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

For those of you haven’t read it, To Love and To Cherish is a book about a pastor and an agnostic falling in love. It’s also very much a book about Christy’s relationship with God, and how at one point he loses his faith in both himself and his creator, and how he ultimately makes peace with both. He enters into a love affair with Anne even though it violates his principles, and he and Anne get into the liveliest discussion about the sinfulness of sexual intercourse without the “benefit” of marriage. (Christy: “The Bible prohibits fornication”; Anne: “But how can something so beautiful between two adults be wrong?” Guess which side of the fence I fall on, heh heh.) And through it all, Gaffney somehow avoids making Christy into a prig. The fact that he has a sense of humor and is much harder on himself while being truly compassionate and forgiving of other people goes a long way towards making him likeable, I think.

I think a lot of the appeal of this book (and in case you haven’t gathered this fact yet, this is definitely one of my all-time favorite romance novels) lies in how Gaffney presents the story in non-preachy terms. That it’s beautifully-written with fully-fleshed characters who aren’t just ambulatory allegories with limbs and a mouth also helps a lot.

So what is it about romances that are specifically marked as “Inspirational” that give me the jibblies? Part of it’s because I’m afraid that the Inspirationals will start preaching at me about the unsaved vs. the saved, which, no kidding, will drive me batshit because I’m not about to give money to an author who believes I’m going to burn in hell for not believing a charismatic Jewish carpenter who lived 2000 years ago was the son of God.

Also, most Inspirationals claim to espouse “family values,” a term that gives me hives because I’ve learned to associate it with: 1. Anti-reproductive choice stances; 2. Intense homophobia; 3. Smug self-satisfaction about their “saved” status and a thorough horror for people who aren’t; and 4. An insane and destructive need to shelter everyone (especially our wee pwecious widdle children) from anything remotely to do with sexuality, from sex education to Janet Jackson’s Amazing Nipple of Moral Turpitude to cussing on TV and radio. To Love and To Cherish doesn’t cover any of these except maybe the “saved-vs.-unsaved” issue, and, well, Christy falls in love with Anne and accepts her as she is, agnostic snarkiness at all. And that’s so very, very lovely, and, well, so very Christian of him. Unconditional, undying love, with some truly beautiful sex scenes thrown in—it doesn’t get much better than that.

It’s entirely possible that I have of the wrong end of the stick, but my impressions seem bolstered by reading descriptions of what Inspirationals constitute. For instance, from Brenda Coulter’s website:

In addition to the usual ups and downs of falling in love, the hero and/or heroine must overcome a spiritual obstacle, whether that involves finding God’s salvation, learning to lean on Him, letting go of the past, etc.

Christian women find inspirational romance novels satisfying because they promote strong family values, emphasizing admirable qualities such as duty, honor, and integrity, all while delivering the guilt-free entertainment of a chaste romance story.

And this is from Steeple Hill’s “About Us” page:

Steeple Hill Books is committed to delivering quality Christian fiction that will help women to better guide themselves, their families and other women in their communities toward purposeful, faith-driven lives.

Wholesome entertainment for women of faith, and seekers of all ages that is grounded in family values and high moral standards, Steeple Hill books nourish and revitalize the heart, mind and spirit as they affirm the biblical virtues of faith, hope and love. Steeple Hill authors write from a Christian worldview and convey their personal faith and ministry values in inspirational fiction that offers uplifting and satisfying stories.

These descriptions would lead people to believe that mainstream romances allow undutiful, dishonorable, lying, sleazy, immoral sons-of-bitches to win the day. I mean, c’mon. Certain alpha assholes may triumph, but generally even these are reformed into model citizens by the end of the book. And since when were faith, hope and love Biblical virtues? Aren’t they just virtues, period? Does the Bible somehow have the monopoly on faith, hope and love, or is it somehow the first to suggest these as virtues? If so, various Egyptian and Sumerian texts, the Upanishads, the Vedas and the teachings of the Buddha should collectively file some kind of copyright infringement lawsuit.

Perhaps most importantly, the descriptions just about shout “THIS BOOK WILL PREACH AT YOU” and I don’t want to be preached at while reading fiction. This goes for any topic, because I’m also annoyed by fictional books that preach about causes I hold near and dear to my heart, like conservation or equal rights.

I’ll have to try out a few Inspirational romances just to see whether my assumptions are correct, because at this point they are nothing but assumptions. I won’t lie and say that I’ll be unbiased; I’ll be reading these books as an unbeliever, which means right off the bat I’ll be a harder sell than most people who deliberately seek these out.

