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

I have lost my patience with this book. It’s like the same conversations between the characters, with Ominous Foreshadowing.

He: You are a ho! I cannot trust you!
She: I am  a noble ho! You can trust me because I looooove you! But I have secrets I cannot share with you!
He: You are a ho! You love me! Yet you have secrets! And so do I but that’s different! And I should be emotionally healed but I am not! I still don’t trust you!
She: Let’s have lots of sex!
He: Yes! Let’s!
She: There is a man! He is scary!
He: I am a spy! After the same man!
Narrator: And she wished she had told him of her past, but she would live to regret bitterly that she had not shared her secrets with him, because they rose up and bit her square on her ass!

Candy tells me this is one of her most famous and widely considered to be her best, but I am not in accord with that assessment. The hero is tortured and scarred, and throught the storyline he’s emotionally healed by her luuuuuuve. Usually I’m a sucker for that, but woo damn, her eternal perfection and serene courtesan routine is starting to bother me.

The story opens with a violent, drunken rape scene between the hero and a young woman, and seriously, I almost tossed the book back in the BooksFree bag and sent it back unread. Yet I knew this book was supposed to be so highly rated that I had to at least try to finish it. I do have to say, if rape scenes are not your thing, you won’t get past page 25 of this book.

The heroine, Diana Lindsay, is a calm and collected country mother, raising her son with another woman, Edith, when they come upon a woman, Madeline, sick and dying in the snow. The miracle of country living cures her, and slowly she reveals that she is a courtesan who fled London after falling in love with her protector. Diana, whose past, including how she came to be living as a single mother in the countryside, remains a complete mystery, asks Madeline to teach her to be a courtesan, knowing on some personally metaphysical level that This Is Her Destiny.

When she arrives at her first Cyprian’s ball, Diana sees the hero, Gervase, Lord St. Aubyn, across the room, and they immediately begin a long, hot and sweaty affair born out of mutual white hot attraction. I don’t think I can reveal much more than that without spoiling the book, but the questions of St. Aubyn’s rape of a young woman, the father of Diana’s son, how Diana came to live on her own in the country, and why on earth she thought being a ho was her destiny are revealed as the book progresses.

It seems to me that Putney takes too many conventions of romance, such as the virginal heroine or the tortured hero, turns them over, then shuffles them together to make you think it’s original. To me, Dearly Beloved reads like a runaway train. I want to stage an intervention with the characters:

Lookee here, Hero: Shut up, listen, and get the hell over yourself.

And you, too, Heroine: You are not perfect. Do something stupid, fart, burp, get mad, raise your voice, get mad in the face of the hero being an assmonkey. But for GOD’S sake quit realizing you’ll regret not speaking up. Fool.

The problem is, subverted conventions are great- but only if they actually develop as characters, and don’t spin their wheels in the mud of their own habits. The hero says he’s realized his emotional paralysis, then goes right back to the same behavior of distrust and accusations. He constantly doubts the heroine without her giving reason to do so, and then excuses his own conduct when those same accusations lead to her to do something he doesn’t like. It’s all her fault - everything, her fault. His emotional wounds: the fault of women, and she’s a woman so lay that at her doorstep. His inability to love and be loved? Caused by his upbringing, and one of his parents was a woman, so see above. This would be bearable if she stood up every once in awhile and told him he was being an asshat, but she just takes it, and remains serene in the face of his derision and nastiness. Only at the very end does she lose her shit with him, and as the reader, I was all, “Thank GOD.” Remaining calm to try to throw off balance someone who is angry can be effective, but after awhile her behavior started to come across to me as manipulative.

Neither of them is a prize, if you ask me. Usually I can read to the end of a novel based on my interest in one of the two protagonists, if the other is something of a butt. But in this case I was disinterested in both of them equally, and repulsed by the end, even. The hero’s temper and the heroine’s serenity just get old after awhile. And no one is that perfect all the freaking time.

Case in point, the following conversation between the hero’s brother, who is confiding in the heroine while the hero is off risking life and limb on some mission.

Heroine: “Why did you choose to talk to me? You hardly know me.”

