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

Then one day she gets a bad feeling about Ginger. So bad, that merely trying to call her on the phone fills her with dread. Always one to obey her instincts, she leaves for Atlanta immediately.

What she finds is a mess indeed: her sister is nine months pregnant, her shady boyfriend, Malik, has gone missing with a huge amount of money and the thug he stole the money from just got out of jail. As Malik’s girl, she’s a prime candidate for some not-so-gentle interrogation about his whereabouts and where he stashed the money.

Enter Malik’s brother, Rick, and woo damn, does Bless receive the shock of her life when she meets him. He’s the dark, handsome stranger in her dreams. He’s also a cop, and he’s determined to protect Ginger and the foetus. Even more shocking, however, is another realization that shoots through Bless: Ginger’s unborn child is going to be a key leader and savior when Armageddon arrives, and Ginger is just as determined to kill the baby one way or another. She’s so determined that she has enlisted assistance from various demons, who proceed to make Bless’s life very interesting indeed. Between finding love with Rick, protecting the baby from Ginger and fighting off demons, there’s more than enough to occupy Bless (and the reader) in this slim 250-page novel.

And really, the biggest peeve I have with the book is how it needs another hundred pages, easy, to do the story justice. I mean, there’s some kind of crazy apocalyptic fight going on between people of Light and these wack-ass demons, and it’s driving me crazy because the supernatural aspects that don’t involve actual demon fight scenes are almost completely glossed over. For example, Bless can heal, cleanse the spiritual atmosphere and all that good stuff. Do we get details on what this process involves, or even what it feels like to channel energy? Nope. There are some very vague descriptions of seeing auras, of pushing out the darkness, and that’s it—nothing about the sensations that go through Bless as she draws on the healing power and then guides it into someone else. Not even something basic like “There was a sense of pressure on her neck, then a warm tingle in her palms and stomach as she drew the bla bla bla from the bla bla bla and oh behold the dying child healeth etc. etc.”

Bless also has to be skooled in the ancient art of demon asskicking. Do we get details on that? Nope, just some rather vague descriptions like “She blasted some light from her palms, the demon burst into flame, then she woke up sweating and sore because she learned how to ‘splode some demon butt in her dreams.” I’m dying here. I want MORE. I want to know what it feels like to kick demon ass. Again: what does it feel like to channel psychic energy like that? Even the most basic of sensory descriptions would’ve helped: cold, hot, painful, pleasant, tingly, shocking.

So in short, I can see the action, but I can’t feel it down in my bones the way I want to. I spend much of the book feeling as if I’m floating above the characters, completely removed from them, instead of living their lives, breathing their air, feeling their pain and happiness. It wasn’t until the last few chapters of the book, when Bless really starts whupping some serious demon patoot and the action sequences become more detailed, that I felt truly engaged.

There’s also a truly complex, fascinating backstory going on that’s more-or-less ignored. See, Bless, Maris and Ginger are part of an ongoing cycle of three souls who are doomed to re-live the same pattern over and over until somebody breaks the cycle. We get the barest hint of how the cycle got started, but that tantalizing taste is all we get. MORE, DAMMIT, I WANT MORE. That’s the refrain that ran in my head as I read through the book.

The love story itself was all right. Bless and Rick are extremely nice people, but I think of this book as another Soulmates Gone Wild story. Wendy the Super Librarian covered this recently in her Romancing the Blog column, and while the book conveyed very strongly how Bless and Rick are Meant To Be, the actual chemistry between them is no better than luke-warm. I, for one, would’ve liked more scenes from Rick’s point of view. I know why Bless is attracted to Rick; I mean, hell, the man’s been sexing her six ways to Sunday for years in her dreams. I’m just not quite sure why Rick is attracted to Bless. I’m told “she feels right” and that he likes curvy women who know how to cook, but something about the attraction just didn’t ring true. I don’t want just to be told that she feels right, I want to be shown it. The book’s breakneck pacing doesn’t allow this, however, which is a shame.

There are bright spots in the book. Some parts are laugh-out-loud funny, often in a rather dark way. For example, Ginger describing how the Universe tried everything to stop her from having an abortion, up to and including having birds spray her with avian bombs from the air as she’s walking to the clinic, is almost worth the price of admission. And the fight scenes, especially the ones at the end, are really, truly fun to read.

When it comes down to it, I would’ve enjoyed the book so much more if it had much more detail than it did, and if it had engaged in more showing, less telling. I think the concept and characters held a whole lot of promise, they just needed fleshing out—especially the supernatural backstory. But then looking at the other reviews for this book, some people were freaked out by the supernatural bits and thought the book was way too graphic. Shit, I thought it wasn’t nearly graphic enough. Which just goes to show: you can’t please everyone all of the time. The only logical conclusion to this is: screw everyone else, Monica. Write books that will please me. I’m all that matters, because dammit, my taste is impeccable and I’m AWESOME.

