Sometimes goddesses have a snafu or three
http://www.marybalogh.com/
As I mentioned before, my goddess Mary Balogh is in the process of releasing some of her old novels and novellas. I am over the moon about this, especially because this brings new
I like paranormal romance stories, I've been a big fan of them for a long time. I'm just not as obsessed with them as I am with historical romance. As with historical romance, I have created many rules my authors must abide by. Sure they don't know them, but it's my dime. Anyway, over the years I have adopted some rules paranormal romance books need to follow for me to enjoy them. One of the biggies is they have to make sense. Yes, yes, I know we are dealing with a world where the boundaries are pretty shaky and beliefs are stretched quite far. But the reasons for these far-fetched storylines/beliefs must make sense and loose ends have to be tied up. At least for me they do.
Let's start with The Dark Rider. This story has a bit of Gothic romance feel about it. You know the theme - a sweet nosy heroine, Dinah Ridding, visits a dark foreboding castle which is inhabited by an enigmatic, brooding hero, his secretive mother and creepy servants. Our hero, Edgar Neville, doesn't want the heroine at the castle because...???? He tries to get rid of her by telling Dinah ghosts stories. But Dinah wants to meet ghosts, explore the family portrait gallery and just suck up the scary atmosphere. She even spots the mysterious ghostly rider who amazingly looks a lot like our hero. This story might have worked if a big misunderstanding blow-up toward the end of the story hadn't been inserted. As a romance, this story didn't work and as a paranormal it was mediocre.
The second story is The North Tower. Probably when Ms. Balogh wrote this story she didn't know that the main device of this story is my least favorite paranormal theme - possession. Yes, as soon as our heroine, Daphne, enters the spooky castle she feels things. She's having a hard time sleeping at night because she's having vivid erotic dreams. Dear oh dear, those dreams seem so realistic - she keeps going into a door which isn't there anymore. Like all haunted heroines she starts snooping around and eventually solves an old murder. Spoiler - then we have the type of paranormal ending I haven't been fond of since the days of A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux - almost at the end of the story a guy shows up who looks exactly like the man Daphne has been snooking in her sleep ... and they live HEA.
The last story in the group, The Heirloom, is a time-travel-body-possession tale. I can be a little persnickety. Here’s the deal. I like time-travels, but not when they involve traveling back and landing in a body which doesn't belong to "moi." I have a reason for that, you know – I always wonder what’s happening to the soul who was kicked out, unless there are two in that body and that gets really confusing. So, where did that other soul go? How are they adapting? Are they still alive? It can be quite distracting. Well, this is a short story and all the way through my reading of this I was concerned whether Ms. Balogh’s would have enough time to tie up any loose ends. Well, she did tie it up. Spoiler, she sort of gave the historical couple a happy ending but then jumped to modern time and gave them their HEA. Giving two couples in a short story a HEA doesn’t leave much time for character development. I liked the historical couple and would have liked to see some kind of an epilogue for them, but was not to be. This story could have been better served if it had been in a longer format.
Bottom line, all the stories were weak, both the romance and paranormal theme. I’m glad Ms. Balogh doesn’t dabble in this genre very often.
Time/place: Regency England
Sensuality: Warm
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