Another example:

By and large, I enjoy Judith Ivory novels, and she’s an autobuy author. When I picked up Untie My Heart, though, I immediately noticed that the recipes provided by the Victorian sheep-farmer heroine were all in grams and kilograms—which immediately awakened the Nitpicking Monster who slumbers within my breast, because the Imperial system was still the standard among laypeople (read: non-scientist types) until well into the twentieth century. If you look at old home-written recipes, many of them don’t use standard measurements, much less the metric system—they’re all about “a pinch of this” and “handful of that.” Even today, metrication isn’t complete in all parts of the United Kingdom. Just ask the people at the UK Metric Association, and they’ll give you an earful.

So again: brutally yanked out of an author’s carefully set up world, and I had to set the book down and go back to it later. I don’t know if my initial peeve stayed with me or if it’s just a coincidence, but this was also the first Judith Ivory book to receive less than a B grade from me, and it hit the “donate to the library pile” quicky-quick like.

As Jorie pointed out, it’s hard to get the tone right in a historical romance. And really, I’m not looking for complete accuracy. If I wanted to read a book that’s 100% authentic, I’d pick up some Austen, or Trollope, or Hardy. And there are several romance novel authors who manage to keep me within their world even as they utilize huge honkin’ anachronisms, such as using the word “sex" to refer to sexual intercourse or genitalia. How do they do it? By getting the rhythm of the language right. By using words that just sound old-fashioned (ref. my really silly nitpick regarding “grippe” vs. “influenza” in my review for To Love a Scottish Lord). By refraining from having their nineteeth-century British aristocrats say something like “You’re kidding me,” or “ The investigator has a couple of leads that might prove who tried to make you look guilty.”

Above and beyond technicalities like language and details of the era, a lot of historical romances also have extremely modern characters. They think like modern people, they act like modern people, and—perhaps worst of all—they indulge in a lot of very modern navel-gazing and psychoanalysis.

Take, for instance, two different tortured heroes from two different time periods: Allegreto of Shadowheart and Lucien of Dancing on the Wind. Both these books have immovable spots on my keeper shelf, and the two men qualify as two of my favorite romance novel heroes. But Allegreto strikes me as a character who is much more true to his time period than Lucien. He never analyzes why he finds so much pleasure in sexual pain; in fact, he’s convinced he’s going to burn in hell for enjoying what Elena does to him. At the end of the book, I KNOW Elena will keep on hurting him in the bedroom, Allegreto will keep on lovin’ it, and both of them will still be convinced that what they’re doing is unnatural and sinful—but like just about everyone else, they’ll ignore the proscription because it feels too damn good and go to confession as necessary to make peace with their consciences. There’s no feel-good, “Oh, it’s not bad if it’s two consenting adults expressing their love in different ways” kind of a resolution—which is great, because it prevents the book from being squishy, and it prevents the book from feeling too modern. I also like how Allegreto doesn’t really ponder on the role his father had in forming him. Instead, the author provides glimpses into his past, which in turn allow us, the readers, to draw our own conclusions about him and what makes him tick.

Lucien, on the other hand, goes into protracted discussions with the heroine about the effect the death of his twin sister had on him, and the effect the heroine’s twin sister’s disappearance might have on her. They talk about the bond between twins in somewhat modern terms, and analyze themselves quite thoroughly. These are the scenes I never re-read when I pick the book up. And every Putney book I can think of has these spiritual healing sequences in which the protagonists look into their pasts, pinpoint what’s making them nuts, address the issue head-on and then allow themselves to let go of the pain, which strikes me as a very modern process. Without reading The Bartered Bride, I can tell you right now there will be a scene in which Alexandra, who’s been raped, is going to go through something like that with the help of the hero.

I’m just not convinced that people knew and accepted the impact their pasts had in shaping their psychological present and future before Freud came along and demanded we tell him about our mothers. Shit, I doubt people before the late twentieth century acknowledged psychological reality and its importance in quite the concrete way we do nowadays. People also placed a lot of importance in heredity—"blood will tell” and all that. Fuck nurture, nature’s where it’s at, baby, hence all the delightful theories about inherently inferior races and classes.

So how does Allegreto, a character whom I think is a pretty convincing product of his time, deal with his past and find his peace? He tries to seek absolution with the Church, and through the Church, with God Himself. Now that strikes me as being more appropriate for the time he inhabits.

But as with everything else, I want my historical accuracy to go only so far, and no further. I don’t want to read about historically accurate heroes who believe, say, that too much reading and thinking will cause a woman’s womb to shrink. Similarly, I can’t deal with heroes who engage in slavery, either as traders or property owners. I just can’t buy into the idea that a hero can own or trade slaves yet still be capable of being truly heroic according to my effete modern sensibilities. And while we’re talking about suspension of realism, I want my heroes to smell nice, still have all their teeth and not be bloated, gouty and syphilitic by the time they’re 45.

