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

Francesca Bonnard is one of the most unusual heroines I’ve encountered in Romancelandia: she’s been deeply damaged by her husband’s treatment of her, and as a consequence, her skittishness about falling in love and allowing any man to have ultimate power over her is genuine and consistent. She sincerely loved her handsome diplomat husband, so when she found out about that he’d never been faithful to her and cheated on him in retaliation, only to have him divorce her for her one infidelity, her life was, in a literal way, wrenched away from her. But instead of playing the martyr or retreating to the country to lick her wounds, Francesca decides to become a courtesan--a very expensive, very successful courtesan. And what’s more, she decides to steal some highly incriminating letters from her husband to ensure her continued safety and to rub her husband’s nose in her newly-chosen profession by writing to him periodically about her amorous conquests on the Continent, as well as the shockingly expensive jewelry her lovers shower on her.

Francesca is, in short, fantastic. Magnificent. Easily one of my favorite romance heroines of all time. She’s strong-willed and strong-minded, and what’s more, she’s effective with it. So many romance heroines are presented as being competent and (gag) feisty and full of strength, only to be systematically emasculated by the story so she can be proven wrong and then rescued by the hero--even in really excellent romance novels, like The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne. Not so Francesca. Every time James tries to pull one over her, she pulls a judo move on him and flips him onto his back before he quite knows what happened. She genuinely outwits him a time or two, and instead of setting up an adversarial relationship in which the hero is clearly the protector and the heroine’s attempts to subvert him lead only to further danger, the story features two true equals, worthy adversaries who never quite successfully get the upper hand on each other. When Francesca outwits James, he’s filled with admiration for her--and so am I, because it’s so rare to have a romance heroine who’s genuinely clever. I’m so tired heroines who are presented to the reader as the smartest biped to promenade around Almack’s, only to have the author show, over and over and over again, that her particular hamster is sleeping at the wheel. Francesca doesn’t have a hamster powering her brain. Perhaps something more like a devious robot ninja.

Oh, come on, if I didn’t have at least one of these cockeyed analogies in my review, it wouldn’t be the same, and you know it.

Francesca also refuses to portray herself as some sort of wounded, misunderstood soul, which only underscores the pathos of her situation. Her choice to be a high-priced courtesan is an expression of her desire to control every aspect of her intimate interactions with men, as well as an attempt to free herself from depending on a man for security, either emotional or financial. Even the way she refuses to paint herself for anything else other than a courtesan is a defensive move, designed to defuse any barbs slung her way, much in the way an overweight girl will make a joke about the size of her ass before anyone else gets there--and make it funnier and more cutting. This exchange, in particular, is telling; it takes place when Francesca is retrieved from the canal, shivering and dressed only in a transparent chemise:

“You’re creating a diversion, all right,” [James] said. “You’re wearing a shift that’s soaked through. You might as well be wearing nothing. And everybody’s looking.”

“That will never do,” she said. “I’m a harlot. They must pay to look.”

Even better, Francesca doesn’t have a problematic sex life, and she doesn’t find True Luuuuurrrve because James turns out to have the one and only cock in all of creation capable of giving her orgasms. She enjoys sex, and she feels lustful when she notices a beautiful male form. (One of my favorite lines in the book is when Francesca says to James “You’re beautiful when you’re angry.” The inversion of gender tropes and the switching of the focus of the gaze makes me profoundly happy in the pantalones.) Francesca gets an inkling that what she feels for James is out of the norm, however, when the sex isn’t just excellent--it’s extraordinary. In short, the experience that’s reserved for showing slutty heroes that He’s Found the One is the exact same one used for a slutty heroine, and it works.

And I think that’s why I’m somewhat disappointed by the readers who seem to dismiss Francesca as an unworthy heroine simply because she’s a whore who isn’t repentant for her actions or condemned by the characters who serve as the ultimate moral compass--James, in fact, tells Francesca that if he can’t keep her interest, it’ll bloody well serve him right to be a cuckold, which just about knocked me on my ass with glee. Francesca becomes a prostitute in a way that’s completely in keeping with her character and motivations, and her lack of shame about it is refreshing. None of the same readers who are bothered by Francesca seem similarly bothered by the way James whores himself and calls himself such. Part of it may be related to the fact that James is doing it for King and Country and not filthy lucre, but I feel like Chase manages to set up Francesca’s circumstances in a very sympathetic way. Mostly, I think, readers tend to be much harder on heroines because they’re simultaneously placeholders and competition, with the added complication of not being the object of desire the way heroes tend to be.

