by Candy • Monday, February 07, 2005 at 07:38 AM
Our Grade:
Title: The Real Deal
Author: Lucy Monroe
Publication Info: Brava (an imprint of Kensington) 2004, ISBN: 075820860X
Genre: Contemporary Romance
By all rights I should’ve loved The Real Deal. It has a computer geek hero. It has a heroine who has body image and self-esteem issues. It’s about two oddballs who have never felt like they belonged finding love and acceptance with each other. It has hot love scenes. And it has received rave reviews from just about everybody.
Yeah, but you know what? It stinks. I had an inkling that this was going to be a rough ride when right in the beginning of the book, the katana the hero uses while practicing swordplay (he’s a computer geek, so of course he has to practice martial arts instead of running the treadmill to keep the geeky flabbiness at bay, right? Riiiiight) is referred to as a Korean sword. The problem is, the katana isn’t Korean, it’s Japanese, and geeks know this. Confusing a katana as being Korean would be like confusing Windows with MacOS. The Koreans have their own swords, none of them referred to as “katana” (which makes sense because katana is a Japanese word). So right off the bat Simon Brant’s credibility as a geeky hunka hunka burnin’ love is shattered.
But that’s petty nitpicking, really. If this were the biggest irritation in the book, I would’ve handled it fine because God knows I’ve enjoyed books that have made big blunders. But the The Real Deal was excruciating to read on all levels. The writing style veered from hilariously purple to hilariously wooden, the characters were poorly-recycled archetypes at best, and the plot was completely humdrum when it wasn’t busy being implausible.
There was also an odd core of prudishness to the book that contrasted uncomfortably with highly explicit nature of the sex scenes. If you want to read more about this, click here and then highlight the space to read additional notes, which may or may not offend you, depending on whether you swoon when you encounter words like “tit”.
The book starts with the heroine, Amanda, having a minor breakdown after finding her husband, Lance, in a ménage-a-trois in his office. But to let us know that Lance isn’t a garden-variety villainous cheating spouse, Monroe resorts to the usual shorthand employed by authors and moviemakers everywhere to make Lance Pure Evil™: he’s bisexual. That’s right. He was being slipped the salami even as he was hiding his own in a trim ‘n tanned California beauty.
Amanda flips out and divorces Lance’s pervy ass (though in my opinion, while cheating is grounds for justifiable homicide, being bi and engaging in a threesome isn’t all that pervy, but then once you’ve seen the horrors of Furry porn, not much seems pervy, period). Having grown up in a loveless, emotionally abusive household and then dealing with two years of a loveless, emotionally abusive marriage, Amanda is now a royal mess and decides that her career is the most important thing in her life. She pushes hard for her company, Extant Corporation, to merge with their competitor, Brant Computers, and is thrilled no end when she’s made the primary negotiator for the deal.
Everything is going swimmingly until she meets the head of research and development at Brant Computers, Simon Brant. Simon is a hunky reclusive genius (read: socially dysfunctional computer geek with a big cock) who’s also bleeding-heart enough be all concerned about the consequences of the merger on Brant’s employees—which is weird since he’s, you know, incredibly reclusive and doesn’t create social bonds easily. He and Amanda develop an instant case of the hots for each other, but of course to drive the book for about a hundred pages, he and Amanda have world-class insecurity complexes and completely discount the possibility that each could be attractive to the other. In fact, their inner thoughts were so repetitive, I can summarize two thirds of the book as follows:
Amanda: I’m fat! My husband didn’t love me! My parents didn’t love me! I suck in bed! The only person who loves me is my wacky redheaded best friend, Jillian! There’s no way Simon wants me!
Simon: I’m really hot, and I seem to be a borderline case of Asperger’s syndrome! Asperger’s is SO HOT! Plus it sounds like Assburgers when you say it out loud! And women are scared by my giant penis! Also, women don’t like it when I act like a crazy recluse or when I walk away from them mid-sentence so I can run tests in my lab! There’s no way Amanda wants me!
