Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

This book fascinated me because I get the feeling this was a heroine that most category readers would not have expected.  Roberts spends a lot of time slowly building the character of Suzannah Morningstar, which is partially accomplished by a gradual reveal of her backstory. There’s no giant dump of revelation, where she spills her life’s story to the hero. She reveals herself deliberately and in small portions, and that slow discovery reveals as much as the actual details. Within that backstory, Roberts tackles some heroine standards head on and knocks them around a good bit. She plays with the virginal expectation of the heroine (Suzannah is a single mom; she’s definitely not a virgin), the purity expectation of the heroine (See #1), and in doing so creates a tough, edgy, unapologetic heroine who doesn’t think much of her son’s father because he obviously doesn’t think much of them, if he thinks of them at all. No angst, no bitterness, no self-pity—just factual hard reality.  Savannah is not a victim; she made her choices and learned to work through them.

Conflict jumps into the wading pool when Jared, the idealistic hero, gets caught up in feelings of jealousy and rage. In his mind, it’s unacceptable that there WERE other men in her life, and she was a stripper and she has no regrets about either. Moreover, he has to confront the idea that she doesn’t need a man to ride in and sweep her off her feet, to make all her troubles go away. He can walk up to the door and ring the damn bell, thank you, because Suzannah has taken care of her life and her son’s well-being just fine on her own. Jared gets his BVDs in a right twisty knot and ends up asking himself the question, “What would his mama say?”

Which, in my mind, became, “What did readers say about this novel when it was published?”

In a lot of Roberts’ trilogies, there’s usually, out of three women, one “tough heroine,” the one who is prickly, standoffish, irritable, or exceptionally independent and autonomous, sometimes to the point of misanthropy. Suzannah seems almost like an early prototype of a lot of those “tough heroines” - I can see shades of a lot of other fierce, ballsy characters to come.

That said, I didn’t actually like her much. She didn’t grow on me until later installments of the MacKade brothers quartet. I thought she was too rude, too brash, too mean, and often her actions overplayed themselves when compared to the rationale behind them - however emotionally charged that rationale was. I didn’t buy the mercurial shifts between caring, doting mom, and ready to throw punches at Jared, and I didn’t get her repeated abrupt descent into rudeness to several ancillary characters. She crossed the line from independent and fierce to just over the border of batshit unstable, and it made me distrust her, while also making me question why the other characters so easily excused her behavior.

Jared, on the other hand, I imagined as a relatively standard romance hero dropped onto a wild horse and told to ride for the duration of the story. He got a lot more than he bargained for in Suzannah, and he couldn’t necessarily tame her. He has to learn to understand her, but then set limits for her behavior, limits based on respect and affection - which she’s not used to. He’s very used to control, order, and balance in his life, and has to confront that messy is sometimes very necessary.

But the title, in this case, is entirely appropriate. The main conflict between these two is pride, and as a result, the internal conflict and external conflict between them is layered, complex, and not easily resolved but worth doing so, both for the protagonists (obviously) and the reader.

Dear Harlequin USA:

Without question, my biggest gripe with this book is the way in which you are choosing to market it. The UK title is better. Way better. Better like it was kidnapped by hot Vikings and rowed swiftly across the frozen seas to Betterland and crowned queen of all of greater Betterlandia. In the UK this book was titled Driving Him Wild. In the US?

His For The Taking

For God’s sake, people. I can’t even tell you how dismayed I am that this marvelous book is going to be dressed up in the washed out faded tripe that is that title. What a damn fucking shame.  “His for the Taking?” I’d like to be taking that title back to 1982 where it belongs. Do I have to move to the UK? I’d have a hell of a time getting a work permit, let alone a visa to live there. I’m doomed to endure these sexist drivel titles slapped onto books that ought to garner MUCH more attention! And wow, does it piss me off.

The tawdry, insulting craptastic shitcake that is the title of this book offends me as an American. What is with the shitalicious retitling for the American audience? Can you please explain?

And while I’m ranting, take a look at the covers for the UK and US versions of this novel:

UK Version: Hot, slightly awkward, but genuine-looking embrace with lithe heroine and normally-proportioned hero? Awesome, with side order of HAWT.

US Version: Instead of “awesome, side order of Hawt,” the waiter has apparently delivered a steaming fresh pile of what-the-fuck. The heroine is a cab driver. She teaches step aerobics, and is described by the hero as being lean, muscular, toned and tomboyish. With short blonde hair, I might add. That right there? Soft focus vanilla yogurt retread of any image you might find on a Presents novel from 2008 to 1998. (Although the female pictured does have very red manhands and an absolutely freaking HUGE thumb like WHOA.)

And this book is not a soft-focus sudsy romance. It’s gritty and real and marvelous and holy crap am I irritated that this lovely story is going to be packaged in chiffon when it ought to be at least dressed in leather if not denim.

Until I picked up this book, I’d never read a Betty Neels book, and I was not disappointed in the least. And in list format, here are are 6 Important Facts I learned about this novel:

1. Hot Dutch doctors, especially the wealthy ones, are incredibly generous and once in the hot throes of lovin’ say things like, “Oh, my darling, my darling!” And I have a hard time imagining Dutch doctors going into raptures of romantic expression by saying, “Oh, my darling! My darling!” However, I can imagine them saying, “But sit and fart in the duck!” Wait, no. I can’t.

2. If you get in a wreck in Holland, and are a British nurse, you and your bus full o’ spastic children (nice vintage terminology!) will end up at a hospital, one which will happily arrange to pay you as if you were one of their staff while you tirelessly and selflessly care for the children. Yeah. But what about retirement?!