James is a worthy partner for Francesca, though because he’s set in a somewhat more conventional mold, I’m not quite as gleeful over his development as I am over the flaming hoops Chase has made the genre conventions governing heroines jump through for this particular book. James’ brutal honesty about what he does and the methods he chooses to employ are refreshing, and I greatly enjoy the fact that he never judges Francesca by a different standard than he does himself. It’s to Chase’s credit that she makes this egalitarian honesty so much a part of James’ nature that I never pause and wonder if this would’ve been a convincing attitude for a man of that time, because she makes it clear that he is not an ordinary man.

Chase’s knack for wry observations and witty banter stand this book in good stead, too. Several bits made me laugh out loud, such as this observation from Francesca, when she swoons after running too much:

She’d fainted because she was not used to running, Francesca told them as they fussed over her in the gondola. (...) “Have you ever run in stays?” she said to James. “Oh, why do I ask you? Of course you have. But you’re a man, and your lungs are larger.

This book isn’t quite perfect, however. For one, I feel that Chase’s prose has gotten choppier over the years, and it’s not an improvement. Her current style doesn’t quite flow in the same way it used to, and I miss that. I also wanted more book. I wanted more detail, more depth of emotion, more details on what Francesca went through during and right after the divorce, and James’ (mis)adventures.

The villains aren’t especially interesting, either. In the past, Chase has made the effort to give us a glimpse into the villains’ motivations, making them, if not outright sympathetic, then at least characters in their own right. The bad guys in this story, however, lack depth. The female villain is a screaming bundle of irrationality, poor breeding and homicidal urges; the male villain, Francesca’s ex-husband, is a scheming, cold-hearted, voracious predator. They weren’t particularly scary to me, and they were never any genuine threat to the safety and sanity of the protagonists. This is a shame, because there’s so much delicious territory to be exploited by a villain who’s genuinely scary, who actually makes you doubt whether the protagonists will survive him, despite knowing there will an HEA waiting for you by the end of the book.

And lastly, I didn’t particularly enjoy some aspects of the ending. Certain bits made sense in the context of the plot, but other bits of Happy Ending were gratuitous and pushed me from feeling satisfied to mildly incredulous. Srsly, why do romances insist on making everything nauseatingly perfect for their characters in the happy ending? Authors: it’s OK for the protagonists to not get every single goddamn thing they want. I just want a solid reassurance that they’ll be happy. In fact, knowing that there are one or two things off-kilter makes the sweet parts even sweeter. You don’t want to douse a decadent brownie with maple syrup; you want to complement it with some slightly tart berries, or pair it with the subtle sweetness of freshly-whipped cream, or the mellow accents of vanilla ice-cream.

All in all, though, these flaws are inconsequential. Your Scandalous Ways is a fantastically entertaining book with a heroine who quickly shot to one of my top spots for all-time favorite and a hero who matches her in every way. If you’ve enjoyed Chase in the past but have found her last couple of efforts somewhat lackluster, I highly recommend that you pick this up.

This book is available in mass market paperback from Amazon and Powell’s, or rented from Paperspine.

Jayne, in her review, and Jane, in an email to me, both pointed out the extraordinary external force acting against the Daniel and Catherine: the entire city of New York will not let Daniel forget his wife. It’s true.

More than that: strange voyeurism that allows anyone to find out anything about 9/11 victims. Daniel’s late wife is not just a former wife; she’s memorialized online, in multiple sites, and because she died on September 11th, she’s called a victim and a hero. Thus it’s easy for the heroine to find out more about her, to find her picture, to find snapshots of her short life. Her life, and her death, are matters of public record and display, and by extension, the end of Daniel’s marriage.