Since Simon won’t stick around long enough to listen all the way through Amanda’s presentation on the benefits of the merger (in true Asperger fashion, he’ll literally stop mid-sentence and head off to his lab to conduct experiments when the urge hits him), Amanda does what any sane, professional (har) businesswoman would do: move into Simon’s house to force him to listen to her. And then proceeds to act offended when people make certain logical conclusion about her intentions.
Anyway, bla bla bla, Amanda and Simon finally have mind-blowing sex, they both reveal painfully clichéd stories about their tormented past, we meet some Hilarious Sidekicks (who aren’t that hilarious, though I do want to kick them), the villainous bisexual husband re-appears to engage in various acts of villainous fuckery and also so Simon can become irrationally jealous, the merger issue is resolved very predictably, and I’m left thinking “This book kind of sucks monkey ass.”
But the plot is really the least of this book’s troubles. The writing style is an even bigger irritant in this book. Purple sentences abound. For example, Simon’s eyes are always “gunmetal”, while Amanda’s are always “doe-like” or “Hershey’s-brown.” They’re never just brown, or gray, or hell, just eyes. Witness:
Their eyes met across the distance separating them. His were devouring her with ravaging force. (…) Her attention was locked on the man standing so still on the deck. His gunmetal gaze moved over every inch of her body with tactile force.
To steal a phrase from my partner-in-crime, Sarah: Gageth me. Amen.
There are also various attempts at sexy love-talk. Here are a couple samples:
“I want to bury myself so deeply inside you that our pelvic bones touch.”
“You’re going to scream all right, but it’ll be because I’m doing something.”
So besides Simon sounding uncannily like Smoove B (at one point I was seriously waiting for him to say “Baby, I want to slip you the sting sideways"), people speak in italics all the time in this book. Don’t know about you, but when a character starts speaking chunks of sentences in italics, I hear William Shatner speaking the lines. Sexxxxxy. So here’s a writing tip, y’all: well-written dialogue rarely needs to resort to italics for emphasis.
The biggest irritant in this book? The characters take the prize by quite a long shot. Amanda in particular was driving me batshit. Her life was also so awful that it was hard to believe. Loveless parents, loveless brother, loveless husband, horrible boss: almost everybody in her life sucks balls, and they suck balls unrelentingly—there’s no depth to the bad guys whatsoever (which, to be fair, is a problem most romance novels struggle with). And as a chubby woman who has struggled with my own body image fuckery ever since I was 13 years old, I felt little patience for Amanda when she wouldn’t quit boo-hooing about how ugly she was. I wanted to smack her and tell her “GET OVER IT. You think you’re 10 lbs. overweight. I’m actually 30. Shut the fuck up and just fuck Simon already. But please gag him so he can’t say shit like ‘I want to slip my arousal into you so deep I can’t go any further.’”
And don’t even get me started on Jillian, the supposedly outrageous best friend. Monroe says Jillian is outrageous, but aside from being a redhead and dressing like a tart, this is, in all seriousness, the most outrageous thing she says in the whole book: “It should be against the law to be morning sick past eleven A.M.”
Ooooh girl, you go on with your bad self. Monroe even tagged “Jill said facetiously” to the end of the dialogue to make sure we know Jillian is joking, because otherwise we might mistake her for some kind of monster who would actually push to legislate morning sickness, and that would make this book anti-family or something.
Only one thing prevented me from giving this book an outright F: my benchmark “F” book is Desire’s Blossom by Cassie Edwards. Very little can beat the sheer horror of that book, and as annoying and tedious as The Real Deal was, it couldn’t match Desire’s Blossom. If you want a good contemporary romance featuring chubby heroines and adorable heroes with real flaws, pick up a Jennifer Crusie instead. Bet Me, in particular, features a marvelously well-done overweight heroine. But hey, like I said, everybody else seems to love The Real Deal. If all the flaws I list above don’t bug you, then by all means pick this book up.
