Review- Mr. Perfect

In the spirit of last week's discussion, I revisited an old favorite, Linda Howard's Mr. Perfect, over the long weekend.

Of course, it only took Monday afternoon to finish it, but that is neither here nor there.

The concept is simple: four friends sitting around drinking after work come up with the list of things that would make a man Mr. Perfect. Before long, people at work get ahold of the list, start emailing it, and it becomes an internet and news sensation. The ladies then start getting threatening phone calls, and Someone Starts Killing Them.

The book focuses on Jaine Bright, a... er... bright thirtysomething with three broken engagements behind her, who just bought a house next door to the hottest cop in books since Marc Chastain. Or Dane Hollister. Linda Howard writes hot cops. But I digress.

The banter is joyous, the sex really good, and he's a cop, so he saves her from the Big Bad, all while admiring her Dad's precious car and helping her take care of her mother's cat. Talk about Mr. Perfect.

The real refreshing thing about Mr. Perfect, though, is it is the first time I have a real memory of liking the heroine and relating to her, flaws in all (subsequent Howard heroines, in fact, possibly all except Milla Edge, have not fared as well). Jaine is sarcastic, swears like a sailor, jumps into situations without thinking, has realistic relationships with her siblings, and a successful career that she does not even discuss giving up when she meets Sam Donovan. They snap-crackle-pop their way through the proceedings and then live happily ever after. And not that cheesey happily ever after, the kind where she occasionally threatens him with a butcher knife when he makes PMS jokes.

Plot- .5 (gutsy to kill half of the ladies, but I've read it so many times I don't remember if the killer is predictable or not)
Characters- 1+ (Jaine and Sam are among my favorite couples)
Sex- 1 (there's not a lot, but it's good)
Style- .5 (typical Howard, but with more curses, because Jaine has a potty mouth)
Consumption- 1 (did I mention I read it in an afternoon?)

TOTAL- 4+

Wendy Pan:

Okay, so not fair! Marc Chastain is, like, the all time sigh guy! He kept it on while he was dancing, HELLO! That being said, Sam is right up there. The whole scene where they are washing the car... nice. Can't disagree with you about any of it. Really like the relationship Jaine has with her girlfriends, all real people and real friends who also happen to work together. But I have to disagree about your plot score - really - the end is so not what you expect! (And I do remember that!) Gonna give that a 1, so I'm coming up with a total of 4.5+

Kate:

No hijacking my review. Write your own.

Discussion Continued-- The Kinks are worked out! (No, the band didn't go to the gym... nevermind)

WENDY PAN:
Okay - so why is it that when the heroine loses her virginity it's always a glamourous and wonderful adventure? Where is the fear, the pain, the mess?


Oh - maybe I'm talking about my first blog publication. I am being hounded by Kate Jones to contribute to this space and I make the effort with the humble knowledge that while I taught her all I know, she far surpasses me in talent. I think when I was her age I had the wit and wisdom to be creative, but I seriously doubt my ability to hold my own in this, our joint post.

So, I'm supposed to make witty reparté about lame heroines? The pressure is on. There was a time when I was enthralled with anything Jude Deveraux wrote and equally Joanna Lindsey. Not so much now. The heroines kind of remind me of the uncomfortable feeling I would get when I watched "I Love Lucy." You just KNEW Lucy was going to screw up and get in trouble and it was going to take the rest of the show for Ricky to figure it out and for them to get kissy face and get over it. I understand the concept of conflict - God knows it exists every day in real life - but do these women seriously have to create ways to be idiots?

Part of my thrall may have been based on a lack, in my own life, of the kind of "romance" that I read about in my favorite books. I have since learned that the fantastical romance I sought escape to, in the pages of comfortable trash, is so far from real life that it actually feels uncomfortable.

So, lame heroines are the ones that have to resort to any kind of subterfuge to attract the man of their dreams, or even the villain who later becomes the hero (Whitney My Love?) And those who think that when the initial bloom of romance is gone they have lost their man to a rival (The Black Lion).

A real heroine - whose character is to be applauded - is the one who is who she is and never needs to make things up to get her guy. But - if she does have to make things up, it's only to protect her man (Lyon's Lady, Guardian Angel). The one with enough guts to enjoy the battle and the struggle - for the reward of endless devotion from the man who sees beyond the tough exterior to the puddle of mush inside (J.D. Robb's Eve Dallas).