It didn’t help that the very first romance novel I cared to try was Desire’s Blossom by Cassie Edwards. Ugh, blech, shudder, etc. Even at the tender age of 10 I knew it was easily one of the worst books I’d ever read.

But this didn’t stop me from going through my sister’s extensive collection of romance novels. I was a bookworm, my book-buying budget was limited, and during Christmas vacation I’d run out of reading material right quick, and I could re-read Roald Dahl, the Three Investigators, the Chronicles of Narnia and Hercule Poirot mysteries only so many times before I went barking mad for something new.

(Aside: in Malaysia, the Christmas break is the longest since it signifies the end of the school year--see, our school years coincide with the calendar year, which is why the American system confused the hell out of me when I first moved here.)

Anyway, this desperation for new reading material meant I kept mining my sister’s romance novels for books to read. Read some Laurie McBain novels, HATED them but finished them anyway because I was so desperate. Ditto Barbara Cartland. Read several other historicals by authors whose names I’ve forgotten, and didn’t like them either. Read more than my fair share of old Mills and Boon novels by Penny Jordan, Charlotte Lamb, Carole Mortimer and the like, most of which I detested as well, though a few were tolerable.

These books did not help my impression of romance novels; I hated the prose style, I hated how stupid the heroines were, and most of all, I hated how badly the heroes treated the heroines. I’d oftentimes skip through the book, trying to look for the sexy parts, but alas these were few and far between. For about six years I thought of romance novels as the bottom of the barrell, since the the ones I’d read easily represented some of the most consistently bad writing I’d encountered in my short life.

The first romance novel I liked (but didn’t love) was Special Gifts by Anne Stuart. My dad’s secretary bought me several category romances for my birthday, most of which were incredibly bad, but Special Gifts gave me pause. The writing wasn’t too bad, the heroine didn’t annoy me (though even back then I snorted at the idea of a 29-year-old virgin), the hero was kind of yummy, the suspense side-plot didn’t insult me, and dude, the people engaged in ORAL SEX. Whoo! I re-read this book several times, and each time it actually got a bit better. And I’m not just talking about the bit featuring the oral sex.

When I was 16 years old, Judith McNaught showed me the light. Judith and Something Wonderful. (I’m very, very glad I didn’t pick up Whitney, My Love first.) Judith showed me that asshole heroes are palatable to me as long as they grovel at the end, and that sex in historical romances wasn’t always rape. I haven’t looked back since; in quick succession I found Lisa Kleypas, Patricia Gaffney, Laura Kinsale, Loretta Chase, Mary Jo Putney, Barbara Samuel, Teresa Medeiros, Jo Beverley and Sharon and Tom Curtis, among others. McNaught got me started, but these other authors were what moved me well and truly into the Dark Side. Other authors I tried in this same time period (Linda Howard, Johanna Lindsey, Iris Johansen, Linda Howard, and Linda Howard--OK, there were a few others but I can’t remember their names) reinforced my old opinion that romance novels embodied some craptastically awful writing, but since I was finding more authors I enjoyed reading than not, my opinion of romance novels was completely changed.

Which brings me to these questions Angie asked on her blog:

“Here’s my question for readers: Are there any authors that you think every romance reader should have at least tried to read? Any authors that instill such a sense of nostalgia in you, that you can’t imagine anyone having NOT read them?”

I don’t think there’s an author that every reader should have tried at least once. Personally, I love Laura Kinsale, but I certainly don’t think everyone needs to have read at least one of her books, though I certainly have her name right on top of my list of highly-recommended romance authors. I do think people should check out new authors regularly, unless she specializes in a sub-genre that you KNOW you won’t be able to enjoy. (I’m staying well clear of Danielle Steele, and I don’t care how much of an uninformed snob that makes me.) There aren’t any authors who instill nostalgia in me that I’d actually recommend, because in my opinion, these nostalgic authors almost without exception produced bad, bad, bad, BAD books. But there are authors who are so ubiquitous, so incredibly famous that I have a hard time believing somebody who’s been reading romances for more than a couple of years haven’t tried them yet. Nora Roberts is one, and Linda Howard is another. Hell, I don’t even like Linda Howard novels and I ended up reading about ten of them. Desperation for new reading material is an ugly, ugly thing.

Not that I have that problem now, heh.

