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

Hot Sauce is a love story that focuses on insecurities, specifically those based in class difference, constructed around a fantasy fairy-tale-esque plot structure. A working class boy from midwest moves to the big city, learns from a master chef, becomes a celebrity restauranteur in his own right, and ends up dating the man of his dreams, a rich, gorgeous, well-connected clothing designer from one of the best families in Boston.

Can you smell the insecurities?

Brad is one half of a gay power couple in Boston, unaccustomed to the attention and unable to find equilibrium when in public wih Troy, his debonair and socially-gifted boyfriend. Troy is, through both the narrator’s account and through his demonstrated actions, off his head about Brad, and yet Brad is unsure of his standing in Troy’s life, as if any minute Troy’s tenderness and caring will turn cold and he’ll be discarded.

Complicating matters is Aria Shakespeare, an upper-crust Bostonian who Troy once knew by a different name, prior to Aria acquiring an entirely different sort of crust - the scuzzy, deceitful kind.

As a total aside, I love adopted names like this. I know a few people who rename themselves in truly over-the-top dramatic fashion.I want to ask, do you think anyone will take that tweety name seriously? Or is it all drama? I once knew a drag queen who dubbed herself “Cicada.” You’re an annoying insect? Sure, why not? I have no room to talk, though - I am the Duchess of Cuntington.

Aria tries by any means necessary, including following them to foreign countries, to interfere with Brad and Troy’s happiness, and he cashes in on the most obvious solution to his goal of breaking them up: he targets Brad’s insecurity, and inserts himself neatly as a much better alternative for Troy’s attentions, using Troy, Caroline - Troy’s social harriden of a mother, and anyone else he can find to get what he wants: Troy. Or, more specifically, the attention he’d receive from being with Troy. He wants a piece of Troy’s glamour.

My only frustration with the book was with the imbalance between the narrator’s account of Troy, and the narrator’s account of Brad’s insecurity regarding Troy’s feelings for him. The narration makes it clear in repeated demonstrations that Troy is over the moon for Brad. He wouldn’t greet anyone else in a room full of political contacts until he spoke to Brad first, he would always look for Brad in a room full of people, and he constantly surprised Brad with trips and luxurious outings, and seemed to be a conscientious, giving lover. So as the reader I had no doubts that, despite the interference of the jealous Shakespeare Aria, Troy adored Brad.

But the narrator also cataloged the ways in which Brad felt slighted by Troy, aside from the attentive devotion Troy demonstrated wordlessly. Troy does not use words to describe his feelings; he does much better with the gesture or the gift than he does with the verbal account of his ardor. He is smooth and sophisticated at all turns, except when describing his feelings verbally. Brad, however, desperately wants to hear Troy say The Words, and Troy manages to avoid these verbal exchanges.

Insecurity gets the best of all of us, however, so it’s entirely realistic to watch Brad bank his happiness on whether Troy will tell him the words he longs to hear. Brad certainly has the right to ask for a clear demonstration of how Troy feels about him, without having the moment tainted by the possibility that Troy is really using their good looks and excellent professional partnership for profit and corporate gain, or without leaving Brad any room to question if it’s he himself that Troy loves, or the public image and the sex. Troy is used to being half of several different locally powerful “golden couples,” including a lucrative and somewhat caring partership with his mother, but Brad does not have the healthy ego to accept himself as on par with Troy’s relative celebrity.

Sooner or later you have to choose to believe in the person you love or believe in the snot-nosed coke headed freakshow who is telling you with some funky evidence that the person who you think loves you does not. So do you believe the person who is kind to you or the one who consistently treats you like shit? At what point does one’s own insecurities have to stop and take a look at their silly selves and say, “Wait a minute. I’ve been given no reason to doubt this person except by the word of someone who has never been trustworthy.”

I wish that moment had come a lot sooner than it did for Brad, as he could have saved himself some serious drama. Of course, if Troy had been able to open up and be more honest about his goals and intentions with Brad, perhaps they would have been able to commnunicate better, instead of letting some deceitful freakshow and a mother-in-law come between them. The narrator’s account of Troy, and of Brad’s perception of Troy, were off just enough to make me wonder how Brad could be so blind.