Highlight the space below to read my Super-Secret note:
Among other things, this book features an explicit tit-humping scene, but the author can’t even bear to use the words “damn,” “dick,” or “fuck.” Hell, she can’t even use the word “penis.” It’s always “arousal” or “sex"—even Simon refers to his cock as his “arousal,” which my husband (a bona fide computer geek and Sensitive Girly Man) found hilarious when I told him. What the hell? Lookit, there’s TIT-HUMPING going on. Using “darn” instead of “damn” and tap-dancing coyly around the words “fuck,” “cock” and “shit” in this context is like preserving your virginity by having anal sex.
Back to where you came from
by SB Sarah • Sunday, February 06, 2005 at 08:28 AM
Our Grade:
Title: Angel Rogue
Author: Mary Jo Putney
Publication Info: Topaz / Penguin 1990, ISBN: 0-451-40598-6
Genre: Historical: European
I started this novel immediately after finishing Dearly Beloved and Candy assured me it was much much better. It was, but I’ve still come away after finishing the novel with a let down, unsatisfied feeling. If you’re only reading the top paragraph of our reviews – and really, why would you do that? – I would have to sum up my feelings by saying, it was a good story, and I liked the characters well enough, but it didn’t sweep me away and cause me to almost miss my stop on the train like a good romance can. I didn’t have the urge to finish it at home because I couldn’t put it down. I finished it at home because if I finished it on the train I’d be leaving myself with nothing more to read for the rest of the trip, and then I’d be annoyed at myself.
Angel Rogue is the story of Robin, more properly known as Lord Robert Andreville, a spy during the Napoleonic wars who has recently come home much worse for the wear after many, many years of derring-do. According to Candy, who has read more of the Fallen Angels series than I have, Robin appears frequently in the prior novels in the series, and he was one of her favorite characters.
I concur with her feelings about Robin. He’s confident, self-assured, but also aware of his own feelings of guilt and horror at the actions he took as a covert operative during the war. Unlike some tortured heroes, he doesn’t behave like a complete bastard and then realize his horrible attitude stems from his horrible guilt. Moments of revelation such as these never garner much of my sympathies; my reaction is somewhere along the lines of, Gee, that’s sad, but you were still acting like a complete schmuck.”
Robin hides his feelings of remorse behind an ever-changing but completely affable, charming façade, which he adjusts depending on the company he keeps. He’s not ever truly mean or cruel, but holds everyone, including his brother, Giles, and the heroine, Maxima, at a distance, feeling himself unworthy of love due to his past.
The heroine, Maxima, is an American born to an English father, himself the younger son of a Viscount, and a Mohawk woman. Maxima was raised in an unconventional home, to say the least, and after her mother’s death, she and her father were roaming bookpeddlers through much of the mid-Atlantic states. They traveled to England so Maxima could meet the rest of her family, and so her father could attempt to raise funds through sources that were kept from Maxima, though she was aware that these sources and schemes never really worked out.
While in England, Maxima’s father suffers a heart attack and dies, leaving her with her uncle’s family. Her uncle isn’t a horrible man, but her aunt and cousins are all jealous in a rather one-dimensional secondary-character-that-doesn’t-matter-much fashion. As Maxima says, when their jealousy is brought to her attention, they “don’t have a waistline between the three of them”
The story begins when Maxima overhears her uncle and aunt speaking of the suspicious circumstances behind her father’s death, and draws the conclusion that her uncle had him killed. She runs away that night, intent on walking to London to find out for herself what happened.
The next day, while cutting across some neighboring lands, she trips literally over Robin, who is sitting under a tree immersed in his own melancholy. Upon discovering her plan to walk to London – and even I had to raise a brow at that, given that she is a female, unaccompanied, and marginally disguised as a boy – Robin declares himself her escort, and they set off towards London together, much to Maxima’s displeasure.
