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

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. 

It actually starts off quite well, with a rather lively writing style. At her father’s deathbed, Sarah Hamilton, our republican heroine (if I had a shot of alcohol every time the word “republican” was used in this book, I’d be dead from anaphylactic shock before page 90) promises to go to England to seek her uncle, the Earl of Westbrooke. Due to a series of unfortunate events, however, she loses her luggage and much of her money. On the eve of her arrival at the Westbrooke estate, she finds herself stuck at an inn and mistaken for a prostitute. She’s promptly hustled into a bedroom that she erroneously assumes is hers, where she undresses (no nightrail because of her lost luggage, so isn’t that terribly convenient?) and promptly falls asleep.

James Runyon, Duke of Alvord, like Galahad of old, is the flower of British manhood: pure and clean and virtuous. Also naked, but unlike the title suggests, he doesn’t spend much of his time in the book in the altogether. However, like many romance novel heroes, he suffers from hypertrophic penile dysfunction once he takes a gander at the beautimous, completely bare republican snoozing in his bed, and the condition persists for much of the book.* (Hey, have I mentioned how often Sarah is called a republican in this book? I have? The repetition is tiresome, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve made my point, why belabor it, right? Don’t you want me to shut up about this already? GOOD. This gives you an idea of how annoying this book becomes as it progresses.)

So where was I before the Spring Snark Attack dragged the last paragraph under? Oh yes, James. He sees a naked, pretty lady in his bed and tries to rouse her because really, he’s not into prostitutes, though he appreciates his best friend Robbie’s efforts to help him get laid. However, Sarah is so exhausted she doesn’t even so much as twitch, the poor lambie. So our Duke of Much Bareassedness, being pretty tired himself, hops into bed next to her, but like a true gentleman, doesn’t ravish her in her sleep despite his manfully turgid state.

Oh, the massive brouhaha when they wake up in the morning with the nekkidness and the virginal trembling and the outrage and the pillow tossing and the misunderstandings and mm-hey the glavin. (By the way, unlike tossing a salad, I don’t think there’s a prurient definition attached to tossing pillows—yet. Please feel free to suggest definitions in the comments. I’d love to come home tonight and huskily tell my husband to “toss my pillows, bitch.")

Once everything is sorted out and everyone and his (clothed) uncle come to check what the ruckus is about, James finds out the woman is not a dirrrty hoooor. She is, in fact, his best friend Robbie’s American (no, wait, republican) cousin. And Sarah is horrified to find out that her uncle died a year before. The man responsible for mistaking her for a prostitute and getting her in this mess in the first place is now her closest relative.

James, personally, is delighted at the turn of events because he has this BATSHIT FUCKING INSANE cousin who’s been trying to kill him, and he wants to get married and pop out sons as fast as possible. Sarah is beautiful, she’s his best friend’s cousin, she smells real purty, and he has very publicly ruined her, so hey, why not?

Sarah isn’t so thrilled and flatly refuses to marry James. She doesn’t want to marry a rake. But specifically, Sarah equates bad marriages and profligacy with the English ton and loving, happy marriages with being American. This borderline xenophobic fear of the English and her veneration of Americans as the models for all marital virtues makes me wonder what version of America she lived in. I mean, wasn’t there an extremely public scandal involving a certain Founding Father boinking someone else’s wife, then being forced into confessing it publicly? And I also seem to remember reading about another Founding Father facing widespread allegations of having a taste for the badonka-donk when he was serving his first term as president.

Anyway, this “no rakes for me” nonsense started to grate on me. He’s nice to her, he’s handsome, he kisses well, he smells good, he’s beyond patient with her, he treats her like a queen, and she keeps on assuming he’s a master cockmongerer without actually telling him her actual fears. And that’s another problem with the book: I have no freaking clue how or why these two fall in love since they don’t spend a lot of time alone with each other, and when they do, they don’t talk very much. James usually latches onto her ta-tas, which of course causes her knees to weaken, and hey presto, they’re making out like horny little weasels. When they do talk, the book is almost schizophrenic in tone. For instance, James can’t bear to say the word “whore” in front of Sarah, yet earlier in the book they engage in an excruciatingly detailed conversation about prostitution without so much as twitching an eyebrow. And of course clamping onto her nipples like a drowning man grabbing at a straw is perfectly acceptable. Seeing the two of them interact more often than not made me go “What the fuck?”