However, the story is as much about Brad’s growth in trusting his partner, and Troy’s growth in his ability to take personal risks in areas in which he’s not entirely comfortable, so in the end, Brad’s growth from insecurity to trust equals Troy’s growth from security to taking personal risks to ensure that security. And their happily ever after, and the just-desserts for Aria, are quite satifying.

Now, for the dishy part.

Y’all. SERIOUSLY. Gay sex. I learned so much about gay sex I can’t even tell you. I mean, in mainstream media one sees depictions of hetero sex all over the place, in various positions and locations. Even ABC, the Ass Broadcasting Network, had in-the-toilet-stall-sex on NYPD Blue, which about made me laugh because, well, EW. Hetero sex, it is everywhere.

But gay sex? Sex between two men? That’s a taboo area that isn’t often depicted, so really, did I have much of a clue what goes on between two dudes? Honestly, no. I didn’t. I have watched porn and seen sexually explicit still images, but descriptions of gay sex? Not really something I’ve encountered so much. Is there equal division between who is on top and who’s on bottom? What are the positional variations? And isn’t there, well, santorum?

I had no clue. But now, I am becoming an educated reader of the gay romance and the accompanying sex scenes. And it’s not like the sex was gratuitous or crass, either. It was genuine and passionate, and pass me that newspaper, ma’am, I need to fan myself. I never thought that gay sex would be hot, but man alive, thems is some hot live men.

So between the hot man action and the genuine, emotional interaction, this is a damn fine romance. Stay tuned for an upcoming review after I read their earlier publication, Spare Parts. 

Candy’s Take

First of all, what I liked about this book:

I loved the unusual historical setting. Nineteenth-century England is all well and good, but it does get wearisome after a while. Lee does an excellent job of portraying the setting and how Chinese culture—everything from its fashions to its style of architecture—jars Lydia.

Also, Ru Shan is a convincing Chinese person. For one thing, the author refrains from making him über-Chinaman, the way Mary Jo Putney gave Troth of The China Bride so many virtues that she became a caricature of a Chinese woman. Ru Shan knows certain aspects of Chinese culture and philosophy, but is not by any means an expert in all of them. He’s not some kind of kung fu master, nor does he demonstrate intimate knowledge of feng shui; he’s a merchant who happens to belong to a rather interesting sex cult. He’s also not anachronistically tolerant of other races and religions. In fact, he has a true disgust of white people, which is consistent with the era.

The author also did a good job with Lydia’s reaction to being confined and made a slave. It’s very convincing. Finally, a captive heroine who’s not a simpering ninny, sighing and melting into the forceful embrace of the captor after her first flutterings of pleasure. She’s pissed off about her captivity, and she remains quite consistently pissed off, and most of the time I was thinking “Yeah! Good for her!”

Which leads me to what I didn’t like about this book:

The transition from Lydia’s very natural reaction to being a slave (anger, frustration, a desire for revenge, a fervent wish to escape and never look back) to OMG I LURVE YOU RU SHAN was abrupt, to say the least. The sexual portions of their relationship are presented in great detail, but it’s clear that while Lydia enjoys these attentions physically, mentally she’s in another place entirely.

Ru Shan does eventually realize that Lydia is much, much more than just a source of yin the way a cow is a source of milk, so his treatment of her improves accordingly, but we really don’t see them interacting in a way that would lead to two people actually falling in love with each other. Lust, yes. Love, no. Lydia’s switch from bloodthirsty revenge schemes to cooing love dove is so fast, I actually paged back to make sure I hadn’t missed some critical scenes.

Ru Shan’s ultimate declaration of love isn’t convincing, either. He does marry her (MINOR SPOILER: partly to compensate for the dishonor he had brought on her, partly because of her everlovin’ yin, and partly because he’s desperate to use her clothing design skills to help pick up business in his store—yeah, REAL romantic reasons for marrying a girl), but up until the very last minute he quite explicitly admits to himself that he doesn’t—in fact can’t—love her. A few pages later, however, he’s declaring his everlasting devotion to her, and given his reasons for marrying her, and the reasons why he panics when he comes very, very close to losing her for good (hint: losing her love was not uppermost in his mind), this comes way, way too close to the Sudden Realization of Love plot device for my comfort.

