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

Couldn’t agree more. Would have been alright from someone else, but Loretta is usually so much better. My problem started from reading the blurb and wondering what a great book she could make out of that, so much better that other more obvious authors - and finding out she hadn’t.

I would have loved Darius to be more obviously geeky and studious. Perhaps for once (gasp!) not a rake. It would have been so much more entertaining if the heroine were the experienced one and he had got it all out of books. There are little bits I love, but overall I grade this a Meh.

OH Noes!!!1!!!1 She used the word “Dude”.

Strawberry Trifle is a gateway drug.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!  I knew I could count on you to reveal the Emperor’s New Clothes! 

I love Loretta Chase—or used to—but nearly threw this one across the room for the exact reasons you cite.  The utter contrivance of the return of the prodigal child.  (I expected Darius to go on a search for the child, at least, but no.) Charlotte’s implausible lack of scruples, falling into the sack with Darius.  (I realize that this was meant to be a character trait, but it SO didn’t work.) And the utter lack of emotional fallout for the revelation of the long-held secret.  It’s like an early outline for a better book. 

I’d go one step further, though, because I found her writing style annoying in this one.  Lots of staccato sentences, one sentence paragraphs and sentence fragments.  It imparts a breathlessness to the prose that makes it seem even more bubbleheaded.  I found myself wanting to write her and say “Cut that out!  Trust your fluid, long sentences, they work for you!”

Very disappointing. I’d have gone for that C+ myself, and I say this, again, as someone who has loved Loretta Chase in the past and used her as an example of quality writing in the romance genre.

Nope, I think you perfectly expressed how I felt, and I skipped the middle 2/3’s of the book.  I’ve never read a Loretta Chase book before, but even with that lack of history, something seemed...off.  Since you and others are fans of hers, though, I’ll make a point to check out one of her older titles.  Suggestions?

Suggestions.... Mr. Impossible, Lord of Scoundrels, Miss Wonderful.

Most of her backlist is wonderful.

Spoilers.

B sounds about right.

It wasn’t the laundry room that set me off so much as the dairy. I know I’ve led a miserably sheltered life, but so had the heroine, and the fact that after four meetings in ten days she let the hero take such extreme liberties in an outbuilding - where any worker on the estate might happen by - I needed a reason to believe it, and there wasn’t one given. She wasn’t swept away by love: she was perfectly able to say no when she wanted to - and she was neither painted as highly sexed, nor as a natural risk taker. 

I did like the villain - I thought Chase wrong-footed the reader beautifully there - I just wished she done the same with the child. I was hoping that the heroine was going to be wrong about the child - if she’d been imagining the similarities it would have been more interesting. And so much more probable. All that part, all the coincidences - they just pulled me out of the story. Instead of reading, I was trying to think whether I’d ever met a child so like their parents that I would have recognised them in that way.

Still, all in all, I thought it wasn’t a bad book.

I was so excited to get to read this fourth book of the series, but I agree with your review.  I expected better from Loretta Chase; “Miss Wonderful” and “Mr. Impossible” were instant favorites of mine, but “Not Quite a Lady” was a disappointment.  I wish I had waited for a copy from the library now instead of buying it from Amazon.

You know, I had to look it up since Mr. Impossible kept niggling that I knew it. I did. I remember books by covers (because, yes, most of the romances I read flow together like a really bad omelet and spaghetti dinner). I remember finishing it going, “Well, it could have been good. If I had found anything believable in it.” So, I’m guessing between that lovely review and your latest that I won’t care for Ms. Chase.

That makes me a sad panda cause I like books, darn it.

C+ from me (which is actually a decent grade from me). I was the typesetter on this book, and I found myself reading it, which is saying something very good about Chase’s general ability to string sentences together. I loved the witty banter, and the sexy scenes were of reasonable hotness.

I groaned at the sekrit baby plot, and yes, the heroine’s lack of “no, no, this is how I got into trouble last time” (though in fairness, I’m pretty sure I remember her having that thought once). The pat way everything came together annoyed me.

There’s no dirt in this book, despite the “scandals” that abound. The characters are shiny, the story is shiny and happy, everything is clean and light. That’s fun, but I prefer a little messiness in novels. Grim situations require a little grittiness on the part of characters.

I was less enamoured with the secondary characters than you are, particularly the rival colonel--he felt very “constructed” to me. Though, like you, I did like that he turned out human in the end. (I predict a sequel in which he finds his own love interest, perhaps a woman who can see through his campaigning and counters him at every turn until he just has to up and surrender. Or at least that’s what I would write.)

