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

I realized, partially related to Candy’s thoughts on romance cliche, that when the characters get married in the middle of the book, it’s almost a let down for me. I find myself...disappointed. I have to ask myself why: is it because I think the illicitness of sneaking around for clandestine snogging in a Regency is half the fun - the danger that they might get caught - although only rarely is a moment where boobs are free and pants are undone interrupted, so once the hero has gotten to 2nd base and is rounding to 3rd, I kind of know they aren’t going to be discovered and have their naughty naughty escapades cast in the public light of shameful gossip. Adding overt shame to the protagonists’ sexual exploration isn’t a hallmark of many Regencies I’ve read.

So do I get bummed out because the risk, the chance of discovery, no matter how remote, is gone once they are married and in each other’s company so frequently? Is it that the author no longer has to come up with clever scenarios to bring the hero and heroine together? Or is it that the conquest is won, the rake has been tamed, and the bliss of marriage and ever-frequent sex makes for a boring finish to the book, regardless of the conflict being addressed by each character or both?

I will say that this is an issue I have with historicals, not contemporaries. I don’t know that I’ve read too many contemporary romances where the hero and heroine get hitched halfway through and then fight the forces of evil for the rest of the book.

But I have to wonder if my disappointment is evidence of my own compliance with the Disney-fied Happily Ever After ending, with wedding bells seen or implied serving as the ultimate culmination of the romance. Maybe I have learned to expect the story to end at the nuptial canoodling and am bothered when it violates my expectations.

I do get bored with recurring characters from prior novels popping up into later stories, bedecked with wedded bliss and all the fire and spark of vanilla yogurt. Do I expect the same of newly-married couples who are also the protagonists of the story? Or is it the loss of the attraction phase, and the beginning of the attached phase, that loses my interest? I know my favorite element of a well-written romance novel is the attraction between the protagonists, so maybe it’s the end of the zest and the beginning of the rest that tends to let me down a little. (As a married person myself, it’s not like I think the attraction ends after marriage. I’m plenty attracted to my husband!)

Am I the only one with this peculiar expectation? Does marriage take away some of the zest for any of you? Or are there well-written examples that you remember fondly?

Friends Into Lovers
I bitched briefly on Romancing the Blog today that many romance novel heroes and heroines aren’t particularly good friends. They’ll shag each other raw because of that Overwhelming Passion that turns the men into walking testimonials for Giant Cockstands R Us and the women into perpetually moistened bints, know what I mean nudge nudge wink wink (do I get marked down for mixing my Python references the way writing students get marked down for mixing their metaphors?). But when I close the book, although the hero and heroine are Madly In Lurve (or claim to be), they’re rarely In Like. And personally, I like it when the hero and heroine are friends as well as lovers, because let’s face it, the zingy sex and out-of-control chemistry can only last so long and take you so far.

That’s why I really dig it when good friends—sometimes people who grew up with each other—suddenly realize that HOLY CRAP, the other person’s really fucking hot. First of all, there’s a definite element of Forbidden Attraction here, which Beth has covered in some detail. The h/h are typically hesitant to get down and get funky because they don’t want to ruin their beautiful friendship, but ohhh, they can’t help themselves, the other person is SO HOT, and a little kiss can’t hurt, can it, just a little touch, and…. Sigh. I love this plot device. It’s rarely done well, because most authors cave in to temptation and have the two friends fighting tooth and nail and acting like complete assholes all of a sudden in an effort to introduce some conflict, when really, I love Friends Into Lovers books because I want to avoid all that bullshit arguing and screaming and hair-pulling.

Some books that have used this device to good effect are titles I’ve mentioned ad nauseam on this site: To Love and To Cherish by Patricia Gaffney, and Manhunting and Crazy for You by Jennifer Crusie.

Virgin Heroes
What can I say? I’m a dirty, dirty girl, and I love the role reversal this presents.

Wild Men
No, no, not hairy men with massive guts and a love for leather vests who go roaring off in their Harleys to the sound of Steppenwolf in the background. I’m talking former feral children, men who were raised in the wild, usually by wolves. This isn’t a plot device that’s been used very often, but since I had a Mowgli fetish when I was a little girl, the whole man-brought-up-by-wolves-and-finds-love-with-good-woman trope holds enormous appeal to me. Realistically, I know from reading about the few documented cases of children who were raised by wolves or other animals that they typically suffer from severe physical, social and developmental disorders, but yeah, FUCK realism, realism can kiss my ass. Wild At Heart by Patricia Gaffney has Forbidden Attraction, a Virgin Hero AND a Wild Man, which is why it’s one of the most re-read books I have in my collection. I was so sad when Anne Stuart totally copped out on Wild Thing and turned the guy into a Not Very Wild Thing After All.

Cross-Dressing Heroes
Just as I like cross-dressing heroines, I love me some cross-dressing heroes. First of all, I’m attracted to somewhat androgynous-looking men, so a guy pretty enough to convincingly portray a woman = hot. (Anyone remember that episode of 21 Jump Street in which Johnny Depp had to dress up as a woman? He was startlingly pretty, and Johnny-boy is one of the few crushes I’ve retained from my early years.) I kept Shadow Dance by Anne Stuart solely because I love Valerian and Sophie’s story so much; the main romance between Phelan and whatserface was pretty standard angsty fare.