It’s not just the switch from hate to love that was abrupt. Overall, the speed at which Lydia and Ru Shan overcome the race and culture barriers when both had narrow, jingoistic upbringings is not believable. Throw in how these two are brought together under unpleasant circumstances that enhance negative perceptions and stereotypes, and I needed a lot more convincing to believe in their love.

Another point that bothered me is how Lydia heads over to China a mere three months after her father’s death, all hot to trot for Max. This seems odd to me. I know at least a year of mourning was customary in the Regency era, though I have no idea what the customary mourning period is in 1898, but three months seems mighty short even for modern times. That, and the fact that Lydia is a young, beautiful, gently-bred woman who travels completely alone all the way to Shanghai provided me with quite the major “WTF?” moment. Even if Lydia is dumb enough to think this is a great idea, where the hell was her mom? I find it difficult to believe that a Victorian mama is willing to allow her young, beautiful, unmarried daughter ship off to a barbaric land without any sort of chaperone.

The writing style overall is quite good, and like I said, Lee does an excellent job with the setting, but there were some passages that, to me, sounded jarringly modern. This is especially true when Lydia finally reunites with Maxwell, her hapless (and hopeless) fiancé. In particular, he constantly calls her “Lyds,” which not only seems modern and too informal even for an affianced couple, but to my ears sounds like a very American diminutive of “Lydia.”

White Tigress is quite the page-turner and I really enjoyed the setting, but ultimately I wasn’t convinced of Lydia and Ru Shan’s love. I’m still going to pick up Lee’s next book, though. It features a Shaolin monk. RRROWR.

Sarah’s Take

I’m entirely in accord with Candy’s impressions of reading about an entirely new location. Breaking out of dewy green England for the far east during a time of great cultural flux was fascinating, and Lee did a masterful job of portraying how each side influenced the other - from their personal perception of each other’s hygiene, grooming, and habits, to the misconceptions that rumors bred on each side.

Further, Lee spent a good amount of time developing how both the hero and the heroine moved past their own shallow perceptions of each other’s culture, and began a deeper understanding of the motives and values that drove them - particularly when those concepts shared common value and interpretation, such as his notion of a person’s “spirit” and her understanding of a human “soul.”

Now, what was it you called yourself, Candy? An uppity Godless chink? Yeah, I think that was it. Either way, Godless hebe over here needed the heathen Chink when it came to some major moments of Chinese culture and Taoist philosophy with a healthy dose of tantra. I honestly felt that the explanation of the motivation came so late that I already distrusted his motives because without any background to his religious goals, I had no basis on which to judge him except by his actions: obeyed woman mentor, purchased slave, chained her to bed, and proceeded to milk her yin, whatever that was.

By the end of the story, I came away with a fascinating grasp of concepts and an appreciation for how Ru Shan’s goals were different from Lydia’s, and, more importantly, how between their character motivations they could find personal and sexual harmony. Getting to that understanding took me some time.

However, my disappointment with the book came when it ended and I didn’t feel there had been enough vindication on three key points.

For one, Lydia herself goes from being a slave to being something of an addiction for Ru Shan to...sailing off into the sunset. I keep asking myself: was the degree to which she became a victim vindicated by the end of the book? Was her experience as a slave properly acknowledged by her lover who was also the person who purchased her and held her in captivity? That’s a serious imbalance of power that a mere, “I’m sorry” is not going to assuage. Even grovelling might not cut it.

Next, Maxwell: without giving too much away, I wanted him to bleed for his treatment of Lydia, and sadly, he remains intact from a phlebotomist’s perspective. She manages to use her newfound language skills and her ability to understand the values of both his culture and the culture of the country in which he resides to bend him to her will, but even then he still manages the upper hand. Through his machinations, she gains what she professes to hate but secretly wants all along, but still, I wanted Mr. Fiance’s head to roll. In a Bobbit sense.