Hero’s brother: “Because it is a convenient plot device!”

Just kidding.

Hero’s brother: “...you remind me of a Madonna, all warmth and understanding.”

And that is pretty much all you need to know about the heroine. As I said, I’m a sucker for stories in which the hero is rescued from emotional torment by the love and guidance of a caring partner. But I also demand that the heroine realize something about herself, as well. She also must learn, or grow, or change, or develop in a traceable fashion that makes her character worth knowing for 350+ pages.

In “Dearly Beloved,” the hero progresses from someone I would dearly love to bean with a tire iron to someone who I’d dearly love to smack around with a frozen salmon. The heroine starts irritating and ends irritating. And the course of the story is angsty and repetitive, and irritating as all get out. There’s no end to the unpleasant subject matter, and any taboos or things that might potentially make you go squick are probably in the plotline somewhere.

I realize that there is a loving following behind this book of readers who adored it, so I am hesitant to throw my own review in their faces, but I have to say, I did not enjoy this book. Too much angst, too much drama, to much anger, and no resolution that effectively and sufficiently diffused all that negativity. It’s one thing for the hero to be a butthead and then say, “I’m sorry.” It’s another entirely for the hero to spend an entire novel being a butthead and then have him deliver words of purple-flowered love and adoration at the end. The latter scenario does not entirely relieve the bitter taste in my mouth.

However, this won’t turn me off of Putney forever. I’m moving on to Angel Rogue, which my partner in crime Candy assures me is a wonderful novel. 

Candy: You know, you’ve hit the nail on the head re: religious protagonists vs. overtly religious plots. Another one of my favorite books, To Love and to Cherish by Patricia Gaffney, has the hottest pastor ever as the hero. And the heroine’s super-snarky and agnostic, woo! Anyway, religion was such a major part of people’s lives that I don’t find historical romances that feature people who are fervent about religion too much of a problem. In fact, if I read a medieval and there’s no religion in it at all, I find that kind of disappointing since priests and the Church played such big roles in people’s lives back then.

You know what I REALLY hate, though? Characters in historical romances who believe in hippie dipshit New Age versions of Christianity. One absolutely terrible Constance O’Day Flannery book I read had characters like that, and I just wanted to kill them all for the sin of anachronism (as well as annoying hippie dipshit pontificating). And I’ll also be honest: I’m not sure how I’d feel about reading a contemporary romance featuring a guy or a girl who’s REALLY into THE LORD. Maybe because every Super-Christian I’ve ever met has been kinda scary.

Sarah: I don’t mind people of faith as protagonists - I even read a few of those Mitford books with the priest as the protagonist, and I kind of liked them. They were the literary equivalent of graham crackers. Nothing too sophisticated, but kinda comfy, like kindergarten snacktime. But the whole “our romance is Your divine Will?” Gageth me. Amen.

Candy: I find the whole “my whole life is guided by Your Will” attitude kinda creepy in general. Perhaps because there’s an aspect of blind surrender to it that I’m not comfortable with, since I’m such a skeptical hobag? Another thing is, the religious protagonists I tend to like are also people who struggle with their faith and what their religion and their God mean to them. As someone who struggled with these questions for a while before finally admitting “Hell if I know what’s really going on, guess that means I’m an agnostic,” I think I have more empathy for characters who undergo a similar process vs. people who are really certain about their faith and are willing to base their mate selection primarily on religion.

Ever since he was a child, Alec John Landers, Earl of Sherbourne, has made annual visits with his mother to Gilmuir in Scotland to spend time with his grandfather, who is laird to the MacRae clan. When in Scotland, they don’t acknowledge his English side; instead, he’s known as Ian MacRae and allowed to run wild with all the other MacRae children. Along the way, he develops a boyish tendre for the beautiful and feisty Leitis MacRae. Then on his eleventh birthday, his mom pulls classic Too Stupid To Live shit: she goes off riding alone, despite warnings of recent raids by the rivaling Drummond clan. Of course, beautiful Moira Landers nee MacRae is found dead that same day, presumably killed by the Drummonds. In a fit of pre-pubescent angst, Alec disowns the Scottish side of family and declares hatred of all things Scottish forever.