O’Reilly did two very smart things in regards to Daniel’s first wife: one, she didn’t allow Catherine to indulge in nasty, pointless jealousy, or allow anything to taint the memory of Daniel’s wife. It’s an old cliche, to highlight the strength and attractiveness of the heroine at the expense of the hero’s past relationships by comparison, but to do so in this case would have cheapened the significance of Daniel’s moving on into a new relationship. In a lot of widower romances that I’ve read, the former wife is a spectre hanging over both parties, either as a formidable nemesis, even from the grave, or as a source of guilt for one or both parties. Not so here.

Secondly, O’Reilly created a heroine who complimented complemented Daniel as he is now: quiet, reflective, and deeply loyal, who understands his desire for simplicity and clarity, and who serves as a compliment to his current personality, and a catalyst for him to leave the stark, mournful pattern of his life. If anything was going to spur Daniel into changing his life after Michelle died, it would be irresistable attraction, which is not only one of my very favorite plot devices, but is used in this plot in particular to reveal more about both characters. Neither one is pleased to be removed from their comfort zones, particularly when they realize the many, many reasons that their relationship could be uncomfortable.

Additional “whodunit?” conflict is taken care of off stage, which is kind of a let down - I think I said out loud on the bus, “Wait, that’s it?!” but it is absolutely realistic. Daniel is an accountant investigating potential financial shenanigans at Catherine’s family’s antiques auction house, and he’s not going to ride a white horse into the boardroom and slay the wrongdoers, or have some showdown in the stairwell that might involve firearms or some crap like that. He’s going to write a report and submit it to the folks who do things. That’s his job.

I do wish more screen time could have been granted to Daniel’s brothers when they meet the heroine for the first time, because I would have loved to have seen/read their initial reactions to the woman who brought Daniel back to living again.

And I wish that in one scene, Catherine would not have been chasing after a black market faux designer bags, as their sale and distribution has been linked by Interpol to terrorist activities. It seemed a poor choice of activity for Catherine, particularly since she is so attentive to detail and quality as she vets antiques. Terrorist ties or no, counterfeit bags are usually craptastically cheap and fall apart easily - to say nothing of the dye that comes off on Catherine’s hands at one point.

Brothers and handbags aside, I come away from this book with the following conclusions: Kathleen O’Reilly is an author name that will immediately pop out at me from the Harlequin rack, as her men are simply wonderful. This book supports my suspicion that O’Reilly writes men of Nora Roberts quality, which is high praise from me, as I love just about all of Nora’s heroes.

And finally: if there had to be a book I read that was the first in my experience to deal with 9/11 as a part of a character’s backstory, I am glad it was this one. O’Reilly handled with deft sensitivity an issue that could easily have been overdrawn and overwrought, and she deserves mad props for the effort.

Looking for independent book sellers? This book is also available from Powells.

Tessa bugged the shit out of me. You know that person you know in your life who is on the cusp of really embracing their potential and then without fail they whine or shoot themselves in the foot or make dumbass decisions while proclaiming, “I am figuring out who I am and what I want?” Tessa reminded me of that person I know, and it’s not a favorable comparison. I don’t expect every heroine to know what she wants, but Tessa’s one step forward toward what she wants not what she thinks she should have, OMG half step back, commence beating herself up for that step forward in a different direction, then take another step forward, repeat sequence again dance got old. 

And the conflicts between Tessa and Gabe that Tessa seemed throw up in front of them like so many pesky hurdles that weren’t that strong from beneath made me want to shake her. I want autonomy! I want anonymity! I want my own place! I want to not need anyone! I make bad decisions and I’m a good bartender, but that’s not enough. I want things and will deny that I want them! But I want them anyway when I SHOULD be wanting someone or something else! And I have to readjust all the things that I want because they are coming into conflict with other things that I didn’t know I wanted, and the other stuff that I want but shouldn’t want.

Tessa had that rare and irritating ability to delude herself, and I lose patience with that shit in no time flat. She recognizes that she makes bad decisions. Admits it outright. And yet she still doesn’t listen to herself - and she barely listens to other people who tell her she’s better than she thinks she is.

She would have continued pushing herself into accounting, a field she was not at all interested in, because she thought that was a responsible profession, until two different people pointed out that her near-encyclopedic knowledge of New York City’s real estate would make her a great real estate agent. Well, duh-cakes, honey.