Perhaps the real problem I had was the balance between fantasy and reality. Reaching a glowing happily ever after when there’s been such imbalance of power, hatred, prejudice, rage and sexual pressure, if not abuse, is quite a task that Lee sets up for herself, and one of the easier ways to urge that HEA along would be for those who stand in the way of the couple, or malign their relationship, to suffer in some way for their poor actions. In a romance, at least for me, I want bad things to happen to bad people, especially after bad things have happened to the good people.

Reality, of course, is that the bad things don’t happen in measure to the bad people who you think deserve them, and perhaps Lee was erring on the side of realism, since she did such a careful and crafty job of clearly portraying the prejudices and hatreds on both sides of the English and Chinese cultural divide. Suspending reality for a just-desserts ending might not have been on the menu.

However, I wanted to see some misery on the part of the shitful characters, and I wanted to see something happen to them other than, “And they lived in Shanghai in their continued misery.” Yes, continuing in their existences as described would be hell enough for me, but like Mr. Fiance, I wanted Bobbit Revenge on these people.

I was thinking, as I read the ending, that the best desserts for the icky villainous characters would be Lydia and Ru Shan’s success. If the family of ickiness can overcome their revulsion of the English wife with the knowledge that she’ll bring in money with her clothing designs, they can damn well swallow the crow of seeing Ru Shan and Lydia so happy together and knowing that their marriage is the cause of the horrid family’s largesse.

However, as Candy and I discussed today, it is often very, very hard to buy into mixed race and mixed religion happiness and I wonder what that says about us as a culture. I mean, Candy and I are both in mixed-culture and mixed-religion marriages, though I converted, yet we both remarked on the hurdle that those mixtures presented, and whether it’s possible to suspend belief knowing as we do the historical prejudice that faces them at every turn. Much like the Cassie Edwards Savage Indian who settles down in to prairie bliss with Margie McPioneer, we have a hard time putting aside what we know must have happened in the future.

Yet doubts and cultural clashes aside, White Tigress is a definite page turner, and is certainly a book I’ll reflect on, particularly for what it reveals about my own preferences and impressions of cultures portrayed in romance.

Candy’s Take
Just so you know: if you’re on a diet, don’t read this book. It often goes into excruciating detail on what Julia’s cooking for Rand—buttermilk pancakes, persimmon cake and orange-vanilla pudding are just some of the more memorable items—and I’d feel hungry after putting the book down. This is despite some graphic descriptions of what brined possum looks and feels like, so Darlene, if you ever feel the urge to go into writing food columns or become a commentator for Iron Chef, GO FOR IT.

Overall, Smuggler’s Bride is a pretty decent read. I’m not sure I’d call it a Big Misunderstanding romance, but let’s just say that there are a couple of Big Secrets that do lead to misunderstandings, and Marshall is skillful enough in her execution that I never questioned the necessity of Julia and Rand keeping mum.

Rand himself is pretty yummy. He’s flippant and lazy and sexy, but there’s a nice little bit of depth to him because he used to be in the Army fighting Indians, and like nice, sensitive girly-men who were ordered to do all sorts of unsavory things to the various tribes he dealt with, he has some inner scars that haven’t quite healed properly.

Julia, on the other hand, is a pretty standard feisty romance heroine. I wouldn’t exactly call her Too Stupid to Live, but she does take some pretty big risks with her personal safety out in the wilds. Ever since our discussion about TSTL double-standards, I’ve learned to be more careful about judging heroines as such and Julia does know how to defend herself, thanks to her piratically-inclined mother. But at one point all her goings-on made me stop for a second and think: really, what aristocratic, gently-reared Englishwoman from the nineteenth century would offer to cook and live alone with a criminal whom she’s never, ever met before? Then I remembered: DUDE, it’s a romance novel. Fuck realism. This crazy impulsiveness to Have Adventures Come What May is part of her character (probably inherited from her mom, heh), and the book would’ve been a whole lot duller without it.

Some of the secondary characters are pretty awesome. The two men who initially kidnap her, Ben and Frank Ivey, are pretty funny, but their mother, Ma Ivey, is a regular caution. I giggled out loud when she tried to show Julia how to chew tobacco juice and spit it on the plants to keep the bugs off.

