Heartless by Anne Stuart

June 22, 2018
Someone needs a copy editor
 
http://anne-stuart.com/
I try, I really, really try to ignore typos or the wrong word/s inserted into a sentence. You know the words I’m talking about, those words which are actually correct, but the author leaves a letter out, and of course the spell check will not catch it because – it’s not wrong. For instance, in this book, and I quote, “I doubt it would hock me.” Hock me? What does that mean? The heroine perchance has a side of pork attached to her leg? Or maybe she needs money. What I’m pretty sure was supposed to be there was the word “shock”. But ‘twas not. If this had only happened once I wouldn’t be whining, but it didn’t and even though I didn’t count the number of times this happened, it was distracting – and sloppy. Don’t get me wrong, there is a reason I don’t count the mistakes, or complain (too much). Editing is a very hard job. Your brain lies to you, it makes you see the words you want to see. No matter how hard you try, you can read and reread and then turn to your bestest buddy in the whole wide world and they will miss stuff. Even those bestest buddies who went to college and had high marks in grammar – you know who you are. So, I understand, I feel your pain. But I feel my pain also. It only added to my overall reaction to this book. After seven long years of waiting for the next installment of the Rohan family, Heartless had the earmarks of a rush job. The overall feeling of this being a rush job, or something that just had to be finished just because. Much as I was looking forward to this Rohan installment, I was disappointed by it. You know, I am always up for one of Ms. Stuart’s manly-men-Steve Morgan bonehead heroes, even when I don’t like them.

As I said earlier, it’s been seven years since we were last visited by the House of Rohan. And, that is a long time for anyone to remember who did what to whom. But, I’ve reread this series quite a bit, so I didn’t have to injure my little brain-box too much to refresh my memory. Captain Lord Brandon, one of the Rohan’s, was injured in one of the wars in Afghan. He was a mess; his face was half-way destroyed and he almost died from injuries. What that means to my little Petunia’s is that one side of his face is allllll scarred and the other side of his face is beautiful to look at. He is a I-only-have-half-a-face hero. Lucky for him, he was nursed back to health by Emma Cadbury. 

Now Emma Cadbury happens to have made an unusual career choice for a heroine. She was a prostitute who eventually became a madam. She was, of course, forced into that career. So, her past isn’t one which would be conducive to being a member of society. Anyway, Brandon and Emma become quite close during his recovery. They fall in love, but she knows it will never work, so she runs away. While she is hiding from him, Brandon’s family finds him and takes him home. Well, Brandon slides into a blue-funk, to put it mildly. If you read the previous book, you will know he turned to opium and a group of sadistic mad-men called the Heavenly Host. The story ended with the group being destroyed and Brandon fighting to join the world. He is in Scotland recovering. He also doesn’t quite remember Emma, but he knows that there is some kind of memory just beyond his reach – something hiding in the shadows waiting to be brought back to life. 

Three years later Emma is attending a baptism for the newest little Rohan and Brandon grumpily decides to journey from Scotland to attend. Because he doesn’t quite remember Emma, he is surprised when she tries to avoid him. Why is this strangely attractive woman trying to avoid him? And, thus begins the beginning of repeated maneuvers of him advancing and she retreating. She does a lot of retreating in this story. I lost track of the number of times she ran away from him. It was annoying. As you can imagine, Emma’s returns over and over again to the I'm-not-good-enough routine. Logically, being a prostitute, she probably wouldn’t be. But she was a nice prostitute. However, the poor me routine was constant, over and over, the neutrons in her brain cells kept turning – much like a hamster in a wheel. It was pretty tiresome. I’m not that stupid, you don’t have to beat me over the head to get the point across. I got it right away that she considered herself not good enough.  

The scene. For a lot of the book, I didn’t think Brandon was going to live up to the bad-boy temperament which Ms. Stuart endows her heroes – but he did. In their first sexual encounter, there can only be what I would call a forced seduction scene. She said no. I had a problem with this being included in the book. I was already having issues with this story, but this dropped the book down to a another level. Forced seduction is not seduction and definitely not romantic. It's a belittling of another person’s rights. I think the author should have taken a step back for a moment before she included this scene. While I am not a big fan of some romance author’s who are trying to make a political/religious statement or right some kind of world-wrong, I do think it is time the forced seduction in Romanceland was laid to rest. 