There’s a suspense side-plot of sorts involving Richard Runyon, James’s cousin and next in line to inherit the title. Richard wants to be the duke, and he’ll stoop at nothing to get it. And make no mistake, he could not be more villainous short of planting a giant red neon sign on his head that says “PSYCHOTIC VILLAIN HERE” with a blinky arrow that points down, and maybe cueing Darth Vader’s theme every time he walks onto a scene. Allow me to bust out a little bulleted list.

• He’s bisexual, and as y’all know, all you need to do to make a romance novel villain Super Evil++ is to have him be a Connoisseur of Cock.
• He rapes women.
• He kills with little to no provocation.
• He’s sadistic.
• This one is actually pretty funny: When Richard is enraged, he starts breaking shit. Throughout the book, he tosses and flings aside glasses, dishes, cream pots and teapots with great zest and abandon. No wonder he wants to succeed to the title and fortune so badly; replacing all the china and breakable tchotchkes he’s thrown about in a blind rage—and he’s in a blind rage A LOT—has to cost a mint.

Worst of all, the author never really bothers explaining why Richard is so insane. No, wait, actually she kind of does. It’s spoiler-ish, though, so you know what to do. Brace yourself, it’s a really, really stupid reason. Apparently Richard’s this way because his dad spanked him when he was four years old for being mean to James. No, I’m not kidding. I wish I was. That’s all the motivation the reader is provided for Richard’s batshittiness. GAAAH.

The book also contains a very amateurish mistake near the end of the book, but this isn’t just the author’s fault because the editors should’ve caught it, too. One moment James and Sarah are engaged and the announcement is in the papers (causing Richard fly into a passion and fling yet another piece of china at his hapless lover’s head), the next moment they’re getting married and nobody in the book has any idea they were engaged in the first place. Not only that, but an event that took place over 100 pages before and several weeks ago is also referenced as having taken place just the previous night. Whoever the copy editor is for this book, she needs to be deprived of cookies until she learns to do her job properly. Bad copy editor, no sweeties for you! *slaps wrist*

Despite the multitude of problems—a plot that doesn’t make much sense, the silliest villain I’ve ever encountered, a heroine who’s an annoying prig, a hero who’s nice enough but is pretty much unremarkable, and for the bonus round, a big honkin’ continuity mistake—the book was surprisingly readable. The tone swings wildly from Regency England ("making micefeet of things") to twentieth-century American (”Okay, sweetheart"), but given the other problems, this actually didn’t bother me too much. There were spots though, such as the very beginning of the book, that had a pleasant liveliness to it, and those few spots were what saved this book from the Dreaded F.

*A side note: Romance novel heroes really need to learn to masturbate instead of walking around with a persistent hard-on all through the book. Really, it’s not that hard. *pause, snicker* OK, it IS hard, but if you take matters in your own hands and give the matters a little rub-a-dub-dub, it takes care of things quite nicely and the hardness subsides. See? Congratulations, you’re now a 28-year-old who has finally learned to master his domain, something most males figure out by the time they’re 13.

It does beg the question: what is it about young girls in romance novels that makes them slightly squicky heroines in their own right? I suspect for my brain, it’s the idea that once the novel ends, the story ends. Hero marries heroine, they all live happily ever after. The. End. The characters stay young, beautiful, and perfectly happy in my mind, and this may be one of the reasons I find recurring collections of past novel characters slightly irritating. No, Bob and Jane are living in Bulltestershire Manor and are YOUNG and HAPPY and they do not age gracefully and have sixteen children all under the age of ten!. I think it is that *I* don’t want to characters to age, and I resent an author forcing me to age them in my mental picture.

