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

Frances never goes to London. She’s either in Scotland, or at the Rothermere country estate, which is fifteen miles from York. Forgive my ever-dependable lack of UK geographical knowledge, but York is a mighty ways away from London, and I think the farthest Frances and Hawk travel during their marriage is to Newmarket, which is still some distance from London by carriage. Frances is never in London as a “leading lady” and while she is fashionable and ravishing, she hasn’t snuck into the ton to reveal herself. She’s still near York most of the time.

Moreover, while Frances does disguise herself as a dowdy mouse to avoid Hawk’s interest, when she returns to her normal, beautiful state, he knows exactly who she is, and is absolutely furious about the transformation and the deception.

The cover copy alone is ample evidence of what was wrong with romance covers back in the day - my copy was published in 1987, I believe - but then, consider the cover image itself:

We’ve snarked this cover hard, as it is one of the more fabulous examples of “Invisible Buttsecks” covers in romance history - not to mention the dubious decision to put a red-haired woman in an orange dress while wearing silver and turquoise eyeshadow. Also, did he just fart out a swan?!

But behind (hur hur) the cover, there lies one of my favorite old-school romances. And when I mentioned it last week as part of a larger discussion of alpha males, I realized that it’s been so long since I read this book that it might be time to revisit it, just in case my memory is faulty as usual, only this time instead of giving me a total blank, my doofy memory has added a patina of quality that the original book didn’t have.

Nope, my memory and I are in accord: the book is still marvelously good, despite the misleading cover copy, the cover image, and some of the worst typesetting errors sprinkled throughout the entire book. Typos, missing quotations, missing capital letters - Jesus Flapjack, who typeset this thing?! Even with all these distractions, I still love this book, and it’s not just the sentimental value talking.

Frances Kilbracken is one of three Scottish sisters whose father, Earl of Ruthven, made a pact with the Marquess of Chandos some years before. Seems Ruthven saved Chandos’ life, and Chandos promised to marry one of his sons to one of Ruthven’s daughters. When Chandos suddenly takes ill, he asks his heir, Phillip (more commonly known as Hawk - yes, of course he has to have a nickname of a predatory bird. This is old school romance after all!) to go on up to Scotland and marry one of the daughters, completing his oath to Ruthven.

Hawk is not at all pleased with this idea. He recently inherited the title at the sudden death of his brother, Nevil, and has been enjoying his new life. Instead of a soldier in Wellington’s army, he’s a Lord of the realm, complete with amorous mistress, neverending nightlife in London, and a healthy amount of wealth to his name.

Frances thinks the entire idea is barbaric, and when she hears of Hawk’s life in London, she figures he’d want a wife as festive, gay, entertaining, and social as the women he currently spends time with. So Frances turns herself into a dowdy, frumpy, socially inept sourpuss and tries to drive Hawk away.

Trouble is, Hawk figures that if he marries Frances, dumps her in the country and heads on back to London, his life can continue as it was, and he won’t have to change a thing.

Consider the multitude of plot elements that could go horribly wrong with this setup: the foundation of the relationship is essentially a Big Misunderstanding. Both parties are horribly blind to one another, plus there’s the aspect of sex between the unwilling protagonists to deal with. But Coulter balances out these tricky elements admirably, and this is still one of my very favorite old school romances.

First: the hero. Yes, the hero forces Frances to have sex with him. This is indeed the romance wherein he has to use cream to ease his way up her tender virgin passage because she wants nothing to do with him, but he has a responsibility to beget an heir, and she’s half the equation required for that result. She knows it, he knows it, and so she lies still, tries to hide from him at times, but submits to his passionless ministrations.

But Coulter’s master stroke (har har) in creating empathy for Hawk is in the first chapter: Hawk rushes from London because he is told his father is dying. The entire chapter reveals how much Hawk cares for his parent, how unwilling he is to live up to an oath he didn’t make, and how, despite that unwillingness, he is aware of the responsibilities of his new life as Earl of Rothermere. In 16 pages of writing, Coulter establishes a hero who is noble, caring, dedicated to his family and his role as heir to the title, and empathetic - because who hasn’t had to do something they really, really did not want to do?

