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

Until I picked up this book, I’d never read a Betty Neels book, and I was not disappointed in the least. And in list format, here are are 6 Important Facts I learned about this novel:

1. Hot Dutch doctors, especially the wealthy ones, are incredibly generous and once in the hot throes of lovin’ say things like, “Oh, my darling, my darling!” And I have a hard time imagining Dutch doctors going into raptures of romantic expression by saying, “Oh, my darling! My darling!” However, I can imagine them saying, “But sit and fart in the duck!” Wait, no. I can’t.

2. If you get in a wreck in Holland, and are a British nurse, you and your bus full o’ spastic children (nice vintage terminology!) will end up at a hospital, one which will happily arrange to pay you as if you were one of their staff while you tirelessly and selflessly care for the children. Yeah. But what about retirement?!

3. The heroine is so relentlessly selfless it’s astonishing that she can stand upright. She’s got a backbone of the same durability as an old, damp dishrag. Her uncle and aunt treat her as one step up from hired help, and her cousin takes merciless advantage of her, even going to far as to slander her to The Hot Dutch Doctor Oh My Darling. But really, they fed and clothed her so she can’t complain. And according to what I’ve read online, many a Neels novel features plain but noble British nurse falling head over heels with Hot Dutch Doctor Oh My Darling. Did the Hot Dutch Doctors die out? Will angsty emo vampires suffer the same fate? Perhaps we need to spearhead the fund raising for the endangered romance novel hero species. Do not let the oversexed Regency Earl With Not a Hint of Venereal Disease go the way of the Hot Dutch Doctor Oh My Darling! Call now!

4. The heroine never complains, even when The Hot Dutch Doctor Oh My Darling has listened to Evil Cousin instead of Plain Noble British Nurse, and accuses her of being a thoughtless wench. Plain Noble Brit Nurse needed to administer an enema of justice to her shitass Evil Cousin.

5. Fortunately, the happy ending elevates the Plain Noble British Nurse, and rewards her for her selfless behavior. She wins an incredibly happy, optimistic future with the Hot Dutch Doctor Oh My Darling - in Holland, far far away from her family of craptastic crap.

6. Unfortunately, the happy ending elevates the Plain Noble British Nurse and rewards her for her selfless, and altogether spineless behavior. She never has to stand up for herself where it counts, really, and the selfish family never gets a hard paddle to the assal region like they deserve.

If Neels is part of the foundation of romance, and indeed I think she is, reading this book (complete with red page dye that came off on my hands) was both a quaint and educational experience. Quaint because romance, ma’am, you have come a LONG WAY. Imagine the heroine of The Magic of Living meeting up with a nurse heroine from a Blaze novel fresh after sex in the linen closet with Dr. McSchlong. Poor Plain Noble British Nurse would pass out cold. Her idea of scandalous was her cousin dating a married doctor - which is plenty sleazy but somewhat less of a shock when compared to what Blazing McSex can occur in Doctor/Nurse romances today.

However, reading The Magic of Living was educational because the elements at work in the story were effective on me, jaded reader that I am. The heroine was faultlessly noble, which got old but even still, she was amply rewarded and there’s no doubt I was rooting for her, especially because Neels took deliberate steps to make her sympathetic to the point of, “Oh, Honey,” but never quite so pathetic that I wanted to smack her around. The hero, however, was something of a stock background figure: enigmatic in his affections until the very end and even then, his mercurial announcements of love and of sweeping her off into the sunset were so abrupt it was creepy. Creepitude notwithstanding, the sudsy fantasy of vintage nurse/doctor category romance worked for me, much to my surprise, even though I could identify when Neels was working to make Plain Noble British Nurse even more Noble and Sympathetic. I more than enjoyed this trip in the wayback machine - but I wouldn’t want this to be the only type of romance I read. I like applesauce, but I also like hot sauce, and I wouldn’t want to eschew the latter for an exclusive diet of the former. 

This book begins with the most doofy premise in a flashback, I literally rolled my eyes and thought that there was NO way I was going to finish it, much less enjoy reading all these categories that insist on making me roll my eyes and snort.