The bulk of the story concerns their journey from Yorkshire to London – on foot – and the resolution of the questionable nature of Maxima’s father’s demise. Along the way, Maxima’s father’s sister Desdemona, another aunt whom she hasn’t yet met, decides to chase after her, certain that Maxima has fallen into the hands of a conscienceless bounder. Desdemona ascertains that Maxima is traveling in the company of Robin, and pays an unannounced visit to Robin’s brother, Giles, the current Marquess, and accuses Robin of “moral terpitude.” Giles is understandably upset, and completely attracted to Desdemona, and the two of them set off to find Maxima and Robin, thereby providing a marvelous parallel love story.
As is so often the case, I was much more intrigued by the secondary love story than the attraction between Robin and Maxima. Part of the problem was the predictable Naïve American Wisdom stereotyping of Maxima, who was eager and able to guide Robin to “listen to the wind” and reach out with her soul to find the dark patches of his conscience, and knew of ritual words to eradicate his emotional burdens. The other part of the problem was that the journey to London seemed to take a very, very long time, and once they reached London, the scene of all of the resolutions to every open storyline in the book, the entire collection of unresolved questions was all sewn up in two days’ time, and in 50 pages at most.
Robin’s journey, aside from the one on foot, was to heal himself from the dark guilt plaguing him from the war. Maxima’s journey was to heal Robin, find closure for herself in dealing with her father’s death, and to find her place as a person who belonged to neither the Native American world, the American world, or the English world. As with Dearly Beloved the tortured hero was much more interesting than the relentlessly perfect heroine, who again was a source of wisdom, healing, warmth, and understanding. As hard as it is to craft a heroine who is flawed but lovable, I much prefer romance novels when both sides of the romance grow markedly from the beginning to the end. Maxima arrived in England with the skills and moral balance she retained through the story itself, and didn’t grow so much as fall head over moccasins in love with Robin, and use her wisdom to heal him, evade their pursuers, and learn the truth of what happened to her father.
Thus, this book rates a B- for me. Giving it a C seemed harsh, because it wasn’t bad. As a romance, it was straight average for me. It wasn’t bad, but it sure didn’t sing.
by SB Sarah • Tuesday, February 01, 2005 at 06:39 PM
Our Grade:
Title: Dearly Beloved
Author: Mary Jo Putney
Publication Info: Signet (copyright Mary Jo Putney, 1990) 2004, ISBN: 045120851X
Genre: Historical: European
Usually by the time I get two-thirds of the way through a book, I’m churning through it, desperate to see how it ends. With this one, I am having a hard time finding the energy with which to give a crap. I mean, how many repetitive misunderstandings and angsty moments can you have in one novel?
If you’re Mary Jo Putney and you’re writing “Dearly Beloved,” there’s no such thing as too many.
I have lost my patience with this book. It’s like the same conversations between the characters, with Ominous Foreshadowing.
He: You are a ho! I cannot trust you!
She: I am a noble ho! You can trust me because I looooove you! But I have secrets I cannot share with you!
He: You are a ho! You love me! Yet you have secrets! And so do I but that’s different! And I should be emotionally healed but I am not! I still don’t trust you!
She: Let’s have lots of sex!
He: Yes! Let’s!
She: There is a man! He is scary!
He: I am a spy! After the same man!
Narrator: And she wished she had told him of her past, but she would live to regret bitterly that she had not shared her secrets with him, because they rose up and bit her square on her ass!
Candy tells me this is one of her most famous and widely considered to be her best, but I am not in accord with that assessment. The hero is tortured and scarred, and throught the storyline he’s emotionally healed by her luuuuuuve. Usually I’m a sucker for that, but woo damn, her eternal perfection and serene courtesan routine is starting to bother me.
The story opens with a violent, drunken rape scene between the hero and a young woman, and seriously, I almost tossed the book back in the BooksFree bag and sent it back unread. Yet I knew this book was supposed to be so highly rated that I had to at least try to finish it. I do have to say, if rape scenes are not your thing, you won’t get past page 25 of this book.
The heroine, Diana Lindsay, is a calm and collected country mother, raising her son with another woman, Edith, when they come upon a woman, Madeline, sick and dying in the snow. The miracle of country living cures her, and slowly she reveals that she is a courtesan who fled London after falling in love with her protector. Diana, whose past, including how she came to be living as a single mother in the countryside, remains a complete mystery, asks Madeline to teach her to be a courtesan, knowing on some personally metaphysical level that This Is Her Destiny.