So to summarize: I want my characters to be historically accurate, but not too accurate, and the setting to be convincing, but without dwelling on the fact that there was no running water or toilet paper which meant performing oral sex on somebody before they took their annual bath involved either a lot of courage or a completely non-existent sense of smell, oh and I want everyone in the book to sound real, which means avoiding words that sound modern even if they were coined way back in the day. That’s not too tall an order, is it?

See, I’m not hard to please at all.

I was torn between a book about a cat burglar who has to cooperate with a hunky policeman, and a book about a small town in Georgia. While I usually go to books set in England in the historical/Regency set, I am a sucker for contemporaries set in the South. Something about the South lends itself to fiction, because place is of such importance in Southern culture that the town itself becomes a character in the book.

I started She Drives Me Crazy last week while Hubby was watching sixty-five consecutive hours of NCAA basketball, and finished it today while in my pjs on a Sunday afternoon. That alone gives me good feelings about the book.

She Drives Me Crazy is the story of Emma Jean Frasier, who returns to her hometown of Joyful, Georgia, after years of living in New York City. She has a bit of a scandalous past, and is trying to put her life back together in her hometown, despite having to face rumors of a wild prom night in which she ended up being found by the entire Senior class buck naked in a gazebo with Johnny Walker.

Yes, that is the hero’s name.

Johnny Walker also left and came back to Joyful, having obtained a law degree in his absence. A boy from the wrong side of the tracks now sits as the county prosecutor, and tries to manage due process in a town of good ol’ boys who get the blind eye of the police, and kids from the wrong side of the tracks, like him, who get the full paddle, even if they’re innocent.

Emma Jean expects to walk into town and deal with an upsurge of rumors about her wild prom night with Johnny, but ends up facing a galloping gossip story that links her to the nudie-strip-club that’s being built outside of town – on land that she thought belonged to her grandmother, and that was passed down to Emma Jean. Not understanding the innuendos and comments being passed her way, she moves into her late grandmother’s home, starts seeing an awful lot of Johnny, who is convinced she’s using him for help and companionship as she did on prom night, and tries to figure out who stole her land.

As is expected in a story set in the South, the town of Joyful plays a major role in the story – the characters are plentiful, from the town gossip who is also the roving housecleaner (and therefore privy to whatever you’re hiding in your underwear drawer) to the gaggle of women at the hair salon. The town is full of people who are passing on stories or listening to them, just as one would imagine any small town. The secondary characters move the story along, and form a tide of influence on the heroine: either they are collectively shunning and condemning her for being an alleged porn star, or they are supporting her in her efforts to right a wrong, once the rumors of her blue background are corrected. The collective of secondary characters is still entertaining, however.

The novel falls short, though, when it comes to the depth of the major characters. One gets a good sense of the background of the hero, the heroine, and some of the major parallel-story players, such as Claire, Emma Jean’s best friend from high school, Claire’s husband Tim, their daughter Eve, and Daneen, a common enemy to both Emma Jean and Claire, who now lives in town as a single mom. But the background one does learn is all told by the characters themselves, and while the reader learns the facts about the events that shaped these characters, one doesn’t get the sense that they really happened, except as convenient methods through which to set up the Insurmountable Tasks ahead of the heroine as she fights her way back from professional and personal failure.

For example: (Spoiler ahead; you know what to do) it’s revealed in the mid-section of the story that Emma Jean had suffered a major head injury, and had been so seriously injured in the cranial sense that her head was shaved and her skull opened to relieve pressure on her brain. That story raises the protective instincts of the hero, and her injury comes up more than once, but the heroine doesn’t dwell on it as much as one might think, except to mention how much she misses her long hair, sacrificed when the doctors shaved it off. The hero is more worked up about it than she is, and while it does make her a more sympathetic character in light of what happens to her later in the backstory, her reaction to this major event, or lack of reaction, is curious and, for me, distracting.

The hero and the heroine are both likeable, and the romance rekindled between them is hot like Georgia summer and quite titillating. Moreover, author Leslie Kelly does an admirable job of building romance and sexual tension, even after the characters have sex for the first time in the book, which is a tough challenge that many authors let slide. In other stories, once the main characters defuse the sexual tension, the story can take a nosedive tension-wise and sometimes focuses only on the external forces working against the couple. Kelly keeps the tension and the emotional stakes on a slowly-increasing incline so the climax of the parallel stories meets up with the emotional climax of the couple’s romance, and the ending is delightfully satisfying.