Fast forward to July of 1746. It’s only three months after the extremely bloody Battle of Culloden. Alec is now a highly regarded colonel in the British army, decorated by none other than the Duke of Cumberland himself. And just as Cumberland was known as “Butcher Cumberland” (and not for his love of a good cut of steak, if you know what I mean), Alec has earned the sobriquet Butcher of Inverness. The Disarming Act is being reinforced with great zeal in Scotland (although I think Ranney might’ve meant the Act of Proscription, which wasn’t enacted until August 1746) and Scots can be jailed for playing the bagpipes, wearing a kilt or a tartan, speaking Gaelic, or expressing any other features unique to Gaelic culture. And oh wondrous fate, Alec finds himself assigned to head the brand-spankin’ new fort that’s been built right next to Gilmuir Castle.

Things are a mess on MacRae land. The clan, which used to number hundreds of people, is now down to a few dozen starving members. Alec’s childhood sweetheart, Leitis, is alone in the world except for her cranky uncle Hamish. And Hamish isn’t much help or comfort: he stubbornly insists on doing assheaded things like play the bagpipes, which inevitably sends a swarm of English soldiers down from the nearby Fort William to punish the whole village for harboring a criminal. Alec arrives at the village just as the English soldiers, headed by the suitably villainous and ugly Major Sedgewick (they’re always ugly, if they’re not they end up reforming and getting their own sequel), are burning the houses down in an attempt to get the people to reveal where Hamish is hiding.

Alec is sickened by the destruction and orders the fire put out, then has Leitis put under his protection under the guise of using her as a hostage to guarantee Hamish’s future good behavior. He doesn’t dare reveal that he’s really Ian MacRae and no longer quite as fervent in his hatred of the Scots. As for Leitis, she thinks he’s OMG hot and vaguely familiar-looking, but also an Evil Swinish English Oppressor. But dammit, he keeps doing nice things like saving the village and treating her well while she’s under captivity. What’s a poor romance novel heroine to think?

And here’s where the plot gets a little bit silly: Alec decides he needs to do more to help the MacRaes, so he dons a nifty little half-mask, wears all-black clothing, calls himself the Raven and with Leitis’s help starts stealing army supplies from under the soldiers’ very noses and distributing them (the supplies, not the soldiers’ noses) to the village. Besides the rather mind-boggling risks they take and the incredible incompetence the English army shows, one can’t help but wonder why romance heroines (and superhero girlfriends) are so susceptible to being hoodwinked by the flimsiest disguises. But to Ranney’s credit, she quite convincingly portrays how Leitis is fooled. Leitis also can’t quite shake the feeling that the Raven is somebody familiar to her, so she’s not completely brain-dead.

Of course, all hell breaks loose when Leitis finds out who the Raven really is. But the resolution to all the troubles and dilemmas they face (both as a couple, and as a clan) are worked out satisfyingly by the end, and I was very pleasantly surprised by the solution that Alec came up with.

Ranney pulls no punches in describing the privations the MacRaes suffer, and this is probably one of the best features of the book. You get a pretty good sense of how horribly the Highlanders suffered under the British regime after their defeat at Culloden. Some reviewers on Amazon.com complained about how this aspect interfered with their happy fantasyland, but those people are pussies, don’t listen to them. Oh, and nobody in the book speaks in an idiotic brogue. Big, big props to Ranney for avoiding that particular pitfall.

The two main characters are quite well-rendered, Alec more so than Leitis in my opinion. We see how his feelings about the Scots evolve from his impulsive, childish hatred to something a lot more compassionate and complex. Leitis is a pretty standard Feisty Romance Heroine, ready to defy death for the sake of her pride and sassing the hero every chance she gets, but hey, she didn’t annoy me too much, which is a lot more than I can say about most Feisty Romance Heroines.