So a qualified recommendation for Smuggler’s Bride. It’s fun and the setting is refreshingly different for a historical, but it doesn’t quite pack the oomph I look for in a keeper.

Sarah’s Take
Look for a star in the east, for again, Candy and I have agreed on the grade for this book. If one looks at the author’s progression as a writer, this novel has much more character development, backstory, and personal relationship development on the part of both protagonists than the previous novel of Marshall’s that we read. I knew why Rand and Julia were into each other; there was no, “Hey! Suddenly we’re in love! Let’s get it on!” moment. They were forced into odd-yet-close quarters with one another and despite the multiple secrets between them, I knew why they fell for each other.

The multiple secrets is one of the two features of this book I must praise the author for, as it’s a fine line to walk between Big Misunderstandings and Hiding Secrets For the Sake of Intrigue. Intrigue is fabulous when done well, but Big Misunderstandings are rarely if ever done well - particularly when you have the characters living in the back woods of nowhere county with no one else to talk to but each other. Big Misunderstandings can hardly flourish in such an environment, but intrigue and secret keeping can, and the challenge of keeping such a story line moving forward lies in the fact that, in this case, the reader knows almost all the secrets, but has to sympathize with the characters who are lying and the ones who are being lied to. The reader knows who Julia is from the beginning, and has a good amount of damning evidence against Rand, though one never wants to believe the hero of a romance is Up to No Good. So what kind of No Good is he up to? And is she going to be able to choose her family over him if he turns out to be indeed Up to No Good? Sustaining the tension is hard, and Marshall does quite a job.

Rand himself, I thought he was quite the dreamboat, but I have a big thing for men who are held to their code of honor, even if that code conflicts with what they find they want more than anything. He’s a confident, self-assured and very smart and crafty man, whose experience in the Army has left him with a very clear and weighty sense of right and wrong that he must at all times live up to. Given the situation he finds himself in with Julia, that moral code is often pressed for testing, and I get all kinds of enjoyment out of watching a noble hero struggle with his own nobility.

Julia was likeable, equally confident, and this may be a sexual double standard on my part, but I found her often to be stunningly, bafflingly, and sometimes stupidly brave. Like Candy said, I can see, from having “met” her mother in a previous novel, where she gets her stone ovaries, but woo damn, does that girl do some astonishing things, and I have to chastise myself for having a harder time accepting Julia’s bravery than Rand’s.

But the most wonderful aspect about this book is the rare find of an author who, when crafting a secondary character who is in all points unique, refuses to fall back on the convenience of stereotype and make that secondary character a one-dimensional caricature.  Ma Ivey is a backwoods, rural, roughly educated, far-from-high-class woman, and there are stereotypes of such rural individuals all over the country. She spits, chews tobacco, makes possum stew, teaches backwoods cooking, and generally speaks in such language that in lesser hands she would become a poor shadow of the character she actually is. It would be simple for the author to swing a phantom arm around the reader’s shoulders and snicker in her ear, “Possum soup? Gross. What a nasty woman, ha ha ha,” and allow the reader to believe she’s in cahoots with the author in laughing at such a strange and low-class creature.

But Marshall doesn’t allow her character to be dismissed: Ma Ivey is also a mother, and a mother who lost one of her children. She’s generous, kind, and thoughtful, and her genuine regard and caring for Julia makes her a terribly fun character to read about. She isn’t just a rural hick who eats possum and probably can’t read. She’s a woman who survived in a harsh land living a sad life on her own, who deserves respect and admiration, even if the entire idea of stewed possum makes me want to gag. I always got a case of the giggles when Ma Ivey’s wagon came rattling onto Rand’s property.

There are so many “forced to live together” “she isn’t who she says she is” “he isn’t who he says he is” stories out there, and I can usually find one that takes place in just about every time period. What’s different about Smuggler’s Bride is the twists applied to the intrigue, and the side characters like Ma Ivey that almost overshadow the main protagonists. It’s as fun and light in tone as Pirate’s Price and a pleasure to read. But I think I’ll remember the characters more than I’ll have an urge to revisit with them. 