Excerpt number 1: “The ghost road is written by a woman who thinks she knows the details of a man’s life in WW1. (...) Overall, I didnt enjoy this book mainly because pat barker of all people wouldnt know about WW1 anymore than high school history students, and above all, a woman talking about male sexuality like she knows. And the grand daddy of them all...... air raids in London. LOL”

Ahhhh. I see. She should maybe stick to topics she would be more familiar with, like cooking, laundry and raising babies? And air raids did occur in London in WWI. They were conducted by none other than zeppelins (of the non-Led variety). From firstworldwar.com:

Throughout the remainder of 1915 the Zeppelins raided London frequently, and with impunity.  They flew too high for most planes, and when they were intercepted by aircraft the ammunition in use at the time had little effect. (...) The Zeppelin attacks had a profound psychological impact on the Allies.  The Germans were ordered, under the treaty of Versailles, to hand over all their airships, but their crews preferred to destroy as many of them as they could.

Even a silly little girl like me who did literally learn all she knew about WWI in high school history class remembered enough about this to look it up with no trouble. But maybe it’s because I’m a silly little girl who actually paid attention in class.

Excerpt number 2, from a review entitled “This book is an abomination”: “Near the end of the book I finally figured out what the point of the entire exercise is. There is one scene where a drunken soldier confides to Wilfred Owen that the horrible thing about the War is that it is depriving them of “Beethoven, Botticelli, beer and boys.” There it is in a nutshell. Pat Barker’s series conveys the strange sense that World War I was senseless because it upset a number of gay British poets and killed a fair number of their potential lovers.”

Yoicks. Think this guy might be homophobic? This book has a bisexual protagonist, and his homosexual encounters make up a very tiny percentage of the book--if I remember correctly, there are four very, very brief sex scenes in total, two hetero, two homo. Siegfried Sassoon is a secondary character in this novel, and as most of you probably know, he was gay as the day was long, but we don’t see him gettin’ down and dirty in the book. So I’m not sure which book this guy was reading, but it takes dedicated reading-between-the-lines to come up with the conclusion he did. Perhaps he should look into a career that involves playing records backwards while listening for Satanic messages? Or looking for pictures of the Virgin Mary in the burn-marks on grilled cheese sandwiches?

Panty-bunching Excerpt number 3: “What the heck does Pat Barker know about World War One? Only what she’s read in her ‘Eye Witness Picture Guide To The Great War.’ She knows nothing. Really nothing. She talks about ‘air raids’ in London!!!! This is the FIRST World War. (...) The cliches are unbearable: she’s writing from a man’s point of view and thinks that she’s the first one to discover the male sex-drive. The worst crud is when one iof the characters has these flashbacks to when he lived in an ‘African Village’. I live in Africa, Barker obviously doesn’t.”

First of all, as I already covered: Air raids DID happen in WWI. That these men are ignorant of this facet of the war while criticizing Barker for being dum female who dont no nuts about the Great War LOLOL is sweet, sweet irony indeed. Also, none of Barker’s characters even come close to Africa in her books; W.H. Rivers (a real-life character like Sassoon) spent significant time in Melanesia, specifically the Torres Straits islands, which lie between Australia and New Guinea. The flashbacks in the book take place there, not Africa. Different. Continents. Entirely. There are lots and lots of dark-skinned tribal peoples living in places other than Africa--whodathunkit?

So yeah, reviewers can oftentimes be wrong. Horribly wrong, in fact. Not us Smarty Bitchypoos, of course. Remember: we’re AWESOME.

That’s the short version. The long version goes thusly: The heroine, Audrey, is introduced to the delights of BDSM when she meets a much, much older banker named Sterling while vacationing in Florida. She abandons everything—her job, her friends, her apartment in Washington D.C.—to literally become this man’s sex slave. However, after a few months, she realizes that what she has with Sterling isn’t exactly what you’d call a healthy relationship, so she makes like an Aerosmith song and runs away, runs away from the pain, yeah yeah yeah yeah.

(Sorry. If it’s any consolation, now I have it stuck in my head, too.)

Sterling, on the other hand, isn’t quite ready to let go and takes steps to keep Audrey under his control, even from a distance. He not only sends somebody to track her every move and take photos, he calls a senator who owes him a favor and asks him to keep Audrey safe (and untouched) until Sterling is ready to claim her. The senator in turn contacts his son, Patrick, who coincidentally is also into BDSM. The senator isn’t pleased with the implied blackmail, and tells Patrick he’ll be happy if things don’t turn out quite as Sterling planned.

Audrey, in the meanwhile, has run back into the arms of her best friend, Tommy. Frankly, I liked him better than Patrick, who’s yummy but a pretty standard romance novel hero—tall, dark, commanding, massive wang-a-doodle, etc. etc. Hot, but nothing too special. Tommy, on the other hand, is skinny, very sweet, great in the sack AND a computer geek. RRROWR. Audrey, of course, prefers the tall, dark, commanding, massive wang-a-doodle type, and more than that, she likes ‘em to spank her and chain her up. That doesn’t prevent her from having some scorching-hot fun of the “everything but putting Tab A in Slot B” variety with Tommy (who’s been in love with her since they were kids) while staying at his apartment.