On the whole, I’m not always pleased by contemporary chick-lit-style novels, especially since they are often heavy on plot twists, populated by a buffet of secondary and background characters, but light on depth of character on the part of the protagonists. But there’s a reason “Chick Lit” sounds like “chocolate.” Both are guilty pleasures that, on a molecular level, are actually good for you. While I wish She Drives Me Crazy had delved deeper in to the emotional ramifications of the protagonists’ pasts to make them each more three-dimensional characters, the romance, the story line, the background characters, and even the town of Joyful itself, all made me happy. If I had to pay retail for a book, I’d want it to be at least as good as this one. 

But then, that speaks volumes as to my expectations of contemporary romances, Harlequin Enterprises, and drug store romance novel purchases in general.

Candy: Yeah, but that’s not necessarily TSTL behavior, though, is it? I define TSTL behavior to be when a person rushes into danger, or steadfastly refuses to heed warning signs or take basic safety precautions in hazardous situations. An unarmed, gently-reared woman who INSISTS on going riding alone when there’ve been reports of brigand raids in the area is TSTL. An armed man who insists on the same is definitely taking a risk, but at least he’s better-equipped to deal with the danger. Furthermore, TSTL behavior is often (but not always) followed by the other protagonist being forced to rescue the other person out of the completely avoidable consequences brought on by the TSTL behavior. I have NEVER seen a heroine having to rescue a TSTL hero out of an untenable situation that he could’ve avoided if he’d only, say, taken a big heavy stick with him before checking out that strange noise in the cellar.

And that’s the thing. I don’t think we’ll ever see a true TSTL hero. Having a hero who needs rescuing from his own stupidity is not sexy. Having a hero who’s that incompetent is just lame. I think heroines are allowed to be TSTL partly because everyone (including feminists like me) assumes women are more helpless than men, and in some ways featherheaded behavior is more forgivable. And of course we don’t need to be sexually attracted to the heroine, so that type of stupid mong behavior is more easily forgiven in a heroine (though we may find it annoying as shit) but I doubt we’d forgive the same kind of thing in a hero. This may, in fact, be one of the few areas in which the hero has a lot less leeway given to him than a heroine.

Sarah: No, it’s certainly not TSTL behavior. I don’t think a hero has ever done that kind of thing, blindly and blithely wandered into danger, like the dumb chick in a horror movie going into the scary creepy dark house alone. I have seen a few books where the hero has ended up in a tight spot and his girlfriend has had to bail him out, but that was just intervention, not saving him from his own stupid bloody self.

I know of a few books in which both the villain momentarily outsmarted the heroine and the hero, and in one case the hero’s mistress bailed him out—but that wasn’t due to heedlessness or sheer idiocy. It was more due to circumstances and a good bit of cunning on the part of the villain. However, whenever that has happened, and the hero and the heroine are bailed out, the hero redeems himself in the reader’s eyes by kicking the ever living shit out of the villain and company, and makes himself into the big strong ass kicking danger man that he is meant to be. He may be momentarily down but as a romance hero, is never wussed out.

You are completely right that weakness is not favored for heroes. Even heroes who are physically weak are brilliantly smart, artistically gifted, blessed with a six foot dong - it is a rule, it seems, that a hero must be Spectacularly Endowed in one (or more) areas and if that area isn’t physical strength, his skill in another venue more than makes up for his lack of manful brute strength. A hero cannot be a wuss. And I am ok with that. I expect the hero to be worthy of the heroine. I HATE it, however, when the heroine is not worthy of the hero’s effort to gain her attention.

Candy: I think we expect the hero to be worthy of the heroine in very specific ways, and the heroine to be worthy of the hero in other specific ways. Can you imagine a romance novel in which the hero bumbles around as much as some heroines do and still coming across as attractive? I don’t like either the hero or heroine to thoughtlessly endanger themselves, of course, but when it comes down to it I really do think I’ll find it easier to forgive the heroine for TSTL behavior (up to a point) vs. a hero.

So much for me being a feminist who enjoys the subversion of gender roles, eh? I enjoy my subversion only SO FAR and no further, dammit. Sigh.

What I do like are situations in which the heroine is set up for a grand rescue scene, and she ends up rescuing herself, and all the hero has to do is mop up what’s left of the villain. Loretta Chase has one such scene in Viscount Vagabond that’s just hilarious.