Yes!  I mean, I still love Loretta Chase madly, and I still enjoyed the book, but the whole kid plot was so...easy.  I felt like there was all this brilliant setup for a fallout that...never came.  It’s not like Charlotte made up in her head the difficulties of keeping her child, which I feel like is how it ends up being portrayed, like she just built it up into this big thing it wasn’t. 

And yes...the father and the stepmother never even TALKED.  It was like, a non-issue after it was this major source of internal conflict through the whole book. 

I liked Charlotte a lot, actually, although Darius did feel kind of cliche.  I agree that I would have liked him more if he were more of a nerd and less of a rake.

Huh.

I liked it.  It’s not one that I’m going to keep forever and ever, but honestly, none of her books are keepers for me. Yes, I enjoy them and recommend them to others, but none of them have ever really stuck with me. 

I will say that this is the first secret baby book that I’ve actually finished, so that says something about her ability to tell a story.

I would rate it higher than a B-.  Probably a solid B to a B+. 

A book has to be an A+ for me to label it a “keeper”.  The librarian in me likes weeding my collection a little too much.

Sorry, I can’t tell you how wrong you are, because you put your finger(s) on everything that bothered me, but that I was too lazy to explicate.

Ismal Delvina!!! <~~fans self~~>

You know - I read this book about three weeks ago and while I enjoyed it at the time, I couldn’t really remember anything about it until I read your review. It just seemed kind of… Well, bland - especially compared to the genius that is Mr Impossible and Lord of Scoundrels.

SB Sarah, I cracked up when I read that part when he had the ‘feeling’ that she was experienced though she was obviously a lady. What a gift!

I’m glad I read your review first. I suspected I love the book because I had lowered expectations.

But yeah, I loved:

The way Darius always employs the word copulate.

The slapstick nonsense that Chase can pull off because she pushes it beyond the limit and then mocks the pushing.

The stepmother.

The pig and the father. He was like a benevolent Lord Emsworth.

The heat between Charlotte and Darius in the dairy.

The way Charlotte fobs off her suitors--and manages Darius that first night.

As always, the way the hero and heroine fight their feelings. She does ambivalence so well.

The sparring. Duh.

I didn’t love the secret baby, and the fact that he was almost perfect annoyed me. (I would have liked a disaster of a kid like Harriet in Metzger’s Jack of Clubs, a book I found disappointing but only because she’s usually another consistent keeper.)

I don’t think Darius and Charlotte are immortal, not the way Lord Scoundrel’s characters are, but I didn’t mind spending time with them. Not at all.
OH, and I thought I was going to get annoyed with Darius’s Logic thing, but it didn’t get pushed too far.

And I enjoyed the fact that Darius was a geek and a studmuffin. I don’t think I’ve seen a lot of that combo before.

A second rate Chase is still a keeper. God, I love the woman. I’m off to lay another offering at my Chase shrine. I love it like it was my brother, maybe, not my mother. I love my brothers a lot, too.

a geek and a studmuffin

That’s why I’m a sucker for plots where the hero’s a code master for the War Office.

math/word geek + studmuffin = gasmic

I totally agree with you.  The book was still good for me though.  It was happy and made me feel good when summer session makes me want to rip my hair out.

I haven’t read this book (or any Loretta Chase. or even much romance), but I love your site and your review is LOL funny. Thanks!

Drat, I just ordered this book a week ago.  I loathe secret baby plotlines, and at this site’s recommendation, I read Mr Impossible and Miss Wonderful and loved them, so I ordered the next two… what’s the word on the last bok in the series?

I think I might be the pickiest romance reader ever. My keepers consist of two Jennifer Crusie and “Lord of Scoundrel’s” by Loretta Chase. So I was very excited to read this one, and very disappointed when I finished it. Oh well. Big sigh. Off to the Salvation Army with you, little book, that should have stayed on my shelf forever.

This review is spot on.  I loved Mr. Impossible as well.  Very well done.  I really didn’t care for this one.  I think the being “too shiny” didn’t work for me either.  I didn’t think the boy needed to show up and I didn’t care for the fact that he did.  I thought she got over a decade of angst awfully fast and repeated an old mistake rather than learning from it.  I think she should have been thinking more about making a break for it and giving up on the guilt rather than hoping to stumble across the lad.  I did NOT like that step-mamma decided that budgets are for wimps and just started spending after being told that there wasn’t much in the way of funds.  There’s plenty that can be done with elbow grease.

I also thought the pig needed another scene mid-story to carry it off as anything other than a contrived setting.  In fact, I kept waiting for it and there was lots of nothing until the end.

I did like that the captain was a human and not superevil since he’s to be their neighbor.

Basically, the novel was readable but not that good.  Even compared to other novelists who don’t have the backlist LC does.  I did just pick up The Lion’s Daughter because she has written a lot of good stuff.  Don’t let this book put you off.