Second: the heroine. Frances is headstrong, intelligent, clever, and utterly hoisted by her own petard. Hawk is gorgeous and she is undeniably attracted to him, but she doesn’t want to marry him, nor does she want to leave Scotland. She doesn’t want her life to change any more than Hawk wants to give up his social life in London.

Yes, there are parts that made me dog-ear a page and laugh out loud, such as Frances’ completely incongruous need for “something more” in her life:

“I want to marry a rich man. I want to be somebody. What else can a woman look forward to anyway?” Viola said.
That was perfectly true, of course, Frances thought, suddenly depressed, but it wasn’t fair. She repeated her thought aloud. “It’s not fair. We should be able to do anything we wish to do.”

I can hear the music from Mary Poppins now: No more the meek and mild subservients we! We’re fighting for our rights, militantly! Well done! Sister Suffragette! Frances at times is a blooming ludicrous example of contemporary mentality shoved into an historical heroine. Even with all that posturing, I like her anyway.

There are some other flaws to the writing, such as an incredible propensity toward head hopping, like the narrator is a Jack Russell terrier on amphetamines. And there is also some marvelously purple prose, plus one of my very, very favorite phrases in all of romance to describe female arousal: To her utter consternation, Frances felt a deep spurt of something very warm and urgent between her thighs.

Now, between you and me? If I feel that, it probably means my water broke. But for Frances? Her arousal “spurts” a few times here and there through the book. It’s enough to make you want to send a gyn back in time to help her out with that problem.

By far the largest topic to discuss regarding this novel: the sex scenes where Frances lies still, an unwilling partner, as Hawk does his best to cause conception as quickly and painlessly as possible. This is one of the few romances I’ve read that has multiple scenes that depict what sexual intercourse could have been like for a couple that wasn’t sexually interested in or even friends with one another. It’s a duty and an obligation, and it’s disturbing, but in this case, the process reveals a good deal about each character. Hawk will rise (har har) to his responsibilities, even if they make him lonely and sad, and Frances will acquiesce to her own duties, even if they also make her lonely and sad.

Hawk, of course, has friends and a very passionate mistress. Frances is in a new place with no one she knows, forced to make a new life for herself despite her best efforts. Frances was caught in her own trap, and in the end, only by revealing who she really is can she find happiness. The same, of course, is true for the hero. He doesn’t enjoy the passionless sex that is his marital duty, and only by admitting he too longs for “something more” between his wife and himself can he find happiness.

Pamela Regis, in her book A Natural History of the Romance Novel outlines the primary differences between what Candy and I call “Old School” and “New School” romance. One of them, and the one I find most interesting, is the requirement in “New School” romance that the hero make his own journey to become worthy of the happy ending. Despite Midsummer Magic bearing many of the hallmarks of “Old School” romance, Hawk evolves through the story into a hero worthy of Frances and worthy of their happy ending. He wasn’t a complete buttmonkey to start with, either - he started from a place of some established empathy: he thought his father was dying and had to honor his wishes - and evolves to a place of greater heroism: he finds a purpose in life, a suitable vocation he can indulge in with his spouse, and a path toward leaving a greater inheritance for his children. And on top of that, he finds a passionate and unique relationship with his wife. They were forced to marry, but as they reveal their true characters, they find that, as is proper in a romance novel, they are perfectly matched.

It’s so awful I can’t even finish it. I already need some kind of mental restoration for having introduced the story into my head. If only I could return my brain to ‘last known good’ configuration, because my memory at present contains the following details:

Wilbur and Homer are best friends. Wilbur drives a garbage truck in Humper County, Oklahoma, and dreams of driving a gold-plated garbage truck while wearing a white Stetson and a red bandanna and some clothing of some sort. He prefers to drive said truck while high or drunk or both, and shoot the reflectors off the road signs and pepper the anatomy of billboard models with bulletholes from his handgun. At the start of our story, he runs out of bullets and goes home to find Homer boinking Wilbur’s wife, Emily.

Emily, it should be noted, is referred to repeatedly and I assume ironically as innocent, sweet, delicate and pure by Wilbur, the narrator, despite the numerous times he comes home to find her naked with some dude sneaking out the trailer door.