So anyway, if you like Ranney’s books but you were feeling nervous about the whole Scottish aspect, don’t be—she doesn’t disappoint. I, for one, really enjoyed reading this book. Even the sillier aspects of the plot are treated with some depth and respect. On the other hand, if you like romances that are all love and bunnies and roses or Scottish protagonists who say shit like “ye ken, wee lassie?” all the time, this might not be your cuppa.

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

Why do romance novel titles suck so hard?

The Unsung Hero has four stories entwined in the plot – yup, you read that right. Four. The main story is the romance between Lieutenant Tom Paoletti and Dr. Kelly Ashton. Paoletti spend key moments of his badass teenage years prior to his enlisting in the Navy living on the Ashton estate outside of Boston. His uncle, Joe, was Kelly’s father gardener, and young Tom had it bad for Kelly, who had it equally bad for him. After a hot and horny kiss and an invitation to meet later in the treehouse (and how on earth that would be comfortable is beyond me) Paoletti smells the coffee before he climbs that treehouse ladder, realizes that young Kelly is jailbait, and hightails it out of town, joining the Navy and spending the next sixteen years ascending through the ranks to commander of an elite SEAL team.

In the beginning of the novel, Lt. Paoletti sustains one mother of a head injury and is placed on a month’s medical leave pending psychological evaluation. As he flies into Logan to spend his leave with his uncle Joe on the Ashton estate, he thinks he sees an international terrorist in the baggage claim, and is convinced that either he’s just seen the impossible, or his head injury has rendered him utterly insane.

Now, as an aside, I completely believe that there are terrorists in Logan airport. Hell, two of the September 11th flights took off from Logan, and one from Newark, the airport I fly in and out of regularly. So there was no suspension of reality required on my part that a terrorist would be claiming his luggage at Logan, though in this novel, the idea that Lt. Paoletti may or may not be non compos mentis is part of the tension in the plot.

Dr. Kelly Ashton has come home to live with her father, Charles, who has been diagnosed with “cancer of the everywhere,” and is trying to reconnect with him emotionally as he lives out his last weeks. Charles is in the midst of a doozy of a fight with his gardener and best friend, Joe Paoletti, Tom’s uncle. The 50th anniversary of the Fighting 55th Regiment’s battle in Nazi-occupied France is being celebrated by their town the following week, and Joe is participating in a newspaper interview about the heroic rescue of the 55th, made possible by OSS spies living and hiding in the occupied French town of St. Helene.

Kelly and Tom don’t know what to make of the ongoing battle between Joe and Charles, who have been friends for 50 years any more than they know what to make of the electric attraction between them. Neither was aware of Joe and Charles’ roles in the battle that marked a turning point in WWII, or that Joe and Charles had even been in France during the war. Neither man is speaking about it, or speaking to each other for that matter, leaving Tom and Kelly to try to manage Charles’ health, Joe’s sudden temper, and their own emotional storms. As the novel progresses, Joe and Charles reminisce about the events leading up to the 55th Regiment’s battle with the Nazis, and the reasons why neither man ever spoke of the war after they returned to Boston together, Charles to his ancestral home, and Joe as his newly-hired gardener and already-established best friend.

The third story operating between Kelly, Tom, Joe, and Charles is that of Tom’s niece, Mallory, who is followed in the park one day by a shy, geeky young college student named David Sullivan who wants to photograph and sketch Mallory for his graphic novel. Mallory is the daughter of the town ho, and as such is wary of anyone who shows interest in her, assuming the allure is her physique, a feature that she inherited from her mother, and the idea that she might be an easy conquest, a habit that she did not inherit from her mother. Since David wants Mallory to pose in a bikini with another attractive college student, Mallory is first suspicious, then intrigued. Their story is an adorable encounter of young love between two people who are just beginning to define who they are, and who they want to be.

The plot that pulls these three stories together is that of a terrorist possibly on the loose in a small Boston suburb. As Lt. Paoletti encounters this man several times over the span of a week, he begins to believe that his suspicious are correct, and a terrorist presumed dead for years has surfaced. But since Tom can’t pinpoint why this man has surfaced, what he wants, or why he’s there, and he can’t cull together sufficient evidence to convince his superiors that the situation warrants attention and immediate action, Tom is forced to both question his own sanity and ability to lead his team of SEALS, and to pull together a makeshift team of any and all available officers who are willing to sacrifice their time off to come to his aid.