Candy’s Take

Y’know, I really enjoyed reading this book. Make no mistake, it’s kind of silly. A ship full of gay pirates? Holy mother of god. But I suspended my disbelief, went with the flow and pretty much had a good time.

The biggest problem with the book is one I rarely encounter. Many single-title romance novels (and fantasy books, come to think of it) tend to prolong the conflict artificially; I mean, usually, just when you think the hero and heroine are going to finally talk and sort out their differences, she catches him kissing some lady on the cheek at a masquerade ball and flies into a passion, runs away to Scotland and rends her hair with grief while he’s convinced she finally ran away to be with that no-good limpdick sunken-chested poet whose titties aren’t nearly as beautiful and firm as his, dammit and then she finds out from her sassy lady’s maid that the mysterious lady is actually his long-lost sister but oh no, he’s all pissy now and she needs to beg his forgiveness for her asinine assumption despite the fact that before marrying her he did have a tendency to hump anything that moved.

So no, this book does NOT have that problem. Quite the opposite. I have to say that this is one of the few books I’ve read that would have substantially improved if it had at least 50 pages or so added to it, because damn, for a big-ass chunk of the book Christine and Justin aren’t even together, and before that they spent all of one day together, none of it particularly pleasant. But within days of them being thrown together on Christine’s pirate ship and Justin reading a few stanzas of Andrew Marvell to her, she’s all “C’mere, stud, I love you, rrowr!” and bam, nookie and HEA. The conflict isn’t just resolved, it’s resolved at warp speed.

Another, more minor problem, concerns Christine’s transformation from shy, chubby duckling to svelte, swashbuckling swan. It takes her about a year, and she sheds most of her weight, loses the zits and becomes a skilled fighter and a convincing male impersonator. OK, one can lose a substantial amount of weight in a year, but the whole master fighter thing was a bit hard to swallow because it takes years and years of training for somebody to become truly skilled at fighting. Hey, just watch any kung fu movie—you can be some punk kid with skillz but the crusty old alcoholic monk can still totally kick your ass.

But on the other hand, DUDE. Shipload of buttpirates. I guess if I can suspend my disbelief for that, Christine becoming a master swordsperson in a year isn’t that much of a stretch.

On the whole, though, Marshall’s writing style is enjoyable. It’s breezy, it’s readable, and the characters are enjoyable even though because of the length of the book and the speed at which the story moves along, they come across more as thumbnail sketches rather than fully-fledged entities. If the love story had been more substantial, it could’ve been a B or B+, easy.

Sarah’s Take

I’m in 100% agreement with Candy in her wishes for more. I wish the story had had more “meat” to it - har har - in terms of the real and valid conflicts between Justin and Christine, and more depth to explain the sudden and intensely passionate attraction between the two of them. I mean, were I a dude, and were I a mega-wealthy stud like Justin, and were I drugged on my wedding night only to wake up with a runaway wife, and then find said runaway wife on a ship of asspirates, would I perhaps, perchance think there was something naughty in her Nottingham? Particularly as she is dressed as a man? On a ship? Of swashbuckling butt burglars?

And my other problem, and truly this is nitpicky in the extreme, is the choice of names for the two major male characters in the book. Justin? Julius? If I was reading quickly - and I usually was because this book just flies - I would often get mixed up between them, as even with a quick scan, the names appear similar. Unless this was a deliberate shading on the part of the author, and I don’t think it was since there was hardly any guardian/ward shennanigans between Julius and Christine, it was a slight distraction that forced me to slow down, even though the prose invited me to speed right along. High speed reading, high speed adventure.

However, the part I loved best about this book, and it was literally a laugh out loud experience, was the camp of it. This was truly the first romance novel I’ve read that was this out-and-out campy. Once I got over the jaw dropping realization that I was reading about a ship of asspirates, I had a great time with this book. Unlike many pirate romances, which try to take the slightly goofy stereotypes of pirates and infuse them with political drama, angst, and sturm-und-drang, this book took the idea of pirates, made them GAY pirates, added a cross-dressing heroine, and hell, while we at it, why not a goose? Named Sally? And an actual person who says, “ARRRRGH?”