Sarah: Well, there’s subversion of gender roles, and then there’s inconsistency. I mean, I do know plenty of individual women who are indeed pretty damn dim. But do I know a dude that stupid, who would walk down the subway tunnels because someone told him there was treasure just past the 42nd street station? Not really. I think it might also be a cultural thing—there is still a good bit of opinion that the Men take care of the Women and there is some shifting in the seat when one encounters the reverse. How does a stay-at-home husband deal with his powerful, breadwinning wife? It happens, but a lot of people wonder what its like because it isn’t always common, especially outside of urban areas.

And also, consider the readership: women read romance novels, and sometimes, you’re looking for a juicy escape to sweep you away, and a hero that sweeps you and the heroine off her feet is a delicious way to spend an hour. Sure it obeys gender roles that are insufferable when you come up against them in Real Life, but sometimes, it’s just delicious.

Our intrepid narrator, shoe aficionado and newly-crowned Queen of Vampires, Betsy, is determined to lead as normal a life as she possibly can. To this end, she goes job-hunting, and manages to land a job right out of her wettest of wet dreams: shoe salesperson in Heaven (i.e. Macy’s at The Mall of America). Betsy’s all “Hell yeah, employee discount!” but as always, there’s bitter with the sweet. For one thing, termites decided her house was the perfect location for a spring break party and then figure ah, what the hell, might as well stay on through summer vacation. For another, there’s a new vigilante group in town whose mission is whacking as many vampires as they can get their stakes on.

The house problem is easily solved, thanks to her best friend Jessica’s unending supply of moolah: they just rent a huge mansion—one right across the street from the governor’s, in fact, and I find the thought of Betsy and Co. living across the street from a house once occupied by Jesse Ventura oddly amusing.

The second problem is a bit thornier. On one hand, Betsy is the Empress of the Undead and apparently one of her duties is making sure her subjects aren’t turned into vampire tartare. On the other hand, a lot of vampires are assholes and she’s had to yank off more than one belligerent undead headcase from their hapless victims, so what’s a staked vamp here and there? But once the thugs attack her friend Tina and make an attempt on Betsy’s own ass—well, in the immortal words of a thousand Steven Seagal flicks: This time, it’s personal. So with the help of the ever hot, ever well-endowed vampire Sinclair and the motley crew of sidekicks we met in the first book (Tina, Jessica, and Marc the Cute Gay Doctor) plus a fresh batch of new sidekicks, Betsy attempts to hold down her job and solve the mystery at the same time. Some righteous asskicking is handed down, but the villains would’ve gotten away with it all if it weren’t for those meddling kids and… Oh, wait. Sorry, wrong campy, insubstantial pseudo-horror comedy series.

The problems I had with the first book are all magnified in this one. The lack of substance, the lack of character development, the chip on Betsy’s shoulder that resembles a flourishing young redwood when it comes Sinclair—I mean what is WRONG with her? This guys saves her ass AGAIN and provides her with the most wonderful orgasms AGAIN and still she snarls and distrusts him, which makes me wonder if she has some kind of a permanent dent in her cerebral cortex from getting her head smashed by that Aztek (godDAMN that’s one ugly car—I mean, speaking of subcortical damage, what in the fuck were those designers smoking when they came up with that hideous hosebeast?).

Aside from a pretty neat plot development at the end that stems from the termite problem, this book is pretty much completely dispensable. You KNOW the plot is very, very light when even a long-winded bitch like me can summarize it in three paragraphs. Nobody grows, changes or learns much of note, and at the end of the book almost everything is returned to the status quo. Betsy is still shallow, sarcastic and not very pleased with being undead royalty, and she’s still totally pissed at her consort, Sinclair, for little to no good reason. Sinclair is still a mystery in many, many ways, but still TOTALLY FUCKING HOT. Etc.

What’s so frustrating is, there’s so much material that Davidson could’ve explored instead of just shooting out more one-liners. Why is Betsy so different from the other vampires? How exactly is a vampire created? There are various mentions of vampire laws and such—how are they enforced? Also, what happened to the vampires who were extremely loyal to Nostro in the first book? And more details about Sinclair, Tina and Marc would not have been amiss. Seeing Betsy interact more with her parents would’ve been interesting too; her dad wishes she was still dead, for Christ’s sake, a hint of conflict that was raised in Undead and Unwed but quickly glossed over.

But despite all my complaints, this book really is a lot of fun to read. Like the first novel, the zippy, snarky dialogue is probably its best feature. Shit, scratch that, it’s just about the only feature in this book. It made me chuckle out loud, though, and I can’t dislike something that’s this much fun, hence the B- grade instead of a C-.

If Betsy keeps going in this vein without growing or changing as a person, I’m afraid I’m going to get tired of her, and I don’t want to get tired of her; I really enjoy her voice. It’s just starting to resemble a one-note melody, and god knows I don’t want Phillip Glass in novel form.