And then sometime things in storage just make you sneeze.
A long, long, long time ago I read a book. I'm sure you've all experience flitting memories of a scene or a plot, but you just can't remember what book they belong to. Now, I have been searching for a long time for a book and I could only remember the following things: it was an historical romance, the hero is disappointed in love and becomes very drunk. In his drunken state he marries a young woman he doesn't know at an inn. In the morning he awakes, assumes the woman is a prostitute, leaves some coin and returns home. Years later he is about to be married, when a woman shows up with his child, his signet ring and the marriage lines. And, that was all I remembered - not the author, the title or anything. Then just recently I came across a website which has plotlines of lots and lots of Regency romance books. Not only that, but they are categorized. Rubbing my chin I clicked on the "children" category and low and behold I found two books. Either could be the one I sought. The one was The Reluctant Heart (1994) by Lois Stewart and the other one was The Forgotten Bride (1983) by Lillian Marsh. I did a little bit of investigation into the authors, Lois Stewart, aka Diana Delmore, appears to have written between 1983-1996 and then nothing. Lillian Marsh appears to have written only two books and then nothing.
As it turned out the Lillian Marsh book was the one I had been remembering allll of those years. As it also turns out, I'm not sure why this book stuck in my memory because I really cannot recommend it. Everyone who reads a lot eventually has things which are called "pet peeves," things that irritate us, things that press our hot buttons. Over the years some of us have even compiled a list of these "things" (some of us make lists). I will not say much about the Lillian Marsh book except to say it had at least nine of my triggers whereas the book by Lois Stewart had only one of my triggers. After all those years, I found I cannot recommend either books.
Triggers, pet peeves in these two books:
"I’m not good enough" syndrome
All women are bad because of "her"
Hero not catching on to the really EVIL woman and sometimes totally overlooking the heroine because of it.
Long separations, and usually the hero has slept around and the heroine has not. Of course, there was never a woman quite like her...he really tried to forget her, but he couldn't.
Adultery.
Parading around an evil woman to make wife jealous.
Sleeping with other women to forget.
Overreacting, jealous.
Revenge.
Never able to forgive, no matter how nice the other person is.
See, not everything out of storage was a treasure.
Time/Place: Regency England
Sensuality: Pffffffft
No comments:
Post a Comment