This book did not take itself too seriously, which is not to say that it wastes the reader’s time in terms of research or story. It didn’t take itself too seriously in the same manner as your favorite friend who is cuttingly funny because she can laugh at her own foibles. This book was a great deal of fun to read, and it must have been fun to write.

Meriel, the heroine, is also about to become a nun when she realizes she does not have the proper vocation for the sisterhood, and chooses to return home with her brother to help run his newly-granted estate.

Meriel is out with her falcon one day when she follows the bird way off course, ending up in a forest belonging to Adrian. He and his men come upon her in the forest, decide she’s been poaching, and take her captive. Also, Adrian gets a good look at her and, aside from noting the oddity of a woman proclaiming to be a peasant wielding a fully trained falcon, a hobby reserved only for those of elevated status, he decides that she’s beautiful and he wants to bring her home.

He holds her captive in exceptionally kind quarters, especially when one considers that later, she is captive again and this time dropped down a hole. She resists his confinement but refuses to tell him who she is, telling lies because she is afraid he would attack her home since her brother supports one claimant to the English throne while Adrian supports another. He grows angry, tries to force her to become his mistress, then repents his horrible behavior and asks her to be his wife.

She jumps out the window to avoid marriage, miraculously survives, and wakes up with no memory of who she is and how she came to be there.

But oh my, that Adrian is a hot man, she thinks, in her newly clueless state. He’s awful nice, especially since he feels awful about not having been as honorable towards her as he ought to have, and they fall in love, get married, ride off to make whoopee in the fields, get hit by lightning, and presto, she has her memory back, with no recollection of the past few months of wedded and hypersexed bliss.

And this is where I about lost my patience. I know this is among the favorite keepers among our readers, so I expect a good number of dissenting opinions, but I have to line up and redress each element that just didn’t fit together.

First, Meriel. Girl, you got on my last nerve. You want to be free as a falcon, but yet as an educated almost-nun, surely you are aware of the life you chose for yourself when you left the cloisters. You remind me horribly of Belle in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.” There you are, twirling around in the fields, unescorted and unattended in a war-torn area, following your falcon for miles without paying attention, thinking about how “there must be more than this...life.” Who told you there was? I’m sorry, dear, no, there’s not.

You want to be free? Where on earth did you get the idea that you could be free? Freedom was your obsession while you were held in capitivity by Adrian as he tried to come to terms with his attraction to you, but even in the convent you felt the walls were closing in on you. Where did you get this idea that as a single woman you were able to do whatever you wanted? Was there some time travel from the 20th century that I missed?

Next, did Adrian really treat you all that badly while he held you in capitivity? He gave you new clothes, he held you in a guest’s room, fed you, gave you gifts, made sure you had a bath every time you requested it, and the only things he did that you disliked were to make sexual advances on your person and refuse to give you any work to do.

Leaving the sexual advances aside for a moment, what did you expect? You’re a shitful liar; you know it, he knows it, and in a time where his enemy just killed his entire family, shouldn’t he be suspicious of a single woman out with a falcon unattended in the forest who tells inconsistent tales as to her provenance and intentions? Why should he trust you if he knows you’re well born, you’re obviously lying to him, and he has no proof that you’re not a spy? 

In short, Meriel, dear, you’re an idiot, and you grated on my nerves the entire story. I had no empathy for you when you were whining about capitity, I was not taken with your innocence and goodness both in and out of the convent, and I was completely furious with you when you had the poor sense to go off, get yourself captured and dropped down a hole, only to have Adrian ride in, win you back your precious freedom, and fight for you, while you try to figure out new ways to escape with your precious freedom. The man just kicked all kinds of ass and risked his life, and you...ride away. You are a fool, and when you got dropped down that hole, I thought, “GOOD, stay THERE you stupid ninny.”

I confess: I started skipping the Meriel-on-her-own parts and just looking for passages that discussed that scrumptious Adrian.

