worked better as an action movie where the romance takes a distant second place. Or, alternately–”because my heart is black and poison flows through my veins–”as a straight action/suspense novel in which either Bastien or Chloe dies. There would be great poignancy in Chloe’s death, as it is shown to Bastien the true cost of his life of massive amorality, not in that he cannot repent, but that the innocent ones he subsequently touches must pay the price for him. And if Bastien had died, then it would be sort of like Titanic. Chloe would go on and live a normal life, but she would always remember the mysterious, charismatic stranger who gave up his life for her and saved his own soul in the process.

As it is, I close the book not very convinced of their HEA, or even happily for a year. All the interactions between Chloe and Bastien had been driven by the adrenaline rush of life-or-death situations. Other than boinking, I cannot see the two of them do normal stuff together. And because the world Anne Stuart had created was so dark, I’m just about 100% sure that someone(s) would come for Bastien and/or Chloe. And if Jason Bourne couldn’t keep his girlfriend alive, well, what hope do the rest of us have?

Bastien is such a great character, and Stuart has crafted some truly touching moments in his unthawing, and in the primal way he both conquered and protected Chloe. But ultimately, I can delight in a hero only as far as I can admire the heroine. So in this case, my enjoyment of Bastien’s journey was marred by my frustration with Chloe. I would still recommend this book, with the caveat that readers who go into a homicidal rage at the sight of a weak heroine approach with caution.

B-. (I got this book at the library. Not sure how my feelings would change if I’d had to pay for it.)

But, dear Janine, although this particular recommendation didn’t hit the target, I would still go on trying other books that you recommend, and even part with cash for them. :)

Sincerely,

Sherry

This book can be purchased in mass market.