The underlying theme centered on Tessa’s achievement of autonomy and partnership, and the idea that it is possible to find a job that fulfills and matches your interests and goals, instead of merely a job that pays the bills. Gabe has that at his bar, but it’s his family’s establishment. He loves his job, and his life, and has always wanted to be doing exactly what he’s doing now. Tessa is conflicted between what she wants to do and what she thinks she should be doing.

Visually explained, Tessa needed to build her own pedestal of accomplishment and then place that pedestal next to someone else’s for equal protection and balance, and not erect a leaning structure that rested entirely on the strength of someone else’s foundation. Problem was, she hadn’t recognized that she had already established her own foundation by moving to Manhattan on her own, getting a job, paying her way through college (even if she was in the wrong major for her skill set) and working at a bar making a huge and solid circle of friends. She never fully gave herself credit for the accomplishments of her backstory.

However, every moment that Tessa bugged the shit out of me was underscored by the fact that, though her habits and hand-wringing moments of self-doubt were irritating to me personally, they were each and every goddam one exceptionally well written. They. Were. Real. I wanted to smack her upside her stubborn head because she seemed so real. It’s rare that a character would get under my skin so much, especially in the limited page space of a category romance. Usually I need a great many more pages to be so bugfuck annoyed by someone, but no, in a few hundred pages, I wanted to sit her down and conk her on the head with a liquor bottle. Then have a drink with her. She brought out the ‘Oh, honey’ in me, but that’s not a normal occurrence with me. O’Reilly gets it right, so right it’s real.

And speaking of right: O’Reilly gets New York right, too. Damn near perfect, and I’m there every day. She knows her apartment buildings, how the different neighborhoods within Manhattan change in a three-block walk, how “Chelsea” used to mean one thing and now it means something entirely different, and what various people in different stages of their lives are looking for when they move into their shoebox in the sky. O’Reilly got Manhattan dead on perfect.

So what was the best part?

While reading this book, I made a note to myself: “hr to ex NR men.” What does that mean? If this book is any indication, Kathleen O’Reilly may be the heir to the Nora Roberts title of Really Unbelievably Nuanced, Delicious Male Characters (aka RUN-DMC). All you ladies who dig Nora for her well-written, flawed, funny, and fabulous men? Go out and find yourself this book. I was totally into each and every brother, and not just Gabe, the protagonist, because they were each fascinating, even as supporting characters who were presently mired in repeated habits of behavior and weren’t fully fleshed out.

The attraction between Tessa and Gabe, his realization of his feelings, and his interactions with Tessa, his brothers, even his bar clientele: delicious.

This book is funny, real, and marvelously well done, with an exasperating heroine I still cheered for, Nora-Roberts-esque male characters ( A WHOLE SET OF FOUR THREE OMG YESSSSSS), and a setting that I know, love, and enjoy when it’s done well. Well played, Ms. O’Reilly. Well played. 

In this scene, she is speaking with Grey, the hero and a fellow spy, after he’s captured her.

“I have known several men of your type. None of them was amenable to reason.” She sounded more and more resigned. “We come to an impasse, you and I. What will you do with me?”

“Damned if I know. Take you to England and decide there, probably. By then we’ll understand each other better.”

“I meant, what will you do with me tonight? I am eating life in very small bites these days, monsieur.”

Then, later, as they find a camp:

“This is what we need. You have Gypsy blood in you, Annique?”

“Not from my mother’s side, I am almost sure.” She could smell his shirt, the starch and the vetiver-scented water that was ironed into it, which was wholly a French custom and not a British scent at all. They had such meticulous technique, these agents. “I do not know enough about my father to say....”

He did not touch her, but something in her body reached out and greeted his body as if the two were old friends who had not seen one another for a long time. She did not like it that her body chatted to his in this fashion.

Annique and Grey are two of the most well-written protagonists in historical romance I’ve read in a long, long time. In fact, I told Candy about this book and said it left me complacently blissed out in such a fashion that I hadn’t experienced since she made me read The Windflower.

Plot summary? Oh, fine then. Annique Villiers is a French spy who is thrown into an enemy prison alongside Grey and Adrian, two British spies. The three all know of each other, and after Annique helps them to escape, Grey captures Annique with the intentions of bringing her to England. And really, I can’t say more than that without giving away some of the best hidden plot twists I’ve encountered.