3. The heroine is so relentlessly selfless it’s astonishing that she can stand upright. She’s got a backbone of the same durability as an old, damp dishrag. Her uncle and aunt treat her as one step up from hired help, and her cousin takes merciless advantage of her, even going to far as to slander her to The Hot Dutch Doctor Oh My Darling. But really, they fed and clothed her so she can’t complain. And according to what I’ve read online, many a Neels novel features plain but noble British nurse falling head over heels with Hot Dutch Doctor Oh My Darling. Did the Hot Dutch Doctors die out? Will angsty emo vampires suffer the same fate? Perhaps we need to spearhead the fund raising for the endangered romance novel hero species. Do not let the oversexed Regency Earl With Not a Hint of Venereal Disease go the way of the Hot Dutch Doctor Oh My Darling! Call now!

4. The heroine never complains, even when The Hot Dutch Doctor Oh My Darling has listened to Evil Cousin instead of Plain Noble British Nurse, and accuses her of being a thoughtless wench. Plain Noble Brit Nurse needed to administer an enema of justice to her shitass Evil Cousin.

5. Fortunately, the happy ending elevates the Plain Noble British Nurse, and rewards her for her selfless behavior. She wins an incredibly happy, optimistic future with the Hot Dutch Doctor Oh My Darling - in Holland, far far away from her family of craptastic crap.

6. Unfortunately, the happy ending elevates the Plain Noble British Nurse and rewards her for her selfless, and altogether spineless behavior. She never has to stand up for herself where it counts, really, and the selfish family never gets a hard paddle to the assal region like they deserve.

If Neels is part of the foundation of romance, and indeed I think she is, reading this book (complete with red page dye that came off on my hands) was both a quaint and educational experience. Quaint because romance, ma’am, you have come a LONG WAY. Imagine the heroine of The Magic of Living meeting up with a nurse heroine from a Blaze novel fresh after sex in the linen closet with Dr. McSchlong. Poor Plain Noble British Nurse would pass out cold. Her idea of scandalous was her cousin dating a married doctor - which is plenty sleazy but somewhat less of a shock when compared to what Blazing McSex can occur in Doctor/Nurse romances today.

However, reading The Magic of Living was educational because the elements at work in the story were effective on me, jaded reader that I am. The heroine was faultlessly noble, which got old but even still, she was amply rewarded and there’s no doubt I was rooting for her, especially because Neels took deliberate steps to make her sympathetic to the point of, “Oh, Honey,” but never quite so pathetic that I wanted to smack her around. The hero, however, was something of a stock background figure: enigmatic in his affections until the very end and even then, his mercurial announcements of love and of sweeping her off into the sunset were so abrupt it was creepy. Creepitude notwithstanding, the sudsy fantasy of vintage nurse/doctor category romance worked for me, much to my surprise, even though I could identify when Neels was working to make Plain Noble British Nurse even more Noble and Sympathetic. I more than enjoyed this trip in the wayback machine - but I wouldn’t want this to be the only type of romance I read. I like applesauce, but I also like hot sauce, and I wouldn’t want to eschew the latter for an exclusive diet of the former. 

I’m categorizing all my category (har!) reviews under the heading “1001 Ways to Eat Crow” because I’m reading a monster truck shitload of category romance right now, averaging about 75% of a book per day. I read fast. And I’m enjoying them. For the most part. This is an exception. But either way, I’m reading quickly enough that my usual monster session of navel-gazing in a review will have to be trimmed by a good bit for the category binge I’m on now. Avast - here begin ye shorte reviews!

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In a word, this book was Yawntastic. It has such a great setup, but the plot and the characterization were so limply executed. A horror writer’s sister is murdered, and a vampire hero has to save her, protect her from potentially risen sister, and eradicate the bad guy vampire dude what’s doing the killing. The heroine writes books that scare even the hero, yet in the course of the story she’s firmly a wuss on the border of TSTL. I was repeatedly told she authored some scary, chilling books but saw no evidence of creativity or crafty thinking in any portion of her scenes in the book. Perhaps she has a ghost writer- literally.

And you know all those warnings to “show not tell?” This here is a 251-page example of tell tell tell with little to show for it. Honestly, it reminds me of Moonlight where terrific actors suffer through some of the most wooden, uninspiring dialog ever in the history of the televised world. If this book were a radio play, the voice actors would probably be shrugging and rolling their eyes as they read it aloud. Check this out:

“...Don’t forget the oath we all took. We can’t reveal the Mission or its purpose to anyone. if the citizens out there found out what we’re dealing with, there would be mass hysteria. Civilization as we know it could crumble, and we would have no way to prevent it. You can’t tell her, Nick. You can’t tell anyone....”

What if he couldn’t protect Erin? What if he lost her to the darkness, too? He’d already lost his soul. How could he survive knowing that she had lost hers, too?

Behold: among my least favorite romance stereotypical heroes? The whiny-ass navel-gazing angsty emo Vampire. More emo than Peter Petrelli from Heroes and that is some emorific emoism to the 100th power of emo, my friend.

And among the top twenty list of my stereotype dislikes in romance? The Doomful Warning of Mass Hysteria from the character who wants to preserve the ignorance of the mortals. Give it up already, dude.

In the end, well, I didn’t get to the end. After the heroine went into yet another trance and the hero busted down the door to save her, I skimmed to the end. There was a happy ending. I wasn’t happy for either of the characters. I couldn’t have cared less.