Soon, however, she realizes that that somebody is tailing her. She ducks into a bar, Dugan’s, which is owned by—surprise, surprise—Patrick, who is quite startled to see the woman he’s supposed to keep tabs on. He hires her as a waitress, but he’s determined to keep her closer and ultimately wants her to move in with him. To help her feel more secure about accepting and also to throw off Sterling’s spies, he asks his cross-dressing lounge singer, Basil, to be his beard and temporary roommate. Uncomfortable with Tommy’s burgeoning feelings for her and feeling increasingly unsafe, Audrey agrees to move in with Patrick and Basil.

That’s when the REAL fun begins, starting with when she finds out that Basil isn’t gay, he’s bisexual, and the fun really kicks up when she finds out that Patrick isn’t a homo either, he just plays one on TV.

I gotta give Holly credit: she actually made BDSM sexy to me. While I find certain aspects of it appealing, I don’t find the whole pleasure-in-pain thing all that sexy. It didn’t help that my introduction to BDSM erotica was with A.N. Roquelaure’s Beauty series, which features lots of outright rape and sexual torture, some of it pretty brutal. Velvet Glove didn’t bruise any of my tender sensibilities, since it mostly concentrated on the bondage and domination aspects, not so much sadism and masochism. All of the sex scenes in this book are scorching hot, and some of the scenes with Tommy (and Tommy’s girlfriend)…. Oh my.

One of the best things about the book is Basil. He’s flamboyant but not flaming; with a character like that, the temptation must be there to turn him into Divine. Thank God Holly avoided that particular pitfall. I also liked how Basil coaxed Patrick along the road to man-on-man nookie, because unlike the two primary males in Strange Attractions, Patrick isn’t bi to begin with, and has to learn to accept sex with another man. In a real sense, we get to see Patrick lose his virginity.

Audrey is quite charming; like Charity of Strange Attractions, she’s a free spirit and a pocket hedonist. The two of them are virtually interchangeable, really, except that Audrey is a bit younger. I do find it refreshing that a woman gets to have lots and lots of hot, sweaty, slutty fun throughout the book and still come up the winner, because the preponderance of literature tends to hammer home the message that sluts (female sluts, anyway) are either mentally imbalanced, evil or deserving of death for having unsanctioned orgasms. I do hope the next Emma Holly heroine I encounter will be different, though, because I’ll tire of non-stop Charity/Audrey clones real quick.

Patrick is also quite appealing. Like I said, he’s quite standard romance novel hero material—poor baby was abandoned by mommy and has problems forming attachments, boo hoo hoo—but Holly takes care to show how different his Mastering technique is from Sterling’s. In other words: Patrick is alpha, but not an asshole. Yay! However, I do wish Holly would stop belaboring certain aspects of his appearance, like his twinkling eyes; yes, I get it, they twinkle. Twinkle twinkle, like little stars. Puh-leeease.

But the part that really made my eyes roll in the book is the short erotic story Patrick tells Audrey while engaging in one of their games. It has a certain 1001 Arabian nights flavor, which is all right, but swear to God, the phrase “fleshy sword” is used, not just once, but a few times. That term should be outlawed from romance novels of any sort. I hope this is not an indication of Holly’s historical voice, because I have her two Victorians winging their way to me from Amazon.com as I write this.

As a villain, Sterling is pretty standard romance novel stuff. He’s kind of nuts, although in an interesting twist that most romance novels don’t feature, he’s the one who gives Audrey all the initial lessons about pleasure, instead of the hero. And speaking of villains: There is a completely extraneous chapter featuring the photographer/gumshoe Sterling sics on Audrey that could’ve easily been cut from the book. It adds absolutely nothing to the story, and it actually gives the impression that this guy is going to play a much larger role than he does. Instead, we briefly see him acting all skeezy and creepy, then poof, no mention of him ever again for the rest of the book.

The romance itself is believable, and in some ways is more fully fleshed-out than the love story in Strange Attractions. Not having a suspense plot and quantum mechanics to mangle gave her a bit more room to develop the relationship, I think, and there are a few vignettes in which we see Audrey and Patrick just hanging out and enjoying each other’s company even though they’re not taking part in any sexual games. Brief though these scenes are, they do establish that these people genuinely like each other instead of being enamored merely with the hot monkey sex. And that is probably why I enjoy Emma Holly’s books so much: not only does she smash all sorts of taboos with great panache and glee, and not only is the sex explicit and well-written, but the protagonists are extremely likeable, the story is generally well-written and I close the book with that warm, fuzzy, satisfied feeling an HEA ending gives me.