Homer takes off running because he thinks Wilbur’s gun is loaded and aimed at his ass, leaving Emily naked on the floor to explain what was going on. It certainly was what it looked like so at least she didn’t attempt a lame defense.

Instead, she attacks Wilbur’s manhood, tells him he doesn’t sexually satisfy her, and furthermore, she’s right pissed at him for not shooting Homer when they were both caught bareassed on the floor: “I’ll tell you what the matter is. You come waltzing in here with your truck pistol in your hand and catch me bare ass naked with another man and you don’t shoot him? I mean, even if he is your best friend, you should of shot him, at least once, somewhere.”

You can read more of the first chapter here. Bring painkiller. Or vascodilators. Or both.

Mixed in with the decidedly un-erotic content is a plot that somehow details how Wilbur, Emily, and Homer become country music stars by playing in a bar, which upsets poor Wilbur because he’s neglecting his trash collection duties. Emily gives birth to a baby that looks like neither Homer nor Wilbur, and they start calling themselves co-husbands since both of them like to boink Emily. Connie, Homer’s ex, is in there somewhere, too. And there are other ancillary characters, like some religious nutjobs who want to shut their act down. And here I am, siding with the religious right - these characters should be stopped.

Now, I’m fully willing to take a good number of romance and erotica plots with a great heavy grain of salt, most notably those that mix camp and sex for really off-the-wall erotica. And when reading erotica, I am also fully willing to read through scenes that don’t do it for me personally, but may engage some fantasies of other readers, such as watching a spouse do the carpet burn-and-roll with someone else, or catching someone in the act of poopchute lovin’ in a cop car. Whatever. People get their jollies from all manner of sexual content, and most of the time, I’m not judgmental about varying sexual proclivities.

However, this story isn’t erotic. It’s not even sexy. It’s just bad. Despite being categorized as “erotica,” with warnings that the content of the eBook is meant for mature audiences there’s really no erotic content. It’s just… lame. Lame lame lame. There was plenty of room for mixed-partner sex scenes, but Allen describes the sexual interaction in one sentence. There’s no description. At one point, Wilbur decides that he likes what-what-in-the-butt with Homer’s ex-wife Connie, so he grabs some butter, slaps her on the butt with it, and engages in some back door lovin’ on the hood of a car. This is described in fifteen to twenty words, tops. My description here? Longer than the actual scene. Allen has the same problem Wilbur has: “crawl on, stick it in and shoot it off.” This is the first erotica novel I’ve read that has its own case of sexual dysfunction.

Another example of potential erotic content that suffered total melting of the man cannon: during a brawl, Connie gets hurt on her breast, which she shows to the two arresting officers who report to the scene. Medical attention is needed - from both officers! In the squad car! And Connie decides to engage the car’s radio so the boinka-boink in her badonkadonk is broadcast to every listening officer AND every person tuned into the police scanner. It’s like the cop-car-in-the-woods version of having the pool boy visit the cabana. Imagine the sexual comedic potential of writing a scene like that.

What happens?

Connie goes off to the squad car, comes back a few minutes later, and tells Wilbur she turned the CB radio on before they got busy. That’s it. That’s all the reader gets. There’s no show, no tell, and really, no damn point to the whole thing. How is this erotica? It’s not. It’s merely rot.

In the hands of a writer who could craft a sensual or even a raunchy sex scene, the rural ramblings of Wilbur (the story is told in first person, heavy on the rural vernacular) could have resulted in something spicy and sexy, if not at least entertaining. The story itself could have been an erotic romp between bizarre characters, or a journey toward ignominious stardom, or even a lot of backdoor buttered sex, but the plot deflated every time it got close to being something other than tawdry, lame, and altogether stupid.

In short: this book is instant, complete, and total bonerdeath. Stay far, far away.

