Sarah: Have you read Putney’s “Thunder and Roses?”
Candy: I read Thunder and Roses ages ago. I remember the following really random things about it:
Other than that, I can’t recall anything about the plot, or how the hero and heroine met, or anything else.
Sarah: I am liking it so far, though the idea of the heroine being forced to stay with the hero to exchange her reputation for his help in saving the town he’s the freaking Lord of was just this side of unbelievable. But there was some great chemistry right off the bat.
Candy: Yeah, even for a romance novel the way Nicholas and whatserface are forced to spend time together seems pretty contrived. Why can’t heroines tell heroes who insist on doing assheaded things to just fuck off? Oh, wait, then there’d be No Conflict. And thus, No Story.
I’ve only read a couple of Putney’s books. Someone really recommended her because her heroes were flawed and interesting. Hmmm....
I read Wild Child and its sequel China Bride. The hero didn’t seem partuclarly damaged. I guess he suffered from Napoleonic Wars Traumatic Stress Syndrome or whatever the hell it is. I just know many a Regency buck seems to suffer from it. I thought the heroine was kind of dopey. Putney was going for “fae” I think. Fae = dopey in my book. But it wasn’t a wallbanger. The sequel I liked better. The heroine was half Chinese and half Scottish. Cool, I thought, not your typical bland heroine. The parts that took place in China were great. The internal battles within the heroine were interesting. The hero’s big issue seemed to be the death of his hooker girlfriend from Romance Novel Wasting Disease and issues with his overbearing father. BFD, he’s rich and handsome, get over it.
The book disappointed me when it moved to Europe. She was like any other romance heroine. Even her features were downplayed. I wonder if this was Putney’s doing or some stupid editor telling her the heroine was bit too “ethnic” for her taste. Also, the final resolution was so cliched and trite, I felt cheated.
Putney is a good writer, but like so many authors today, she won’t push the envelope. Lisa Kleypas is another good writer but she seems to step back before pushing her characters and her plots to a more intense level.
I think that is why I don’t read much of the historical genre anymore and tend towards the paranormal. There seems to be more freedom for the writers.
Y’know, I much preferred The Wild Child over The China Bride. Dunno why, but Troth made me grit my teeth. I’m Chinese (Malaysian by nationality), and she didn’t sound or act like any Chinese woman I knew, and her huge list of accomplishments (she knows wing chun! And feng shui! And is appropriately modest! And instead of exclaiming “Wah!” like a real Chinese woman would when startled, she says “My Gods!") got be be a bit much. There’s a review for that book on this site, actually, and I nitpick the poor book apart. But Mrs. Giggles, who’s also Malaysian (well, she was originally Singaporean) and who may or may not be Chinese didn’t seem to mind Troth and her uber-Chineseness too much at all.
I never know what awakens the nitpicking monster in me. Dara Joy novels I can accept without a blink. But God forbid Mary Jo Putney get little details about Chinese culture wrong, ha!
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TracyS - that must have been the blizzard in 1990? It was the only time I remember school being closed (I was in college at the time) for snow in years...Our school closed more often if it got too cold…
The book has a US publisher now. Beaufort Books has also bought (optioned? what’s the right word?) the sequel.
I thought that kid was queefing, but it was a boy, right?
queefing?? What’s queefing?? At least one of those little leaguers was a girl.
Unfortunately, that’s not very much snow for MN!
Um, I think that…
The Meltzer video is funny, clever and classy! It’s hard to believe that the book is bad, given his skill in handling criticism.
Of course the computer ate my first post which was so much more eloquent than this one will be, but here it goes.
I LOVE how Meyers handled this entire situation. Her chapters were leaked. Her readers/fans forwarded/read/perpetuated…
Candy said on...
03.02.05 at 08:10 PM |