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

Beautiful half-Chinese Girl is orphaned and taken in by Scottish father’s associate, one of Canton’s Big Pajandrums. Half-Chinese Girl is forced to masquerade as a man so she can be Big Pajandrum’s interpreter and spy. Tormented White Dude arrives in China with the intention of visiting secluded temple, a big no-no since Anal Imperial Court Dudes have forbidden any and all White Dudes from venturing outside Canton’s warehouse strip.

Tormented White Dude is saved from certain death by Beautiful half-Chinese Girl (mistress of wing chun, haaiii-ya!) and finds out she’s a chick, not a dude. Tormented White Dude gets Beautiful half-Chinese Girl to help him escape the confines of Canton, and offers to help her to go to Scotland after the trip to the Secluded Temple. Tormented White Dude and Beautiful half-Chinese Girl engage in naughty shenanigans en route to Secluded Temple. Tormented White Dude experiences satori at Secluded Temple but is caught in Podunk Chinese Town on the way back to Canton. Tormented White Dude is sentenced to death by Super Anal Magistrate Dude and marries Beautiful half-Chinese Girl by handfast on the night before his death sentence.

Beautiful half-Chinese Girl travels to England to inform Bereaved Twin Brother of the tragedy. But—whoa! Tormented White Dude isn’t really dead after all and returns to England, more tormented than ever. Big Misunderstanding ensues, with Tormented White Dude thinking I’m unfit to be a husband; she’ll be better off without me and Beautiful half-Chinese Girl thinking I’m nothing but a burden to him and an unfit wife for him; he’ll be better off without me. Pointless and strange suspense side-plot comes out of nowhere so our intrepid hero and heroine can gang up, kick some ass and discover their True Love for each other.

My biggest peeve with the book is its saccharine quality. Putney’s characters are sometimes so Too Good To be True that it’s about all I can do to prevent myself from hurling. Kyle Renbourne and Troth Mei-Lian Montgomery are good people, but they are so very, very good that they’re bland caricatures. Kyle isn’t nearly as badass as he was in The Wild Child, and the amount of New Age-y internal musing he indulges in grated at me. Troth is Too Good To Be True, period. She knows tai-chi, wing chun, feng shui and a host of other Chinese accomplishments while still remaining suitably modest and insecure about her looks and ability. Despite all these very Chinese accomplishments, though, Troth still strikes a false note.

Which leads me to my second biggest peeve: the Chinese characterization and culture in the book. I am by no means a fluent speaker of Chinese, but I do know enough to distinguish between dialects. Many of the words used in the book are Mandarin, while a few are Cantonese. Since part of the book is set in Canton, and since Troth lives there for much of her life, I was expecting more Cantonese words. Putney got tai-tai right (a phrase that literally means Big or Great Mistress, and an honorific given to the first wife in a household), but others such as feng shui are distinctly Mandarin words that have Cantonese equivalents (fung sui in this case). And what’s with Troth’s constant use of “dear gods!” and “my gods”? As far as I know, Chinese people don’t really invoke deities the way Europeans do unless it’s during prayer or to call for protection. When we exclaim, we tend to use the much more prosaic “aiyah” or “wah” or resort to blue language. Of course, saying “Wah, Kyle really loves me!” isn’t nearly as romantic as “My gods, Kyle really loves me!” even if it is more accurate.

This generic treatment of Chinese culture gave this book a kind of Chinese Lite feeling: half the fat, half the flavor and double the sugar. Troth didn’t strike me as a particularly Chinese person. She’s more like a white woman who happens to knows kung fu and some basic Chinese philosophy. It’s hard for me to pinpoint what exactly is lacking in her character; all I know is, something about her didn’t resonate as a Chinese woman, or any kind of Asian person at all. I kept comparing her with the people in, say, The Joy Luck Club or Snow Falling on Cedars, and she came up short. OK, Amy Tan is Chinese so she does have an unfair edge. But David Guterson, to my knowledge, is not, and he did a wonderful job with the Japanese women in his book. I think Troth’s overpowering blandness despite her über-Chinese abilities has something to do with it.

But overall, the book isn’t too bad. It’s readable, and though Putney’s prose is kind of awkward, it’s not execrable. Once the Big Misunderstanding got under way I perked up a bit (which isn’t a good sign now, is it?) but the rest of the book, despite the setting, is a yawn.