Anyway, once again I have to say I’m very disappointed by Heartless. I was so excited when I saw it was to be published. This story was not up to Ms. Stuarts normal standards. The pacing was off, there was pondering, pondering, pondering of the same thing over and over. It was filler. Maybe just too much time had passed between the previous book and this one. The story was rushed and had an incomplete atmosphere to it. Sorry to say, I cannot recommend Heartless. 

Time/Place: Georgian England
Sensuality:Warm/Hot/Disturbing

Too Wilde to Wed by Eloisa James

June 20, 2018
Sometimes things don't work if they don't make sense. 

http://www.eloisajames.com/
Well this is the second book in Eloisa James series about the Wilde family, and so far I’ve been disappointed. This is not up to par with a lot of Ms. James stories. I’m not sure if this one was rushed or if Ms. James was having trouble connecting the dots, but for me this story had a bit of a disjointed fill to it.

Ms. James is ending this particular series with “sort of” cliffhangers. Oh, don’t worry my little Petunias, she finishes the main story. It’s just that she tacks on a cliffhanger. So, in the last one the secondary character of North, aka Lord Roland, aka Lord Roland Northbridge, aka heir to a Dukedom, has been dumped by his fiancée Diane Belgrave. Well, in the end of that book we see North finding Diane hidden away at a cottage with a baby in her arms. 

This book picks up two years later and North is returning to England after two years fighting in the American Revolutionary War. Imagine his surprise when upon his arrival he finds Diane ensconced at his brother’s house as a governess to his half-sister Artemesia. Artemesia also happens to be one of those children who talks as if they are thirteen when in all actuality they are two years old. But the really big surprise is that Diane’s bastard child is also living with North’ family. But wait, there’s more!! Everyone thinks that the little boy, Godfrey, is North’s child. My mind did stumble a bit at this point. When we left the first story, I thought the baby in Diane’s arms was a leddle baby, brand new. But according to this book, he’s four. Wouldn’t North’s family know he wasn’t the father? Wouldn’t his friend’s know? Wouldn’t everyone in society know that Diane wasn’t evvvveeeer pregnant? Most women get a large protrusion.  Wouldn’t North know? Anyway, this part of the story didn’t make all that much sense to me – and that was just the beginning of a lot of things that didn’t blend together logically. 

Well North takes the whole society-you-got-a-kid thing rather well. He’s not really upset, just puzzled. He’s not really upset that Diane is living in his father’s house, just puzzled. He’s sort of a low-key kind of guy. Anyway, it isn’t long before North and Diane are communicating with each other. It isn’t long before they discover that they didn’t really know each other when they were engaged. They were both pretending to be other people – not “other people, other people”, but different personas. He was trying to be what everyone thought a future Duke should be and she was trying to be what she was told a Duchess should be. They were both pretending, and they were both very uncomfortable with the roles they were trying to take on. In the first part of the book we get to see them as they relearn each other and that was the nice part of the book. This part of the story was alllll about getting to know one another. Then Ms. James decided to throw some tension into the mix. The second part of the book was taken up mostly by a two year-old spouting wisdom, North proposing again and again and again and Diane turning him down again and again – at least when it came to becoming married. She didn’t have too much of a problem jumping into the sack with someone she wasn’t married to. Remember this is Georgian times, not the 21st century.

Here's the tension part. Diana has an aversion to being a Duchess. She has some idea she would not be qualified for it. She moans on and on about it. She doesn’t quite get the fact that if she was a Duchess, she could probably write her own rules. After numerous turn down of the North proposals she decides to strike out on her own. She has an idea, and it’s a doozy. She decides to take off and become a barmaid. Yes, you heard right. A barmaid. I admit, I had to lay the book down for that one. Nothing better than being a barmaid in Georgian England. I bet that would bring in some coin to help raise poor four year-old Godfrey. I was astounded that this was in the book, it was just so, I don’t know – silly. A barmaid. Yep, I want to work in a smelly, dangerous tavern in Georgian England because I am not fit to be a Duchess. 

But North saved her and they married and they went off to sunny Italy to not be a Duke or Duchess. I wasn’t really quite sure what was going on with the ending. 