Trae, the heroine, and four of her friends are in college, indulging in a candlelight oath ceremony wherein they promise to fulfill their personal goals before getting married. The ceremony ends with them all saying in unison, “When it comes to marriage, just say no!”

Oh, for God’s sake. Note to author: making me think of Nancy Reagan = total romance buzzkill.

Enter the story: Trae is a bridesmaid at her friend Lucie’s wedding when Lucie goes flying out the door and runs away, leaving her groom, Rhys, at the altar. Rhys, the tycoon referenced in the title, is Lucie’s longtime neighbor and their families had intended them to marry for a long ass time. Trae, one of Lucie’s friends from Tulane, the same group of friends who promised to “Just say no!” runs after her, as does Rhys. They end up in Rhys’ rental car, driving to Lucie’s house in case that’s where she ran off to.

No such luck. Lucie is gone, and Rhys and Trae are equally determined to find her and make sure she’s ok. Lucie, it seems, is exceptionally wealthy but horribly neglected and controlled by her parents, and neither Rhys nor Trae believe she’ll be ok without her money, connections, or friends for long. Trae wants to make sure she’s ok; Rhys fully expects that yet again, he’ll rescue Lucie, talk her down from whatever panic she’s in, and persuade her to go through with their marriage as expected. That’s your key to Rhys right there: “as expected.”

The two of them team up, and suddenly, this book is much less about the tycoon referenced in the title, and is more about the chase, the travel, the adventure, the maddening mishaps, and in short, became one of my favorite types of romance, one that I haven’t read in a long, long time: The Road Trip Romance.

Oh, man, I enjoyed this book like Merde and Mon Dieu, to quote Nathalie Grey. Seriously. I dug it. 

Sarah reviewed Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist for Romancenovel.tv earlier this week, and I was supposed to get in on the HOT HOT VIDEO REVIEW ACTION, but alas, technical fuckiness got in the way. It ain’t easy being bi...coastal. So you get a review the old-fashioned way instead, which is almost definitely for the best, because appearing on TV presents all sorts of difficulties, such as dealing with the fact that I’m Sarah’s Tyler Durden. (And if you’re wondering whether this is my incredibly roundabout way of saying that I’m actually Brad Pitt...well, I’ll ask you this: have you ever seen the two of us in the same room?

Think about it.)

My corporeal status notwithstanding, here’s what I think of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist:

I like it. I like it a lot. It’s not perfect by any means, and I didn’t fall head-over-heels in love with it, but it is a fresh and daring beastie, and in many ways, it’s a very well-crafted story. The book, not unlike a good pop song, is rife with hooks. Behold:

1. It’s about a boy who asks a stranger to be his Five-Minute Girlfriend. I am a sucker for this storyline. The Fake Fiancé(e) plot will get me every. Goddamn. Time.

2. In the tradition of some of the greatest coming-of-age tales, like American Graffiti, it takes place in the course of one night.

3. Late-night teenage capers! In Manhattan!

4. The book is written exclusively in first-person, with all the bits from Nick’s perspective are written by David Levithan, and all the bits from Norah’s perspective are written by Rachel Cohn, and the chapters alternate point-of-view.

Good, clean fun.

So Our Intrepid Hero, Nick, is the bassist for a queercore band and has just finished playing a show when his Evil Ex Girlfriend hoves into view. In desperation, he turns to the girl in flannel standing next to him and asks her whether she’ll be his five-minute girlfriend. And after some struggle, she agrees. And they share a smoking-hot kiss. And then her Evil Ex appears. And then assorted adventures ensue, including hijinks that involve a dying Yugo, a jacket named Salvatore and a strip club featuring dancers who dress up like nuns while performing songs from The Sound of Music. And since it’s a YA novel, along the way, the two of them learn valuable lessons about letting go, taking chances, making the right sorts of choices and not moving too fast. Awww!