I think Putney was aware that a grown up child from a previous novel suffering as a heroine the way Alexandra does in this novel would give a good number of readers a major case of the squees. In Rainbows, Alex was called “Amy,” until she decided to change her own name, according to her own telling, and demanded everyone call her Alex. The name change might have been Putney’s attempt to encourage readers to separate the young girl from Rainbows from the heroine in The Bartered Bride. Because Alex sure does suffer a good bit in this book, and no one would want to see a young girl they liked from a previous novel fall into such circumstances.

I will warn you, there is rape, abuse, and a good deal of sexual trauma in this book, and if this is something you are sensitive to, I suggest you avoid this novel entirely.

But aside from the often difficult subject matter, The Bartered Bride is a roller coaster ride of a book, specifically because so freaking much happens it’s amazing that it takes place of a matter of months. I mean, woo damn. Name a convention commonly found in a European historical novel, and I will bet you a Butterfinger that it’s in this book. Kidnapping? Slavery? Young children? Older children? Grown up children? Past characters aiding the present hero and heroine? Villains up to no damn good in horrible ways? Disinheritances? Lack of sexual confidence? If you like adventure romances that take place over several countries instead of romances that insist on keeping the characters in Hymenshire all the time, this is the book for you.

The hero, Gavin, is a Britain-born, Scottish-raised American sea captain; Alexandra is the daughter of Catherine Kenyon, as I mentioned, and is now a widow herself with a 12 (I think) year old daughter, Katie. Katie is alternately precocious, all-too-wise, and the only sign of her acting appropriate for her age is her loathing of her “lessons.”

Gavin first encounters Alex in a slave market on an island in the Pacific while touring the central village with the Sultan, a shrewd and somewhat sociopathic man. Gavin makes the mistake of asking to buy the slave so he can set her free, and the sultan realizes he can use Alex as a bargaining chip in his desire to have Gavin serve as his liaison to the European market, an idea Gavin is opposed to, having guessed that working for the Sultan would be an unfair, tenous arrangement at best, and downright dangerous at worst.

The sultan and Gavin return to the palace, and Gavin finds Alex in a cage in his room: she is to be the prize in a challenge between the Sultan, who has never lost, and Gavin. If Gavin wins, he is free to take Alex with him. If the Sultan wins, Gavin is his slave, along with Alex.

The terms of the challenge are not insurmountable but certainly extremely difficult, and the last challenge places Gavin and Alex in - well, not to give away too much, but places them in a rather forced horizontal position, not the best thing for an honorable English gentleman, and a woman who has already been sexually assaulted several times while in captivity.

I will tell you that Gavin does win, and he and Alex locate her daughter and return to England to face their feelings for one another, and society at large, which would not be all too welcoming to a woman with such a tattered sexual past.

The sexual past is the challenge for me here: on one hand, this book dealt with real issues and managed to sustain an engaging storyline that travels from multiple countries to multiple societies and illustrates some of the differences in those societies. However, I do recall on several occasions thinking, “When is this angst going to come to an end?”

I’m not talking about the personal angst experienced by Alex. She had sexual issues to deal with throughout the book and I found them realistic and somewhat admirably dealt with by the author. But one catastrophe after another smacked these two over the head, to the point where you wanted the villains, all the many varieties of them, to experience hell-on-earth style punishment just to vindicate all the suffering the protagonists had to endure.

On the other hand, Putney is a master at describing emotional encounters, and the scenes between Alex and Gavin are wonderful, as are the scenes that develop their relationship. I’d have to say that The Bartered Bride is often more of an adventure book than a romance, but the romance is a solid element that provides a great deal of healing and does soothe the angst when it gets to be too much. And the adventure itself is intelligent reading, with a romance between two intelligent protagonists, so I found it perfectly enjoyable.

On A Wicked Dawn, and by the way, the title has nothing to do with the plot, not that romance titles do, is the story of Amelia Cynster, one of a set of female twins who I first encountered when I read Devil and Honoria’s story, Devil’s Bride. Amelia and her sister Amanda were very young, about to make their debuts within a few years, and were more annoying than adorable if I recall. Now Amelia is left in London after her sister makes a lovely match with some lord of somethingorother, and she’s set her sights on Lucien Ashford, Viscount Calverton.

