A Genre Switch

I'm pretty much a life-long romance reader, but lately I find that I've grown rather tired of the books set in early 19th century England. (Basically a huge sub-genre in modern romance.) I used to love those books. But in the past few months I've passed on two new Mary Balogh books and a Julia Quinn book, authors who I used to count among my favorites. I've enjoyed discovering new authors like Tessa Dare, but all in all I'm tired of the English regency era novel.

After reading Sara Donati's Wilderness series, what I find myself really wanting to read are books set in America, especially the American west. For instance, I have gotten a little bored waiting for The Endless Forest and Insatiable to arrive, so I dug through storage for some of my old romance novels. My top choices were those classic Westerns from Elizabeth Lowell (Only His, Only Mine, Only You, Only Love, Autumn Lover, and Winter Fire). I've always loved that series. Another top choice was the Clayborne series from Julie Garwood (For the Roses, One Pink Rose, One White Rose, One Red Rose, and Come the Spring).

I wish I knew of other great western romances, but it's not a sub-genre I'm familiar with other than those that I've listed. Any recommendations?

Book Review: Blue Smoke and Murder

Good news! Blue Smoke and Murder is classic Lowell and not the disappointing piles of poop The Wrong Hostage and Innocent as Sin were. This book is more on the scale of Always Time to Die (which I enjoyed).

It still centers around St. Kilda Consulting, which I think it totally weird, but whatever. The heroine, Jill, is a river guide who saves the life of a son of two St. Kilda operatives. In payment, his father tells her that if she ever needs help, to call him. Scarcely a month later, Jill's great-aunt dies in a suspicious fire, one of twelve family paintings is destroyed, and Jill's life is threatened. So she calls in her favor, and hottie operative Zach shows up to help her out.

The story really centers around the painting, and Lowell goes on and on about Western art. (If you've ever read an Elizabeth Lowell contemporary, you know how she tends to do that with art, jewels, minerals, etc.) But it isn't as boring as it usually is.

Also, there is real, genuine chemistry between Jill and Zach. That was something that was definitely missing in Innocent as Sin.

It was an entertaining read.

Book Review: The Wrong Hostage

I have no complaints about The Wrong Hostage specifically. Elizabeth Lowell is one of my favorite romantic suspense authors and she's really good at crafting a phrase (okay, I'm trying to say that I like her writing style). But I do have a beef with a general theme that showed up in this book that often shows up in other and it just makes me so frustrated I'm going to rant about it.

I am so freakin' sick of heroines that are supposed to be smart, confident, strong women who marry complete losers! Unfailingly we're supposed to feel sorry for them or at least think that they're completely in the right. But most of the time I just end up wondering why they were dumb enough to hook up with such a total and complete slimeball to begin with. Sure, I know people do stupid things in the name of love, but romance authors always write about these ex-husbands like they have no redeeming qualities at all, and they've always been that way. It's so frustrating for me to admire a woman that would be so stupid as to (A) marry a guy like that, and (B) stay with him.

In The Wrong Hostage for example, the heroine is a federal district court judge that is so amazing and wonderful that she passed the bar at the age twenty-one. Please. Don't even get me started on that shit in romance novels. If you want to make you almost-forty year old heroine be a hotshot defense attorney when she had her kid sixteen years before, then turn her into a forty-something year old, okay? Don't bend the rules of logic. I'm supposed to believe that she went through college and law school by the age of twenty-one? Not gonna happen. There are not a plethora of Doogie Howsers in the world, yet they all seem to end up in romance novels. ANYWAY, back to the point. Grace, the heroine, was dating her future husband when she had a torrid weekend affair with the hero in the book. They parted ways soon afterwards, and she married her boyfriend and never told him that she wasn't sure that he was the father of the child she carried (don't worry, this is revealed very early on in the book). Turns out he wasn't, and needless to say, he was a little pissed. But she stayed married to him despite his MANY, MANY affairs for years afterwards. Oh, and he was always a shitty father to her son. WHY DIDN'T SHE JUST DIVORCE HIM? Instead she never tells her son the truth and her ex does some terrible things. I'm reading this thinking, She's an idiot. And, she has no right to be full of righteous indignation. What she did was pretty terrible and dishonest herself. The son's biological father, WHOM SHE NEVER TOLD, EITHER, accused her of using him for a stud then marrying a billionaire to be the kid's father. He was spot on! She was a loser! I like flawed heroines, but not immoral, dishonest ones! And I totally didn't feel sorry for her that she married a man she never loved because that was her own dumb choice. Am I too judgmental? Maybe, people do make mistakes, but I don't read romance novels to hear about those kinds of stupid-ass mistakes.

So please, romance writers, if you're going to put an ex-husband in the story, don't completely villianize him. It makes the heroine seem retarded for falling for such a loser in the first place. Linda Howard managed to have a perfectly nice and normal ex-husband for her heroine in Cry No More, so it can be done.