Next, the plot: one of the Amazon reviewers used the phrase, “Gilligan’s island plot device.” Hell, yeah. Amnesia storyline aside, what was the real conflict of the story, here? Was it Adrian’s coming to terms with his choice to be a battle-fighting, ass-kicking leader of his people instead of a peace-seeking, scripture-reading monk? I can understand the turmoil there, but I’m not entirely sure that was the real issue. Adrian felt a good sized mountain of guilt over his treatment of Meriel, but really, he could have, well within his rights, treated her a whole lot worse. Was it his inability to reconcile his faith with is overpowering lust? Was it the quest for revenge?

Further, the enemy of this story, the guy named Guy, reminded me of the Sheriff of Nottingham in “Robin Hood: Prince of Theives.” More specifically, he reminded me of Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham in “Robin Hood: Prince of Theives.” He chewed on the scenery in his over-the-top evilness. And guy named Guy, short of being gay and molesting animals, masters ubervillany to the point where I didn’t fear him at all as a villain. He was so damn villainous he became almost a caricature of evil: raping, pillaging, bankrupting the estate, setting families up to die so he could steal their wealth. I get it. You’re a bad, bad man.

But then, there’s Adrian. Oh, Adrian. Come on over here next to me and tell me how annoying you find your heroine. You are worth so much more, and at the very least worth a better heroine to be worthy of you.

I swear, he’s like the romance novel dream man: in a time period of ignorance, cruelty, war and instability, he’s educated, fair, possessing of a moral compass that dictates his decisions as a leader, honorable to his bastard brother, careful of his family’s memory, and ready to kick ass and take names of anyone who tries to hurt him and his again. I am fanning myself right now, he’s so hot.

Moreover, between Adrian and Meriel, Putney manages a most wonderful portrayal of faith and devotion to prayer for two characters who almost took vows to the church. At that time, religion was one of the few systems of laws that were constant as leaders changed hands so frequently. One might not know who the rightful leader of the country was, but the Bible’s message at its core did not change. Meriel and Adrian’s devotion to prayer and to their faith was not at all treacly or preachy, but was a source of excellent warmth and a clever method through which to appreciate the complexity of their character.

I read like a fury through most of the novel, but stopped and savored each and every scene with Adrian. Wow, what a creation. He’s so great, I might have to start writing fanfic about him.

Sadly, my dissatisfaction with this book comes from my sense that Adrian was so fan-fucking-tastic that I didn’t think the rest of the story lived up to him. Putney crafted a story about a most exceptional hero, and the plot and chracters around him didn’t equal the joy of Adrian.

Watching Adrian struggle with his feelings for Meriel and finally allowing her to leave him for good was like watching one’s best most wonderful guy friend, the guy who you know is one of the best men out there, marry some shrew who you cannot stand.

Like I said, I’ve been staring at this book, trying to figure out the grade I’d give it. I used to teach remedial Freshman composition, and I’d grade on content and then on composition - what you said, how you said it. If you had a good argument, should it be penalized because you don’t yet know all the grammar rules?

The same rule applies here: there’s a fantastic hero, one of the best I’ve ever read, in this book. Should readers be dissuaded from experiencing his story because I thought the heroine was a right twat?

I will have to spoil one small bit: the best character, after Adrian, in my mind was Cecily, the guy Guy’s heiress wife. She deflects a rape against Meriel and takes it onto herself when her husband decides to violate their high-born prisoner. She’s frequently beaten but once her husband is dead, she stands up to an army of her own men intent on killing Adrian and tells them that she will not stand for any more violence. She throws men without honor out of her home, kicks the villainous sidekick out immediately, and restores order in one long moment. Cecily is amazing, and I adored watching her stand up for herself and take back control of a keep that was rightfully hers to begin with.

My final question: what heroine that I know of would live up to Adrian? If I could pluck a heroine out of another story, historical or contemporary, and match him with someone more worthy, who would I pick? Adrian needs his own personal ad:

Honorable, faithful, morally upright and damn fine looking hero, recently titled and owner and protector of a crapload of land, seeks strong, devoted woman of similar faith to stand beside him against much kicking of ass and political strife. Women with tendencies towards whining, bipolar mood swings, frequent mentions of yearning to breathe free, and multiple losses of memory need not apply.