Lucien, quite the honorable gentleman, has spent many years within Amelia’s circle of acquaintance, and many more trying to dig his family out of a mountain of debt left by his wastrel of a father. Without telling anyone about his circumstances beyond his mother and their solicitor/banker/investement wizard, Lucien manages to invest and profit enough to bring his family from the deep scaret to the solid black - or in this case, the purple. Now that Lucien has the money, it is time for him to have the luuuuuv (tm).

Amelia has figured out that he was in dire straits for years, and sneaks into his house at three in the morning, the night after he has imbibed his weight in liquor celebrating the windfall that put his family firmly on the side of fortune. She proposes marriage: we’d suit well, and you need my dowry.

Rather than correct her, he agrees. And then passes out.

Now pay attention, because that last part is important. See, in most romance novels, there is a hero, a heroine, some attraction, and some force or problem that must be overcome to reach their happily ever after. Both parties have to earn their happy ending. Sometimes that problem is internal (he stutters or has a predilection for sheep, she spends too much or has a weakness for rutabaga flambe, leading to bad breath and pimples) and sometimes it is external (cue evil villain and don’t forget to make him a gay abuser of animals, too) and sometimes it is not even a person. Sometimes it is cultural differences, class differences, or a big misunderstanding that keeps on going.

This book has two problems to overcome by the authors creation, though there are far more than two problems as far as I am concerned. First, Laurens creates this peculiar theme of control that is found in many of the Cynster novels. He who admits love first, loses control. The men fear losing control of their lives because of their growing emotions for the heroines. The heroines want control over their manly men. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The same is true of On A Wicked Dawn: Lucien fears losing control of his engagement and then his marriage by admitting he loves Amelia, and seeks to secure her declaration of love to assure him that he is not alone in the emotional experience. He also does not want to tell her of his duplicity, because he is afraid...of what exactly I am not sure. Of her being angry at him? It’s a peculiar plot device and not one I understand entirely.

As for Amelia, she’s loved Lucien for years and now that they are married, she sets off building the marriage of her dreams: a love match between two committed people. Where she got the template for that in the London society in which she moved I have no idea. But that’s what she wants. So she’s plotting and scheming to gain his love, while he does the same to gain hers.

And how do they go about securing this love? By exhausting themselves with sex. Seriously, if there was ever a book made for frequent and interminable masturbation or a surfeit of hormones, this is it. They are either kissing, going to second base, rounding third, or just humping like bunnies every fifth page. You’d think they’d have been caught in the act, but no, rooms down the hall from ball rooms, masquerades, garden parties, house parties: all fair game for some humpity hump. And after the marriage? There is still some humpin’ going on. It is non stop. And I have to wonder if the main reason Laurens wrote this book was to answer the question, “Can I write a romance novel that is, content-wise, 78% sex scenes?”

There is another force at work in the novel causing conflict, but it seems like such an afterthought that I still can’t figure out the point of it. Someone is stealing items of value from members of the ton, and various scenes indicate a lady, though one is never sure which lady it is. And the plot is so disconnected from the rest of the story it’s more of an annoyance than a source of intrigue.

However, I can’t grade this lower than a C because I did enjoy reading it. So long as no one read over my shoulder while the hero and heroine did it on a riverbank, in bed, on a desk, in a chair, on the floor, in a closet, in the garden, in a shed, on the grass, in the parlor, on the table, in the foyer....

The plot is simple enough. Fallon Gilchrist (what the hell kind of name is “Fallon” for a socialite in 19th-century Boston, anyway?) is an artist, and somewhat of a recluse after her husband’s death. Gilchrist couldn’t screw worth a damn, of course; this is Romance Novel Commandment No. 43, which says “Thou shalt not suffer a heroine who hath great orgasms to live, unless she hath sexual congress with the hero and only the hero.” Fallon has fallen into a creative and social rut, so her best friend, Anna, decides to shock her out of it. The Boston Women’s Auxiliary holds an auction for Montague Bridgeman, who’s quite the studly stud, to help raise funds for the library. Whoever wins the auction gets to keep him for a week. (Please ignore this glaring historical improbability, because this is the least of the book’s problems—seriously). Anna wins the auction and proudly presents the hunka burnin’ love to Fallon.