KATE:

Well Wendy Pan, thank you so much for joining us! No more putting down your own ability to repart-- any blog where we make up words like "repart" obviously has no standards of any kind.

I was waiting for you to bring up Eve Dallas, a difficult female character who finds a dude who, as you say, finds the puddle of mush inside. It makes the heroes better (sexier, more likeable, etc.) when they can see past the heroine's serious flaws (difficult, standoffish, badass warmonger, etc.) and like her anyway. This is the evolution of the "new" heroine, who the man adjusts to. Unlike in the earlier books you mentioned (everything, ever by Jude Deveraux), where it is up to the heroine to adjust and forgive and negotiate parts of her own personality.

Wendy Pan:

Okay, so what happened in society that made the weeping wimpy heroine so unacceptable now? And can any of us go back and be satisfied with Kathleen Woodiwiss again? I mean, Shanna... really? I think K.W.'s Ashes In the Wind gave us a better heroine - one more vibrant and less weepy, but the doctor actually fell for the sneaky cousin instead. Look how that ended!

I began reading trashy romance at the ripe old age of 17 (my grandmother's influence, if you can imagine) and Shanna was as hot as they got. (I won't say, "back in the day" but it's implied.) I worked my way over to Jude Deveraux and was truly, madly, deeply in lust with anyone whose last name was Montgomery. The women I could take or leave. They weren't why I was reading. I think Linda Howard changed my perception of the heroine. She made her women witty and bold. Jaine Bright - I mean, how great is she? And that Sam actually "gets" her at the same time he is perplexed by her? And that she drives a really cool car and that she's so not a wimp! Heroine evolution? God did not just create her, she has evolved. Her genetic roots can be tracked back to Lucy the fossilized hominid. And baby, look at her now!

KATE:

Funny, I'm a Taggert girl, myself...

Discussion- The Heroine Lameness Factor

And thusly begins our first discussion post.

I don't know exactly how this is going to work between the two of us, but I'm going to start in one color, and then Wendy Pan will respond in another color. Or something.

Let the Great Experiment Begin!

To open, I give a little background: This blog is largely inspired by another, more famous blog, nd the genius creators/writers of said blog recently published a book, from which our beginning discussions will originate.

So, one of the major breakdown/critical assaults (with love!) is about Trashy Romance Heroines, their archetypes, and how generally helpless they can be (except for a select few of our more mod ladies).

That said, here I am opening the discussion. Ready, steady, GO!

KATE:

I have two current paranormal series obsessions, one of them the aforementioned Black Dagger Brotherhood series by JR Ward, the other the Immortals After Dark series by Kresley Cole. Ward's prose is more heavy, the characters better developed, the drama more wraught. Cole's is lighter, fluffier, and just plain more fun. But I digress.

I prefer Cole's series for a number of reasons, the most important of which being that the women kick ass. Like, seriously. Kaderin the Cold Hearted is a badass warlord who collects the teeth of all the vampires she's killed. Mariketa the Awaited is the most powerful witch in a millenia who manages to fend of otherworldly threats just fine before her lykae shows up, thank you very much. Sabine the Sorceress of Illusions is a tormentor and torturer of epic proportions, and continues to be even after she is comfortably mated to the King of the Rage Demons.

By contrast Ward's heroines are always the secondary members of the book, they have identities of their own, but they don't really do anything... they have their moments of glory and then very quickly fade into the background at the Brotherhood takes precedence.

Now there is a time and a place for a complacent heroine (mostly in historicals), but if I'm talking about personal preference, I want my ass-kicking heroes to have ass-kicking femmes. Who's with me?

Review- Smooth Talking Stranger

Let me start this review by saying that books in the first person, particularly romances in the first person, make me especially nervous. Sometimes it's good (hello, Linda Howard and your should-be-annoying-former-cheerleader, Blair!), and sometimes it's very, very bad (let us not delve too deeply into my post-Twilight hate fest. But seriously). Anyway, risky risky risky proposition, especially in a genre new to the author.

Ladies (and gentlemen?), may I please bring your attention to Lisa Kleypas and her new, first person contemporary romances, the latest of which is Smooth Talking Stranger.