Tortured Heroes
And I’m talking REALLY tortured, not “wah wah my parents were not faithful to each other so I’ll use this as an excuse to act like a complete buttmunch.” To illustrate, here’s a conversation just last Saturday between me and the Very Tall Husband, who’s reading Seize the Fire between playing Doom 3 and Knights of the Old Republic (interpretation: progress is very, very slow, because computer games in which he gets to kick 3,256 different types of ass > romance novel):

VTH: You know, that Sheridan is a real jerk.
Candy: Isn’t he, though? I still love him. He’s a total rat fucking bastard, but damn, he’s funny.
VTH: Yeah, but I understand now why he’s such an asshole. His dad was the Grand Cockmaster. I mean, telling his ten-year-old son “Hey, I’m going to send you to Vienna…”
Candy: “…so you can study music and be immersed in everything you love…”
VTH: “Totally, and here, all these nice men on the ship will look after you, but oh, hey, PSYCH! YOU’RE IN THE NAVY! SUCKS TO BE YOU!” Jesus. What a father.

Again, I know that realistically, people with extremely troubled childhoods are disproportionately likely to repeat the same patterns of abuse with their future families, but I’m enough of a sucker to enjoy reading about the All-Redeeming Power of Love and believing that these extremely troubled men are able to confront their demons and find true happiness with the love of their lives. So very satisfying, plus there’s usually a good grovel at the end of the book where they apologize to the heroine endlessly for the shit she’s had to put up with. Ahhhh, sweet, sweet payback.

Addendum:
Other plot devices I like that I remembered in the course of discussing this in the Comments:
- Guardian/Ward romances
- Older Women/Younger Men

The premise of the book sounded like so much fun that I’m sad it didn’t turn out better. Caitlyn James is a hairdresser who owns her own salon. While out on a wild night of partying with some of her sorority sisters, a car accident renders her less-than-alive. A secret gub’mint agency decides that her body is salvageable, however, and re-engineers her into a bionic woman. The trouble is, since this was all done without her consent, Caitlyn doesn’t figure she owes anyone anything, and is especially unwilling once she meets The Boss, a creepy eyebrowless wonder who will stoop to nothing when it comes to national security.

Then somebody starts whacking the members of the team of scientists who created the cyborg technology, and Caitlyn reluctantly agrees to work on the case. The prime suspect is Dmitri Novakov, a Lithuanian cyborg gone rogue. Problem number 1: He’s hot. Problem number 2: He thinks she’s the one killing all the scientists.

Think this might provide pages upon pages of interesting conflict and action-packed adventure? Yeah, dream on, kid. This mystery is solved so fast that it’s rivalled only by how fast Caitlyn and Dmitri hop into bed and fall in love, but then everything that happens in this book does so at super speed, since it’s only 195 pages. 195 pages of large print, at that. And of those 195 pages, there are as many scenes of Betsy—oops, Caitlyn—burning out exercise equipment with her bionic strength and speed as there are of her kicking bad guy ass.

Aside from an obsession with hair instead of shoes (and since Caitlyn’s big thing is hair, I don’t know WHY the cover’s tag-line says “Saving the world—one Manolo Blahnik at a time…” unless it’s to associate this character even more closely with Betsy), Caitlyn is basically Betsy from the Undead series. OK, Davidson keeps noting that unlike Betsy, Caitlyn was a straight-A student, but given the way Caitlyn acts and the way she talks, I think the people in her fictional world should find which university gave her all those As and start lobbying to have its accreditation yanked. And when I say Caitlyn talks like a stupid person, I certainly don’t mean Caitlyn’s predilection for bad words; I mean she just plain sounds dumb. She stumbles over perfectly ordinary words that a bright 6th grader has no trouble with. Seriously, at one point in the book she has problems pronouncing “enmity.” What in the everlasting fuck? Three syllables, all easily pronounced and more-or-less phonetic (what a rarity in English!) with the root word quite clearly being “enemy.” It’s not as if the word were a mouthful like, say, “prestidigitation.” So the author takes care to say over and over that Caitlyn’s smart, as do all the secondary characters, but what Davidson shows over and over is a bimbo who has trouble with problem-solving, task accomplishment and multisyllabic words.

The hero is pretty much a cipher. His history is fascinating, because he’s turned into a cyborg against his will much in the way Caitlyn was, and at one point he turned rogue. Do we get any of that juicy backstory? Like hell we do. Instead we get another scene featuring Caitlyn dishing on and on and ON about whatever with Stacy, her best friend. In fact, most of the book is from Caitlyn’s viewpoint, and when we switch to Dmitri’s, all we get is that he thinks she’s hot and smart and funny, a conclusion he comes to after exchanging all of 10 sentences with her. I’m not kidding when I say there are more scenes from The Boss’s point of view than Dmitri’s. What does that say about a romance novel?

When it comes down to it, the book isn’t too bad a read; it’s certainly fast and funny, though completely unmemorable. I had to dock it a few points though, because Davidson is now parodying herself, and worse, doing it poorly. If you’re a MaryJanice junkie, I highly recommend that you check this out from the library before shelling out $14.00 for this extremely slim volume that’s basically a re-tread of her vampire books in cyborg guise.