Annique is a clever heroine, who at the start of the novel is learning to see a future when her life has never been more than the moment when she puts one foot in front of the other. She’d never looked further than her next step, her next minute. She’s funny, charming, brave, resourceful, and brilliant. She refuses to compromise herself, or her integrity, and she knows she’s good at being a spy.

Grey is a slightly tortured, lonely, but deep hero, who gives little away on the surface of his expression but has a lot going on in his active, brilliant mind. Fascinatingly, Bourne acknowledges in the narrative that while Annique is beautiful, Grey himself is plain, and not necessarily attractive (all the more reason the abtastic cover model should go pose elsewhere. This is a terrible cover that sells this marvelous book way, way short, dammit). But he’s brilliant - and since I find intelligence beyond sexy, I loved this hero.

The plot is both new and not new. As Jane from Dear Author pointed out when we emailed each other about the book, squeeing like dorks, the heroes are English; the villains are French. That’s nothing new in a war-set historical romance. But the depth of historical significance and the intrigue of spies from rival sides reveals another side to Napoleonic wars. Some historical novels take place at balls in England while the war is raging on in France, but it’s something happening elsewhere, to other people, not to the protagonists. This novel is about those “other people,” sneaking back and forth from England to France and back again, the people to whom the war is happening personally. There’s much drama, but thanks to Annique, there’s also a thick element of humor woven through the story.

The only flaw I found with the story was that while Annique and Grey are uniquely rendered characters of a familiar mold, the villain, he was stock and dull and scary only because he had no mercy and I had to therefore wonder how someone so stupid and so ignorant arose to such a position of power when surrounded by all these marvelously intelligent people. The villainy in both the antagonist and in the larger French spy community is based on sexual assault and predatory actions on the innocent, and the endless threats of rape and assault made me more than a little ill, not because they added up to a significantly dastardly villain, but because it was too simple a retread of rape-and-violence-and-thinking-with-cock = Bad Guy. The extra thick icing of bad guy is that he tends to rape people for a good bit of the story, and I didn’t need that extra spoon feeding of “here’s the bad guy!” If the villain had kicked puppies and been a raging closeted homosexual, I’d have had to weep for the injustice of pairing that villain with the marvelous creations that are Annique and Grey. He’s not the bad guy because he wants to sacrifice others for the sake of his own ambition and greed. That’s apparently not enough badness. But when a villain is that much evil, there’s rarely any resolution that can adequately revenge his evilness.

But truly, the hero and heroine are incredible enough to offset the over-done bad behavior of the villain. Bourne could have written Grey and Annique’s entire backstory out as part of the narrative. The book could have been three times as long and no less fascinating. This is easily one of the best historical romances I’ve ever read. Bourne’s use of language and her skill in slowly revealing the layered secrets of her protagonists are lessons in writing talent that many, many others could do well to follow.

Wilson uses Ellie as the reader’s access point and world building device: she’s an unschooled yet deeply skilled woman learning of Fey culture firsthand. Conversely, Ellie is well-versed in folklore of Fey culture and of the legend of Rain himself. Through Ellie, the reader learns the present state of the Fey, and their past as well.

But gosh darn, she’s perfect. Seriously, I don’t want to reveal how she is perfect in every way, but clearly untapped wells of massive awesome reside in Ellie, and each chapter grabs a trowel and digs the reader closer to the subterranean depths of innocent awesome that reside in Ellie. In just about every respect, she is nearly perfect, and despite making social gaffes, she does nearly everything with grace and kindness. It gets a bit old. But even then I liked her. She skirts the border of Mary Sue but I found her to be more than just the typical marvelous fairy-tale heroine.

She has a darkness to her that is dangerous to the future of the story, I think. While I can’t get into the specifics without giving too much away, Ellie’s lack of knowledge and control about her skills are doubly harmful to herself and the other Fey, particularly since her origins and the source of her gifts are a mystery. Further, because she is so freaking perfect, as high as she rises in status during books 1 and 2, she has that much farther to fall.