And really, if there’s one thing I have to complain about with this book, it’s that I could sometimes spot the Big Lessons too easily. I didn’t like it when I was a kid, and I like it even less as an adult. Cohn and Levithan aren’t especially heavy-handed with it (unlike the utterly execrable Rainbow Party), but some of the characters behaved in perfectly convincing precocious teenagerish ways, and other times behaved in ways that you would mostly see only in a YA novel. Nick’s Evil Ex, in particular, was inconsistent in rather jarring ways, and there were times when I wondered why Nick and Norah didn’t behave more like the horny teenagers they are, but these quibbles are minor. What I liked about the book far outshone the problems I had with it. There are three things in particular that stand out for me:

1. The way it talks about music. Music is an incredibly visceral experience for me, and it’s taking over a lot of the “Keep Candy Happy and Sane” tasks that leisure reading used to accomplish (because leisure reading time isn’t exactly in plentiful supply nowadays, cry). I’m a bit of a music geek (if I weren’t so slapdash about the way I dress, I’d probably qualify as *gulp* a hipster), and going to a show is often a full-body experience for me. Cohn and Levithan capture that really, really well, with all the force and unfettered passion of teenagers whose emotions well so full and so hot, they threaten to burst out of their skins.

2. Its portrayal of teenage sexuality. Norah is horny. Nick is horny. They fool around. They’re not virgins. They think very frankly about sex. Yeah yeah yeah, I mention up above that I wish Nick and Norah had behaved more like horny teenagers, but by and large, this book captures the impetuousness and sexiness and high-running emotion of teenage crushdom without seeming either exploitative or preachy. Teenagers think a lot about sex, and the book treats that as a given without making it a point of titillation. That’s hard to do, bitches.

3. This is probably my favorite aspect of all: I love, love, love the queer-friendliness of this book. This is not your mom’s YA novel. Nick plays in a queercore band. His bandmates are gay. Norah, at one point, has doubts about Nick’s sexual orientation, and she’s peeved because she wants his hot ass, and not because being gay is somehow revolting or villainous. During the night, they go to a strip club full of drag queens and strippers dressed as nuns. There’s a little bit of girl-on-girl making out. And it’s all portrayed as more-or-less the status quo. I especially loved the fact that Nick’s sexuality comes off as somewhat ambiguous to the outside eye. When was the last time somebody like this was portrayed positively in a romance novel? Shit, when was the last time a character like this was actually a hero in a romance novel? I can’t think of too many. Nick’s ambiguousness and the general queer-friendly air of the book were a breath of fresh air, especially compared to the way romance novels tend to hyper-masculinize their men--which, paradoxically, enough, often makes me wonder what they’re attempting to compensate for. The contrast Nick provided was especially stark because I read this right after I finished Dark Lover by JR Ward.

And speaking of Nick, I would like to state for the record that for much of the book, I felt like a pedophile because he is HOLY CRAP SO HOT. It’s highly disconcerting to develop a hard-on for a fictional character 11 years younger than me, but seriously? I’d do Nick, and do him hard.

Sarah, in her video review, mentioned the ending and the issue of the Happily Ever After. I have some issues with the way the way the Happily Ever After is often portrayed and treated in romance novels, and the rather strange and, to be perfectly frank, somewhat fucked-up expectations we seem to have, but that’s another rant for another day. I agree with Sarah: the ending is excellent and full of hope and future adventure, and it doesn’t make the typical mistake that many stories do that take place in similarly compressed timelines, i.e., end with the protagonists declaring love everlasting (like the creepy and awful and unintentionally hilarious ”Naughty Under the Mistletoe”).

In short, if you’re looking for a Young Adult romance that’s unusual, unabashedly urban and topical (though it sometimes verges on the fleetingly scenester-ish--fifteen years from now, kids reading this will be snickering and rolling their eyes at the references to emo and hipsters, I have a feeling), pick this book up. It’s unlike any YA novel I’ve read, and I really wish I’d had something like it when I was a teenager. I certainly love reading it now, well past my teenage years, and have Cohn and Levithan re-capture some of the spark and turmoil of those years for me.

Generally we have a lot to say around these parts about kickass heroines who go all wussy or, God forbid, humpity sexfiend on us. Or, for that matter, heroines who are labeled as strong, feisty, or even lethal on the back cover but then spend the whole plot hiding behind or whimpering for a big hulking male to come and kick the ass on her behalf. Highly unsatisfying.

