Book Reviews: Romance Novels

So now all the smugness I felt about reading Jane Eyre has faded as I reveal that I read four romance novels in between reading the classic. Hey man, it’s midterm time. I have a history of this.

To Desire A Devil by Elizabeth Hoyt
I was pretty disappointed by this book. The hero returns from the dead (actually he just returns from North America where he’d been held captive by Indians for the past seven years but believed dead by those back home) and asserts his right to his family title, which had passed to the heroine’s uncle.

The romance in this was too much too fast. This guy was held captive for seven years and, at some point, tortured. And although he has some mental health issues from the ordeal, they didn’t really seem too bad. He was ready to jump into bed and into love with the heroine. It just felt like a ruse to me. If an author is going to make the readers anticipate a book (this is the final in a four-part series) because of the whole back-from-the-dead ploy, then she’d better be genuine about how she’s going to resolve it. Any real person that went through what the hero went through would be pretty fucked up in the head, and a pretty little Englishwoman would not be a panacea.

This Duchess of Mine by Eloisa James
I quit reading Eloisa James after the first book in this six-part series, Desperate Duchesses. I intensely disliked that book. But after a few years I caved and read her again. Overall I liked this book even though I totally called the ending about a quarter of the way through. I like the hero and heroine, who are a married couple trying to reconcile after a nine year estrangement. (He’s a duke and needs an heir, hence the reconciliation.)

What I didn’t like was what took the couple so freakin’ long! She loves him, he appears to love her, they have open communication, but for at least half the book they’re just circling around each other. It felt forced to me.

A Duke of Her Own by Eloisa James
I liked this one better than its predecessor. It was a pretty standard romance. I don’t recall there being anything that really jumped out at me, good or bad. Oh yeah, except the fact that the hero was a blockhead about a certain matter. The hero has been a fixture in all six books in the series, and even though I’ve only read two of the previous books, it just seemed like his thought processes in this one did not match the man he appeared to be in the earlier books. That felt forced, too.

By Love Undone by Suzanne Enoch
I thought this was a cute little book. I really believed the affection between the hero and heroine, and I believed the conflict that posed a barrier to their happiness. It’s not an earth shattering piece of literature, but it was good enough for me.

Book Review: Desperate Duchesses

I don't really know how to feel about Eloisa James. When I first started reading her books I liked her a lot, but recently I've not been too crazy about her stories (even though I gave Pleasure for Pleasure a good review). One good way for me to gauge if I really like an author is how often I'll re-read their books. I re-read Much Ado About You a fair amount, Kiss Me, Anabel maybe once, and The Taming of the Duke and Pleasure for Pleasure never. I've not even been tempted with those last two. So why do I think I like her so much?

I'm not the only one with this problem. There's something about her writing that we fans seem to recognize as very special, but at the same time, we don't connect with her stories. I think part of it is because James is one of those authors that spends a good amount of time on non-main (secondary) characters. And it's usually pretty obvious that James likes them way better than I do. For instance, I never liked nor cared about Mayne, and she made him the hero in the last book in the Essex sister's series, Pleasure for Pleasure. I also never liked Rafe or Imogen, and they were the main characters in The Taming of the Duke. The other reason for my dislike, I suspect, is the way James seems to craft her books around a theme. A very literary them. I JUST WANT TO READ A ROMANCE NOVEL. NOT HAVE SOME GREAT LITERARY EXPERIENCE.

In this book, the theme is chess. Chess, chess, chess. Out the wazoo. I was so sick of it. Also, I hated Villiers, one of the characters. Unfortunally I think James is going to make him show up again and again in this series, and probably eventually as a hero. Ick. He was just nasty. I didn't like Roberta either, but that was probably because I knew next to nothing about her despite the fact that she was supposed to be the main character. I thought she was kind of a bitch. And I really didn't like the set up between the Duke of Beaumont and his wife, Jemma (more secondary characters, if you're wondering. They're everywhere). I have a sick feeling that James is going to drive their relationship through the mud for the sake of realism and literary conflict, not caring about how messy she gets. Listen, I don't like adultry in romance novels. Ever. Call me a prude, I guess, but I feel like that's where James is going. The way it's set up leads me to think that she will have them eventually live happily ever after, but I don't think that's the best resolution (Jemma's a spoiled, selfish slut, and Beaumont's a hard-working, intellectual politician that should have kept it in his pants, too). All together this book just left me with a bad feeling. I didn't like it at all.

I guess I shouldn't say at all because I really liked the Georgian period James set this book in. It was way more fun that Regency. I may read the other books in the series for that reason alone. I also liked Damon, the hero, but James doesn't spend much time with him so I figured I shouldn't either.

Lindsey's Grade: D

Book Review: Pleasure For Pleasure

I used to count Eloisa James as one of my favorite authors, probably because I really enjoyed the first couple of her books that I read. And also because I read the blog she keeps with other romance writers and I think that she just sounds like a very interesting, fun person. But I wasn't crazy about her last book, but since it was third in a serious of four, the first two of which I really liked, I still picked up Pleasure for Pleasure when it came out. But about 100 pages in I almost quit reading it.

I think I've mentioned before that I don't like large age gaps between the hero and heroine in a book. And even though this is a historical romance set in the Regency Era in England, something about a man being 16 years older than the woman doesn't sit well with me. The characters in this book were not new to me either, because both of were frequent players in the other books in the series, the hero especially. He is a notorious rake that has seduced countless women. The hero is an eighteen year old girl in her first season in London. She is also the youngest of four sisters, and other three books in the serious were about her older sisters. It just so happens that the hero, the Earl of Mayne, was previously engaged to the oldest sister, a potential prospect for the second, and a potential lover for the third.

Now, maybe I'm strange, and I know I live in modern times. But there is no way in hell I would have anything to do with a guy that was previously involved with my sister. In fact, a guy that she "went out with" in high school for less than 48 hours was once interested in me in college, but those 48 hours years ago were enough to make me want to have nothing to do with him romantically. So it kind of blew my mind that Josie, the heroine, would be interested in Maybe. It was also kind of gross that they knew each other when she was fifteen. Fifteen!

Also, I never really liked Mayne. But apparently everyone else loves him (I also read Eloisa James's website.) I even skipped most of the parts with him in the other books because it was a second storyline. Maybe that's why I don't like him as much as everyone else. Hmm... I should also note that it was not clear from the back of the book or for a while in the beginning of the book itself who Josie would end up with. When I figured out that Mayne was indeed the hero, I set the book down out of protest and almost wasn't going to finish it. But of course, I picked it up again.

And darn if Eloisa didn't make it work! She is a great writer, although kind of perplexing for me. In real life she's a professor of Shakepearean literature, and so her books always have a very intellectual and academic feel to them. And sometimes its too much for me and I don't like it. But she's a crafty one, that Eloisa, because even when I don't like the main characters in one of her books, she will have a second storyline going on that I love (like in Taming of the Duke or Fool For Love). When I'm really lucky, I will love both (like in Duchess In Love). I loved the secondary storyline in this one a whole bunch.

So even though I still didn't like the age difference between the characters, Eloisa wrote about them in a way that was fun and interesting to read. I ended up liking both characters much better at the end of the book, more than I expected to. It was a fun read. I enjoyed it. A nice end to a good series.

Lindsey's Grade: A

Short Cuts

I read this book. The title kind of says it all. Not much else to say.

Although I will add one thing. The hero was a total asshole at one point, and the heroine forgave him WAAAAAY too easily. Just my opinion. He needed to do a lot more groveling.