Her grandmother, a Cherokee Indian labeled a witch by Asshat Stepdad, isn’t home, and Zoey goes looking for her, only to feel herself getting sicker and sicker as her body begins the initial change far from the safety of the House of Night. She runs looking for her grandmother, but instead trips, knocks her head on a rock, and finds herself on an out-of-body journey to a meeting with Nyx, the Goddess of Night and the Goddess of the Vampyres. Nyx marks her again as her own, this time by filling in what had been an outline of a moon on Zoey’s forehead - something that shouldn’t happen until much much later in the changing process - and tells her that she is special, the eyes and ears of the Goddess in the world. Zoey refutes this idea. Loudly. But since much of what has happened to her is out of her control, she accepts this idea of being a Goddess’ chosen daughter, and when she wakes up, Zoey finds herself safely at the House of Night, her grandmother beside her. Once recovered from her fall, however, she faces life in a new boarding school on her own, with the requisite challenges of avoiding the psychotic bitch queen bully girl, and making new friends who are at least as interesting as she is, while knowing that she doesn’t quite fit in at this school, either.

I’ve said before that I’m a big YA fan, and love a lot of YA books, and this is no exception.

Do I like Zoey? Yeah. She’s subject to a lot of forces that she can’t control or even remotely understand, but she operates on instincts that come from a good heart and an intelligent and strong moral code. She gets feelings that tell her clearly when to conceal things she knows, and while she doesn’t know why she’s being told by unseen forces to keep her mouth shut, she does it, and figures she’ll get the answer eventually. She’s been dropped into a world that’s much more powerful and scary than the world she’s used to, and she doesn’t whine about it. Zoey possesses enough self-confidence to navigate her new environment, but not so much self-confidence that she begins to irritate. The only thing that’s odd about Zoey is her very firm and outspoken stance that drugs of any kind are stupid, and those that do them are beyond morons. I was more expecting her to have a live-and-let-live kind of attitude, since most of the time she herself would like to be left alone, but her perspective is a theme throughout the story, and while it matches with her strength and her moral compass, it comes across almost abrasive - and I can see why other characters would find it a drag to listen to.

In the larger picture, though, this is a story of a teenager who is different for magical reason, but then becomes even more different than her already-different peer group. Add to that a boarding school, a whole lot of magical training, and there’s a very Obvious Comparison to be made. But fortunately, both writers Cast are aware of the similarities and do it all much better in this book.

Marked is different because the book is told in the first person and Zoey’s narration possesses a very unique voice. As I said, she isn’t much of a whiner, unlike some male marked-on-the-forehead characters I know, and she’s strong. The friends that she makes at school are believable in themselves, and aren’t just reflections or foils for Zoey. They’ve got their own problems and their own charms.

Further, one of the most unique aspects to the story is the world that Cast & Cast construct. Everyone knows there are vampires, but not much is said by Zoey or her friends (vamp or human) that indicates how or how much the vampires interact with humans. The humans know they could be marked as teenagers, and they know about the process and the existence of the school, but there isn’t much detail about how these two words interact, if at all.

Most obvious among the mentions of these parallel societies is the idea that prominent celebrities (to wit, Kenny Chesney and Faith Hill - Zoey’s roommate Stevie Rae is a country fan) are vampires. Interesting concept - and one answer as to why some people seem so incredibly talented AND good looking, if the excuse of digital vocal tuning and rampant airbrushing weren’t satisfactory.

In addition to that world are some nefarious elements that aren’t quite identifiable yet. The evil in the book, and the forces working against Zoey, and possibly against Nyx, are layered, mysterious, and of course not at all satisfactorily worked out in this, the first book of a series (dammit).

And yet again, I find myself butting heads with my frustration with series books. There are big threads left hanging that don’t allow the book to stand full on its own. It’s clearly a Book One, not just a book in and of itself. I do know from many a source that publishers who want a series want the books in the series to be clearly and obviously part of a larger whole, even if that means the individual books issued in the story need crutches to hold up a piece of the storyline. At this point I do expect to encounter a character saying, “And visit the bookstore next month when....” Seriously, publishing folks? It gets old. It’s stringing the reader along and this reader don’t like it much.

In this particular series, the larger questions that are left so very unanswered are very large indeed, and seem to encompass several entwined mysteries, leaving Zoey and the reader to question who is trustworthy, and what is happening to some of the students who don’t survive the complete change into full vampiredom? Yet even within those questions, the revelations of Zoey’s character, the development of her friends, and the potential for the future of the story arc in this series definitely cause me to look deliberately towards book 2 with an eye to read and enjoy. 