Some readers may be bothered by the degree of sparkly perfection that is invested in Ellie’s character, but Wilson’s skill in developing the other characters assures me that she’s not going to neglect the development and potential flaws of her heroine. She’s too smart a writer, if books 1 and 2 are any indication, to fall for such an easy characterization.

Rain is a delicious fantasy hero, all magical and powerful and shapeshifting into a big ass fire-breathing cat with wings. He’s a few thousand years old and can kick all kinds of ass, but he has some big ol’ flaws to overcome as well, both as a mate and as a king. He’s tormented by his past, and has a stubborn tendency to see things in black and white. He needs to grow up despite being thousands of years old, and his pairing with Ellie, who is so very, very young by comparison, twists the balance of power back and forth, between his magic, her innocence, her knowledge of humanity and his inability to be flexible with other’s faults.

The books build a LOT of world and a LOT of characters and sometimes the plot drags for having so many players to introduce. But each one is fascinating enough that I didn’t feel overwhelmed with people to keep track of. Wilson does an outstanding job of balancing development of character with development of the saga - I don’t get tired of any of the new characters, and even caught hints of characters to come who I anticipated. There’s a lot to keep track of but it’s worth every moment. Further, it’s another marker of the excellence in the writing: the Fey and the mortals both are flawed characters, but Wilson manages to lend humanity to the Fey and nobility to the mortals who might otherwise seem pale in comparison to the amazing magical skills of the Fey. Plus, Wilson’s portrayal of how easily those who are scared or intimidated can be manipulated by rumor and falsehood parallels the current political situation in a great many places. Like I said, there’s layers. Layers like a stack of Big Macs.

Some of the reviews elsewhere talk about the slow development of the plot - this is true. But it’s also deliberate, I think, because in every respect, the story and the characters are moving towards battle. There’s a lot of mention of the Fey’s skills in war, their weapons, and their manner of fighting, and the enemies rising against Rainier and Ellysetta and the Fey and the Celerians. The preparation for that battle, and the smaller battles that precede it in books 1 and 2, is deliberately slow because it heightens the tension and the importance of what’s going to happen. The parts I found myself skimming more were those that featured extended face time of the evil Mage, or of the idiot queen of Celeria, who really never got what was coming to her in my opinion. The malevolent hand-rubbing glee of those who plotted against Ellie and Rain grew tiresome. Instead of developing an exceptionally large Big Bad for Ellie and Rain and the rest of the Fey to battle, those who plotted against them seemed more pathetic or egomaniacally overblown to be as scary as they may have been meant to be.

However, Wilson circumvents one plot foible that irks the crap out of me most of the time: the idea that because the narrator and the story proclaim person A and person B “soul mates” and that they are Meant to Be Together, they are hereby exempt from all normal awkward process of getting to know the other person - even though they are for all intents and purposes complete freaking strangers. While the courtship between Ellie and Rain goes on awhile, and they fly off here and there to be alone during the appointed times for courting, they do navigate the process of learning about each other like any other couple might do, soul mates or not.

Within that courtship is a fascinating balance of power on which I am still ruminating: he recognizes and claims her (I keep envisioning the Jersey/Philly version of Rain’s claiming of Ellie: “Yo. Ellie. Youse’s my true mate, or what?!") but they have to bond on many levels and establish psychic and physical links to one another to complete the pairing, or he will die from her absence. She has to accept and believe in him - and love him, of course - to create those links. He identifies her, but she has to accept him - so the stability and health of the relationship, even on a magical level, depends on both of them.

Wilson’s prose is tight, balancing action, romance, magic and simple humanity. It’s a world that’s easy to step in and out of, and despite the immense number of things going on, I didn’t lose track of the story’s multiple threads - and for a distracted person such as myself, that says a lot. I had to stop myself from reading the book more than a few times because I knew if I sat down to read a few pages, I’d end up reading dozens and lose complete track of time. When book 3 is published, I’m going to have to mark time in my agenda to read it, because the pleasure of losing one’s self in the fantasy world should be a sizable indulgence. A mere bubblebath won’t cut it. This is a book worth taking a weekend vacation solely for the purposes of reading it. You could book a room at the Holland Tunnel Motor Lodge and just sit and read.

Come to think of it, that’s not a bad idea.