Riona isn’t quite that lucky. During a ball, she’s lured into the garden by the smarmy and extremely broke Harold MacDougal, who then attempts to compromise her to force her into marrying him. He doesn’t succeed in so much as stealing a kiss—Riona, to her credit, kicks him in the nuts while he’s trying it and this is one of the few satisfying blows she gets in, from here on out it’s sheer frustration watching her helplessness, baby—but he does succeed in mussing her up. And of course that’s enough evidence of her ruined virtue for the rest of society, and perhaps even more importantly, in the all-powerful Mrs. Parker’s eyes.

Riona initially resists the attempted manipulation, but Harold insists on spreading ugly false rumors about what they did in the garden. She realizes that the scandal of being both ruined and unmarried would in turn ruin Maureen’s chances at marrying her British captain, but balancing her personal happiness with that of her sister’s proves to be a much harder task than she had bargained for. She eventually acquiesces—reluctantly—to Harold’s suit.

Riona’s mother decides to enlist help with Riona’s mulishness from an old friend and former tenant of hers, Fergus MacRae, who was something of a father-figure to her girls while he lived with them. Fergus, however, is otherwise occupied by his impending wedding, so he sends his nephew James in his stead.

Of the MacRae brothers, James is the sensitive, pretty girly-man. He became a ship captain because his brothers did, but he doesn’t feel the same affinity for the seagoing life as his siblings. He maintains a journal, in which he confides his most intimate thoughts in the best angsty, sensitive girly-man prose. Really, if James were a modern man, he’d probably keep a livejournal, listen to bands like The Flaming Lips or Radiohead and have oodles of fangirls who secretly assume he’s gay.

So at any rate, here’s the rest of the plot: James meets Riona. They fall madly in love at first sight. Riona’s mother sees this, tells a big whopping lie about missing livestock and enlists James’ help in catching the imaginary thief in an effort to keep him at the farm longer. A crazy-ass villain with a grudge against the MacRaes makes a quick appearance, but that side-plot is neatly resolved about halfway through the book. James realizes that a farmer’s life is much more fulfilling for him than being a ship captain. Riona and James have OMG HOT SEXX0R. And everyone in the book who realizes how perfect James and Riona are for each other just kind of walk around with their dicks in their hands going “Uh duhhrrrrrr, what do we do, boss, what do we do?” But praise Jah, James finally gets a clue and resolves everything in the last 40 pages of the book.

Despite the rather dismal excuse for conflict in this novel, The Irresistible MacRae is still eminently readable. Like I said before, this story was a nice break from the high drama of the first two books. It also helps that Riona and James are both extremely likeable characters. I like how realistic Riona’s struggles were when it came to weighing her concerns about getting married to Harold the Slimeball vs. her sister’s happiness. Her deep-seated desire to be selfish and tell everyone to fuck off was a nice change from the usual romance novel heroine, who can be quite the martyr, and her eventual capitulation makes her that much more honorable because you realize the cost it exacts on her. And James is adorable. He’s hot, he tries hard to resist Riona before he caves in to his desires, and he also has a nice protective streak to him that’s never obnoxious. I happen to like sensitive girly men, what can I say? Makes a nice change from the usual romance novel heroes, who tend to be hyperkinetic alpha types.

I did bump the grade a half-point lower because of one more issue besides the plot: Ranney’s tendency to dwell on her protagonists’ internal musings was a bit much. YES, I know Riona is unhappy with her choices. YES, I know James is having a hard time resisting Riona even though he knows he should stay away from her. I GET IT. MOVE ON WITH THE STORY, PLZ. It’s all very prettily written, but pretty is as pretty does.

But really, despite all my snarking, you could do a lot worse with a romance novel choice than picking up The Irresistible MacRae. You could, for example, be reading Kill and Tell. If you don’t mind books with lots of introspection and sluggish excuses for plots don’t bother you too much, feel free to give this a shot. I do recommend reading the first two books first, but Ranney handles the backstories skillfully enough that doing so is not strictly necessary.

Notes:
The Highland Lords novels, in the order in which they were published:

One Man’s Love
When the Laird Returns
The Irresistible MacRae
To Love a Highland Lord
So In Love