Lookit, this book not only features a secret baby, but a secret baby that’s reunited with the heroine by a string of highly unlikely circumstances, AND it features an ending that smooths over the difficulties and minimizes the impact of what happened. I’m not talking about the social consequences--though that was handled in a rather distressingly facile manner as well--but the emotional impact on the family. From the father (who’s been lied to for over ten years not just by his beloved daughter, but by his wife), to the child himself--come on, the boy’s concept of who he was and where he came from has proven to be a complete and utter lie--the book dealt with all that juicy conflict in the space of a couple dozen pages. Double you tee eff, mate?

Let’s face it, the secret baby device is pretty damn hackneyed, even when done well--and I speak this as somebody who’s actually enjoyed secret baby books in the past, despite my tendency to treat it like a piñata--so why exacerbate it by making everything so pat? So easy? So--dare I say it--treacly?

It’s not as if I’m especially bothered by predictability or spoilers; in fact, I’m the sort of sick freak who’ll occasionally sneak a peek at the ending of a book and continue happily reading. But once the secret baby was introduced, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that the kid was going to show up later in the book, probably as a plot device to allow things to come to a head.

I didn’t especially enjoy being proven right on that score.

I’m not saying the heroine got off scot-free, or that the father didn’t display distress at being lied to. It’s just that the consequences weren’t enough, especially given the fantastic job Chase had done building the father’s character up and his connection with Charlotte--and really, the father, together with the villain were my two favorite characters in the book. Charlotte and Darius pretty much walked out of Casting Central in this one; in fact, I kept thinking of Charlotte as Whatsername from the moment I set the book down until I looked it up just a few minutes ago. They’re decent characters as far as they go, but they didn’t do much to make themselves memorable, and Charlotte, frankly, exasperated me when she started fucking Darius without agonizing over the consequences because GOOD GOD, WOMAN, HOW DID YOU THINK YOU GOT PREGNANT THE FIRST TIME? BY EATING TOO MUCH STRAWBERRY TRIFLE?

I also didn’t especially like the way the two of them fell in love so fast and so hard, given how the two of them are set up as these cautious characters who are all wary of love and marriage. The two of them really don’t get to interact all that much before they’re all goo-goo eyed (and loined) over each other. This aspect of the book, as with so many other aspects, felt rather slapdash and rushed. Not to say that there aren’t well-written whirlwind romances, some of them even featuring rather cynical characters, but I didn’t feel the spark in quite the same way I did with, say, Jessica and Sebastian in Lord of Scoundrels, or Daphne and Rupert in Mr. Impossible.

The rest of the book is passably well-written, because this is, after all, Loretta Chase we’re talking about. The banter is decent, and Charlotte and Darius spar amusingly, with a rather memorable scene in the library making me chuckle out loud. I just couldn’t help but feel that the book would’ve been vastly improved if, say, Charlotte had had to suffer the rest of her life not knowing what had happened to the child, or she and Darius had sparred more and had a relationship that had developed more slowly, or if we’d seen more of the fallout as a consequence of the bastard child Charlotte bore--in short, if the book hadn’t taken the easy way out so many damn times in a row.

I do have to mention that Chase did a great job with the secondary characters, because they take on a life and vividness that most other authors can only dream of for their main characters. Chase pulls off her characteristic inversion-of-expectations with the villain, a military man who, unlike the other suitors Charlotte has successfully brushed off, is smart enough to see through her tactics and deploy some novel tactics of his own. (Oh, would that Chase had done the same on the secret baby plot. Cry.) You’re set up to think he’s going to be an evil, evil bastard, but no, he ends up being a human. Fancy that.

When I put this book down, I thought “Meh. Yet another readable but predictable romance novel. Disappointing. B-.” But when I thought about the secret baby plot, the outrage at its squandered possibilities eclipsed my other reactions to the book, so I knocked it one down another half grade to C+. Then I re-read the irritating portions, and though still irritating, they really were quite well-written, so: back to B-. Verging on a C.

I checked a couple of other review sites and Amazon before making this review live, and it looks like most people loved this like it was their mama. So bring it, bitches! Tell me how wrong I am.