To say that I’m disappointed in Too Wilde to Wed is an understatement. I admire Eloisa James; I love most of her books, but I’m not quite sure what the point of this one was. While it started out with a good idea, which might have been fun or romantic, it dissolved into odd pieces of things thrown together. There were things that didn’t make sense and a heroine who was just too juvenile for words. I can only hope the next Wilde book is better, or I might have to take a break from this series. 

Time/Place: Georgian England
Sensuality: Warm/Hot

Someone to Care by Mary Balogh

June 11, 2018
There is Life After Twenty

http://www.marybalogh.com/
One of the many reasons I'm such a big fan of Mary Balogh is that she explores themes which aren’t always the trendsetter of the day, then turn them into something delightfully refreshing.  As far as I’m concerned, Mary Balogh is the queen of writing intense feelings. Someone to Care not only has a couple in which the female lead is older, but both the main characters are older than 20, nay older than 30 – one of them is in their 40s! It was appealing not to have to read about a young woman just out of puberty.

Mary Balogh has also tackled characters which are not necessarily likeable. Both of them have a distinct edge. Sometimes Ms. Balogh succeeds with these edges and sometimes she doesn’t. In this case, I believe she has succeeded in treating us to a delightful story with a fascinating couple. I really enjoyed watching this couple maneuver through the obstacles presented to them as they marched to their well-deserved HEA.

If you are following Ms. Balogh’s latest series, you will recall Viola Kingsley, Countess of Riverdale isn’t really the countess. It seems her husband was actually married to someone else when he married her. So, not only did her world come crumbling down around her feet, her children became illegitimate. In this book MS Balogh’s breaks away from the younger characters and focuses on forty-two year old Viola.

Viola is not taking her new standing in society very well. Even though her entire family and her husband-not-husband's family have surrounded her with love and support, she has rejected them. She has hidden away from her loved ones in the country and now calls herself Viola Kingsley. It is at a joyful family gathering; a christening for her grandchild that panic-doom-boo-hoo sets in. She abruptly flees from her family. When she stops at an inn, she notices someone from her past, Marcel Lamarr, Marquess of Dorchester.

Marcel has rather a rakish reputation, and it’s a well-deserved reputation. He remembers Viola. When he was young, he tried to seduce Viola – she said no. He moved on, he married, became a father, then a widower, but he has never forgotten Viola. So, when he spots her at the same inn, an idea takes form. He has some family duties he is avoiding. He suggests to Viola that they just shuck it all and make a mad dash to his cottage, far, far, away from family, and the weight which is pressing down on both of them. Much to his surprise, she takes him up on it. And, soon Viola and Marcel are on a road trip, where they are free to indulge in their lustful feelings. Along the way they become friends, lovers, confidants, and uncover angst-filled pasts. Here’s the thinking on their plan: what do they have to lose? They’re adults, they don’t have to answer to anyone. Who cares what they do? They can be irresponsible it they want to be, can’t they? Well the answer to that my little Petunia’s is no, they can’t be irresponsible.

While Marcel and Viola are traveling around, going to fairs, enjoying life and each other’s company both of their families are barreling down the roads after them. This chase allows us to visit with some of the characters from the previous books. And, that was fine. The chase scenes with the other characters did not overwhelm the telling of Marcel and Viola’s story.

There is a scene in this story which might disturb some readers – spoiler. Marcel mentions numerous times in the book that he killed his first wife. Well, as we all know in Romanceland that doesn’t always mean anything. However, in this case he did. It was an accident. While some may consider him abusive, I didn't. There isn’t any mention anywhere in the entire book which would indicate he was a violent man. What he did was strike out while trying to save his child and his wife lost her balance. I believe he acted as any human would have acted while defending his child. And, there would have been plenty of angst and guilt he would have felt to be the cause of someones death. But is was an accident. When I read this story I saw no signs of abusive behavior, nor anything which would make him less of a hero. I just saw a man consumed with alllllll kinds of pain caused by a disaster beyond his control.

Overall, I do recommend this story. I loved the characters and was thrilled that at last we had some mature people to read about. Thank you Ms. Balogh.

Time/Place: Regency England
Sensuality:Warm/Hot