Which is why I am so pleased when I discover a genuinely kickass heroine. Jasmine Parks, aka “Jaz,” in Jennifer Rardin’s new series (Yes, yes, another series. I’m going to read a stand-alone single title next, I swear) is 100% bonafide grade A certified-by-Oregon-Tilth Kick. Ass. What are the ways in which the ass is kicked by Jaz? Let me count them:

1. She gets hurt. She falls out glass windows, shit (not literally) falls on her, she gets cut, hit, slapped, beaten, and bitten, and she says “OW” and then keeps going because if she stops to nurse her wounds and whine about how she’s a delicate little flower, she’ll die. There’s fight sequences that make you wince, because Jaz will get the ever living shit beat out of her and still stand up and kick the ass.

2. She doesn’t call for help unless she needs it. Her partner has otherworldly powers (more on that in a minute) and can kick slightly more of the ass than she can, but does she hide behind a pillar and whine for him to come save her? Nope. She pulls yet another weapon out of her sleeve and serves up the ass for more kicking.

3. She rescues herself time and again from some bad situations, while also keeping in mind the relative health and safety of other people who have come into her world. She looks out for her partner, the people who help her, the could-be-a-stock-character-yet-is-awesomely-developed gadget dude who builds neat weapons, and all the other characters who enter her posse. No one is expendable in Jaz’s estimation.

4. She tends to become personally offended and outraged when innocent life is taken for granted and needlessly killed. She tries to keep collateral damage to a minimum, and gets really freaking pissed if her target kills people and taunts her with it.

5. She knows that getting the funky-funky on with her partner is a bad idea, and repeatedly recognizes that and thus lectures herself out of doing so regularly. She’s strong in her own convictions, so the sexual tension builds for understandable reasons without being contrived.

6. She’s flawed, emotionally wounded, unsure of herself at times, and at times genuinely surprised that she’s able to kick all the ass what needs kicking. Yet, turn the page, there’s more ass kicking.

Have I explained sufficiently how much I like Jaz? She’s ornery, prickly, haunted, wounded, exceptionally smart, and lethal. Even when she bugs me, she does it in a way that’s understandable for her character, and I can get over it easily enough. The kickass heroine, how I love thee. I’m about three minutes from being an annoying bint and emailing the author, her publicist, and anyone who knows her to beg for book three because I’m sorry I’m done with 1 and 2.

Candy once said that Lisa Kleypas is her romance novel crack, and I can see why. Even as my brain questioned the possibilities and the circumstances of a happy ending for the two protagonists, I smiled and read along anyway, because her historical romances are comforting and happy in the way that soft flannel and hot cocoa are reassuring. I know the story isn’t going to demand too much of my brain or toss me into a hot maelstrom of overblown emotional angst.

I wouldn’t call Kleypas novels my crack, however. More like my brain candy. But not candy like “Oh, it’s 3pm and I’m starving and in the grocery checkout and hey that Twix bar from God-knows-how-long-ago looks pretty tasty” candy. More like Cadbury imported (random trivia: Hubby’s favorite Cadbury bar is called “Whole Nut” and he can’t eat one without giggling like a 12 year old boy). Or those really rich sweet candies made from real sugar and not high fructose corn syrup - the kind that are swirled into really fragile lacy shapes and come wrapped in individual bits of paper at the holidays. Yum.

Anyway, as I was saying, Kleypas = candy. Not the Malaysian kind or the crapass grocery store chocolate kind, but the kind of candy that you stop and devote a good few minutes to enjoying, doing nothing else but savoring the calories that add nothing to your life nutritionally but make you feel happy and indulgent.

I started Mine Till Midnight (and by the way, the title has minimal to do with the story, and those who are sticklers of historical detail should ignore the lace up strapless dress on the cover) last night, and thanks to Baba O’Riley having a bottle and then a long nap on my shoulder, I finished it today in about two hours. The book left me in a happy, mellow mood, and sometimes, most of the time, really, that’s exactly what I want from a historical romance.