“Bridge,” as he likes to be called, is allegedly to be used as Fallon’s model, but of course by page 17 they’re humping like crazed ferrets. And somewhere along the way the two of them fall in love. And—ugh, I can’t even work up the energy to come up with a decent summary of what happens next. So the seven days are spent in humpalicious bliss (although when I went through the book and counted the days they actually only spent four together), and in that space of time they realize they can’t live without each other yet they still separate for completely pointless reasons that I can’t fathom, Fallon’s artistic juices are fully flowing again (as well as her other juices—Lawless never ever lets us forget the state of Fallon’s wetness, I mean Jesus Keeee-rist this woman’s poonanny bears a terrifying resemblance to a faucet whenever she’s around Bridge) and bla bla bla hump hump hump they all lived happily ever after.

To call the characters in this book “cardboard caricatures” would be to insult cardboard, which is a really useful product when you think about it. Fallon is such a bland non-entity that I can’t even come up with a whole lot to say about her. She married a bland man, lives a bland life, and other than a stupendously well-lubricated cooch, I honestly can’t think of any distinguishing characteristics about her.

Bridge isn’t much better. He’s supposed to be deep, because right when he meets Fallon, he makes this astoundingly profound pronouncement about art, artists and their subjects:

“For you and I are both aware you need to get to know the ‘me,’ inside as well as out. Only then will you be able to capture my true essence. (…) Every artist longs to capture his subject’s true essence. The ability to do so is what separates the good from the truly great.”

Apparently finding out his true essence involves frenzied tit-humping, lots of blowjobs and gnawing on his asscheeks. We also find out Bridge was in a war (presumably the Civil War) and is suitably tortured about it, but only in the most superficial way. Behold, the existential angst suffered by Our Hero as described by this piece of deathless prose:

He’d given up trying to gauge why he had been spared when other good men, men a damn sight better than he’d ever be, had fallen like flies. It was too much to understand.

Did you hear that? Damn good men had been killed pointlessly in a war. What a very novel thought! Oh the philosophical and moral conundrums it presents!

But most of the time Bridge’s thoughts are occupied with Fallon’s melon-like breasts and perpetually moist hoo-ha, which is a blessing because all that deathless prose was making me gag.

And speaking of deathless prose: the euphemisms used for body parts in this book made me laugh out loud several times. The first time was when Fallon’s ‘giney was referred to as a “honeypot.” Goddamn. A honeypot. Thanks to the good folks at Honeybucket, though, a port-a-potty was my most immediate association when I read that word. And a few pages on, Fallon’s Chunnel of Love is called a “hot little box.” I’m serious. I was waiting to see if it would be eventually referred to as a “bearded clam” or a “cum-bucket” and thus seal my theory that Taboo was actually written by the same people who write all those letters to Penthouse, but alas, I was destined to be disappointed.

The rest of the prose, when not coming up with hilarious words for our naughty bits n pieces, is awkward. In fact, it downright lurches. It switches between fairly modern cadences to extremely clumsy ‘tis-ing and ‘twas-ing. Hey, everyone knows that all you have to do to replicate authentic 19th-century speech is to use those contractions. ‘Tis a fact.

See?

The sex scenes themselves weren’t too bad. They got kind of numbing and repetitive after a while, but some of them were pretty stimulating. So that, coupled with the excellent cover, raised this book a half-grade and saved it from D- territory.

But other than the hothotHOT cover and the two scenes that were actually pretty sexy, I really can’t recommend this book. The emotional interaction between the characters is wooden at best and contrived at worst, the prose style is pretty awful and the plot is pretty much non-existent. Even as a piece of titillation it doesn’t work all that well, because more often than not it’s kind of a snooze-fest. Unless you’re looking for a historical that uses the words “box” and “pantiless” with wild abandon, skip this one. Trust me. ‘Twould never do for me to lie to my faithful readers.

See?