When she arrives at her first Cyprian’s ball, Diana sees the hero, Gervase, Lord St. Aubyn, across the room, and they immediately begin a long, hot and sweaty affair born out of mutual white hot attraction. I don’t think I can reveal much more than that without spoiling the book, but the questions of St. Aubyn’s rape of a young woman, the father of Diana’s son, how Diana came to live on her own in the country, and why on earth she thought being a ho was her destiny are revealed as the book progresses.
It seems to me that Putney takes too many conventions of romance, such as the virginal heroine or the tortured hero, turns them over, then shuffles them together to make you think it’s original. To me, Dearly Beloved reads like a runaway train. I want to stage an intervention with the characters:
Lookee here, Hero: Shut up, listen, and get the hell over yourself.
And you, too, Heroine: You are not perfect. Do something stupid, fart, burp, get mad, raise your voice, get mad in the face of the hero being an assmonkey. But for GOD’S sake quit realizing you’ll regret not speaking up. Fool.
The problem is, subverted conventions are great- but only if they actually develop as characters, and don’t spin their wheels in the mud of their own habits. The hero says he’s realized his emotional paralysis, then goes right back to the same behavior of distrust and accusations. He constantly doubts the heroine without her giving reason to do so, and then excuses his own conduct when those same accusations lead to her to do something he doesn’t like. It’s all her fault - everything, her fault. His emotional wounds: the fault of women, and she’s a woman so lay that at her doorstep. His inability to love and be loved? Caused by his upbringing, and one of his parents was a woman, so see above. This would be bearable if she stood up every once in awhile and told him he was being an asshat, but she just takes it, and remains serene in the face of his derision and nastiness. Only at the very end does she lose her shit with him, and as the reader, I was all, “Thank GOD.” Remaining calm to try to throw off balance someone who is angry can be effective, but after awhile her behavior started to come across to me as manipulative.
Neither of them is a prize, if you ask me. Usually I can read to the end of a novel based on my interest in one of the two protagonists, if the other is something of a butt. But in this case I was disinterested in both of them equally, and repulsed by the end, even. The hero’s temper and the heroine’s serenity just get old after awhile. And no one is that perfect all the freaking time.
Case in point, the following conversation between the hero’s brother, who is confiding in the heroine while the hero is off risking life and limb on some mission.
Heroine: “Why did you choose to talk to me? You hardly know me.”
Hero’s brother: “Because it is a convenient plot device!”
Just kidding.
Hero’s brother: “...you remind me of a Madonna, all warmth and understanding.”
And that is pretty much all you need to know about the heroine. As I said, I’m a sucker for stories in which the hero is rescued from emotional torment by the love and guidance of a caring partner. But I also demand that the heroine realize something about herself, as well. She also must learn, or grow, or change, or develop in a traceable fashion that makes her character worth knowing for 350+ pages.
In “Dearly Beloved,” the hero progresses from someone I would dearly love to bean with a tire iron to someone who I’d dearly love to smack around with a frozen salmon. The heroine starts irritating and ends irritating. And the course of the story is angsty and repetitive, and irritating as all get out. There’s no end to the unpleasant subject matter, and any taboos or things that might potentially make you go squick are probably in the plotline somewhere.
I realize that there is a loving following behind this book of readers who adored it, so I am hesitant to throw my own review in their faces, but I have to say, I did not enjoy this book. Too much angst, too much drama, to much anger, and no resolution that effectively and sufficiently diffused all that negativity. It’s one thing for the hero to be a butthead and then say, “I’m sorry.” It’s another entirely for the hero to spend an entire novel being a butthead and then have him deliver words of purple-flowered love and adoration at the end. The latter scenario does not entirely relieve the bitter taste in my mouth.
However, this won’t turn me off of Putney forever. I’m moving on to Angel Rogue, which my partner in crime Candy assures me is a wonderful novel.