And herein begins the story of Sam and Alyssa, which I first encountered in a later novel, after Sam and Alyssa had acknowledged and done some horizontal damage to attempt to alleviate the explosive attraction between them. Sam Starrett and Alyssa Locke are part of Tom’s assembled team, and watching the beginning of a relationship that I already knew would carry forward into the backstories of subsequent novels before climaxing in a novel of their own was both a pleasure in terms of the entertainment, and a lesson in how a good writer keeps the reader interested. I know novels like the “Outlander” series carry backstories forward into other works that focus on other couples, but this was my first encounter with a plotline that I knew would continue for several volumes, and seeing its inception was lovely. If it was indeed the inception of the Sam and Alyssa storyline – as I said, I found conflicting reports about which novel marked the “start” of the plot.

The terrorist story drives the Sam & Alyssa, Mallory & David, Joe & Charles, and Tom & Kelly stories sufficiently with enough pace and twisty turns to keep me interested, and I started this book on the airplane from the Dominican Republic on Friday, and finished it early Sunday morning, after tackling a botched pickup at the airport, and then coming home to a house with no heat, and a delayed trip to pick up the dog at the boarders. If I’d been on vacation still, I could have read through this book in an afternoon, not because it was easy, but because the plot was tough and scary and demanded my attention. I never got distracted or confused, even though names like “Tom,” “Joe,” and “Charles,” are rather bland and can easily get mixed up before one comes to know the characters.

However, the strengths of the plot are not enough to cover two flaws that prevent me from giving this book an A rating. One, too many romance novels rely on a “big misunderstanding” device to push the heroine and hero apart and then together again. Kelly and Joe suffer something of a “big misunderstanding” plotline in the late middle of the book, mostly because both people neglect to be honest about their feelings, even though they’ve been honest and downright forthcoming about other issues, including Tom’s possible sighting of a terrorist in town, and his fears that his head injury has scrambled his mental eggs.

Second, I could tell the minute the full plot was divulged exactly why the sighted terrorist might have found motivation to be in a sleepy Boston suburb, and I had a hard time accepting why Tom didn’t also immediately identify the motive. I mean, if this guy is smart enough to extract politically connected socialites form hostile countries with a Plan Alpha, and a Plan Beta, how’d he miss such an obvious reason for a terrorist to be in town? I won’t say more, but the fact that the hero, a military leader, had such a giant blind spot for the sake of plot development did not sit well with me. But then, I get pissed off when television show characters do things I find inconsistent with their personalities, and spend a lot of time yelling a the screen.

However, the themes of the novel, and the characters themselves were enough to ensure that, unlike some of the books I brought with me, this book came back home with me, and was not donated to the resort library. Brockmann’s exploration of love, risk, choice, heroism and bravery in everyday and in exceptional circumstances was fascinating, and I’m going to rearrange my BooksFree queue to include some of the other books in the “Tall, Dark, and Dangerous” series.

So anyway, on to the review. Here’s some good news: If you really liked Archangel but thought Rachel should’ve dropped the rather stiff-rumped Gabriel for the gorgeous, golden, sweet-natured Obadiah, you’ll be ecstatic because Obadiah finally gets his own story, and it was worth the wait. Shinn weaves together two most excellent stories of two different sets of people falling in love.

The book starts a year and six months after the cataclysmic events that ended Archangel. First, we meet Elizabeth, a wealthy man’s daughter who has fallen on hard times after being orphaned. She currently lives with a cousin on his farm, essentially working as an unpaid servant. When presented with an opportunity to run off to Cedar Hills, a new angel stronghold, she decides to try her luck being an angel-seeker in the hopes she can regain her life of luxury.

Angel-seekers are essentially groupies. These women do their best to establish sexual relationships with angels, not just because angels are powerful, gorgeous and exotic in their own right, but in the hopes of becoming pregnant. If the pregnancy results in an angelic child, their future and status are assured because angel babies are so rare.

Soon after moving to Cedar Hills, Elizabeth strikes up a relationship with the handsome but rather feckless angel David. She also meets an Edori man named Rufus who works as a construction worker. Rufus was a slave until the archangel Gabriel outlawed the practice. He seems to love her, but he can’t give her an angel baby and the cushy life she’s looking for. Quite the dilemma, eh? (If you can’t guess what the outcome is to this love triangle, you gotta be brain-dead.)

The second love story is a lot more compelling. The angel Obadiah is assigned a new job by the archangel Gabriel: to pacify and negotiate with the Jansai. The Jansai are a people whose primary commerce used to be capturing and selling Edori slaves, and they are not happy with Gabriel’s new interdiction. But Obadiah is happy to accept this thorny commission because he’s more than half in love with Gabriel’s wife, and the assignment allows him distraction and distance from temptation. However, one of his wings is seriously injured on his way back from his first talk with the Jansai leader and he crash-lands in the middle of the desert. Luckily for him, a young Jansai girl, Rebekah, finds him on her way to get water for her family’s caravan.

Rebekah, like all other Jansai females, lives a life so sheltered it’s oppressive. It’s obvious that Shinn modeled the Jansai very closely to wacky fundamentalist Islamic regimes like the Taliban. Jansai women are required to keep all of themselves (including their faces) completely covered when not in the presence of immediate family, and are not allowed to go out in public unaccompanied by male relatives. Women found guilty of being “impure” are put to death. So Obadiah is completely out of Rebekah’s realm of experience, but she has a strong streak of independence to go with her compassion, and so their love story begins: she secretly helps nurse Obadiah back to health in defiance of everything she’s ever been taught, and they eventually become lovers when she returns home—quite the dangerous enterprise for both of them, especially Rebekah. How the two of them achieve their happily-ever-after is quite the suspenseful ride, but the resolution is very, very satisfying, if occasionally heart-stopping.

I really enjoyed this book. It is mostly character-driven, and Shinn does a good job with the people who populate the novel. I loved Obadiah when I first encountered him in Archangel, and I loved the opportunity to finally get into his head and see things from his point view. On the other hand, I found Rebekah and her wishy-washiness regarding Obadiah a little annoying at times, but then I realized that growing up as she did, her feelings about what she was doing and who she was doing it with could hardly be unequivocal. Elizabeth, however, was the character who grew and changed the most, and the transformation was very satisfying to see. She starts out as an unhappy, rather petulant woman who longs most of all for a life of luxurious idleness, and by the end of the book she has matured tremendously and manages to build true happiness from her circumstances.

Shinn also manages to present the angel-seekers with a lot of depth and sympathy. The seekers are generally treated with contempt by both people and angels, but Shinn convincingly shows us why many of these women are driven to do what they do, especially Elizabeth and her circle of friends.

I only have one small beef with the book, and it’s in the way Shinn writes about the Jansai. I know there are cultures that are based on oppression of the weak, and I can buy that these types of cultures don’t always produce the nicest people. I didn’t really have a problem with seeing many of the Jansai men being presented as greedy, brutish and selfish. But not only are they evil oppressors, they’re also FAT. And DIRTY. What the fuck? I think the dirty bit was what bothered me the most, because I grew up in a Muslim country (though I was raised Buddhist and am now officially agnostic), and I’ll tell you what: ritual purity and cleanliness are very important to most Muslim cultures. I would’ve appreciated a little bit more depth and balance to the portrayal of the Jansai; throwing in “fat and dirty” to add to their general villainy essentially pushed the race from being credible to being caricatures.

Anyway, if you enjoyed the previous Samaria novels, what are you waiting for? Go get it; this is one of the best so far. (But just to give you an idea of my tastes: Unlike most other readers, I found Archangel a bit underwhelming and really, really liked Jovah’s Angel.) If you’ve never tried Sharon Shinn and you like love stories set in other worlds, then check her out, she’s one of the best.

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

Archangel
Jovah’s Angel
The Alleluia Files
Angelica
Angel-Seeker