For the ease of this writing, I am going to refer to them as the Travis Series, although I'm not sure Kleypas is actually designating them as such.

These books have focused on the wealthy Houstonian Travis family, whose men are men, and whose women are pretty gutsy too. The reason I hesitate to name them as the Travis series is because in three books (no, it's not a trilogy, there is very obviously at least one more book to come) is because the first person is always the heroine, and so far only one of those women has been a Travis herself.

In Smooth Talking Stranger, Ella Varner tells us about how one day her mother called her up to say that her emotionally unstable sister has just birthed and abandoned a baby boy. Ella reluctantly rushes to the scene, determined to save not so much her mother as the baby from her mother, and sets about trying to find the baby's father. You know, to take responsiblity and pay, etc. etc. etc.

Enter Jack Travis, suspected daddy #1, and fortunately it's established very early that he did not, in fact, impregnate Ella's sister. Fortunate, because who wants a heroine who takes her sister's sloppy seconds?

Jack graciously helps Ella find the man who did father the baby, falls in love with Ella, deals with her emotional baggage, loves the baby, blah blah blah.

Trite Harlequin concept? Probably. But for some reason, possibly that pesky first person account, I was completely riveted. I wanted to know why Jack was so keen to help Ella, I wanted to know what was going to happen with the sister and her dirty preacher babydaddy, and I wanted to know when Jack and Ella were going to get naked. Which they eventually did. Several times. And it was great.

It's light and fluffy, but not silly or unreadable by any stretch of the imagination. If I had to register one complaint, it would be about the first person narration. And not because it doesn't work, but because it does work, and I found myself wanting to know what was going on in that uber-sexy head of Jack's, not just Ella's. When there's a sexy Alpha-Male in the house, third person omniscient is the way to go.

Plot- 1 (potentially lame, but well delivered)
Characters- .5 (not a whole lot of time spent developing Ella before Jack shows up, which was a staple of the first two books in the series)
Sex- 1+ (parking garage. And then after the parking garage... whew)
Style- .5 (really, really wish Ella's wasn't our only perspective)
Consumption- 1 (considering I read it in less than a day... yeah)

TOTAL- 4+

How This Is Going to Go Down: A Post

So, to be clear, there are actually TWO people writing this blog, although one of them has chosen to be MIA until sometime next week. In the meantime, here's how this SHOULD work on a week-to-week basis.

Wendy Pan and I will each post a review of a book, either that we have just finished, or that we finished a decade ago and want to write about, or that we are currently reading and are extremely in love/annoyed with.**

Then once a week we will have a "discussion" in which we pass a given topic back and forth like a beach ball. Only it probably will not go on that long, since neither of us is very coordinated.

So I'm going to hold up my end of the deal and write another review for this week, and then hopefully we'll start writing right along next week. Or in July. But we'll see.




**A minor disclaimer: If we are that in love with the book, we might not want to put it down long enough to write about. Sorry.

The Grading System. How it Works, What it Means

Here's how this is going to work.
At the end of each review, we are going to grade each book based in five areas.

1. Plot- Feasibility within the book's own mythology, whether it made sense, etc.
2. Characters- No idiots/helpless heroines welcome.
3. Sex- It better be worth it.
4. Style- Appropriate to what the author was aiming for... or what we think the author was aiming for.
5. Ease of Consumption- How much fun was this to read? Or wasn't it?

BONUS POINTS: Only our favorite authors can get bonus points. They are our faves, and we will follow them to the ends of the earth... but they can also lose extra points for copping out and not living up to their full potential.

Each of the above is worth 1 point. The best a book can do is 5 plus Bonus Points. Worst is -1. Yes, -1... you can lose points for being that bad.

Review- Lover Avenged

Let's face it: there are Vampire Books and there are Vampire Books. There are the Anne Rice kind, the ones with orgies and gory bloodsucking and in-depth mythologies that cannot help but grow tiresome. And then there is lightweight drivel like Twilight, in which the vampires voluntarily give up that which they need most (you know... human blood) and don't generally adhere to any vampiric precept.

I find that most of the time I need something somewhere in between those two extremes. Thank goodness, then, for J.R. Ward and the Black Dagger Brotherhood series.

Lover Avenged, the seventh installment, follows already familiar characters, but focuses primarily on Rehvenge aka The Reverend, the pimp/drug dealer/club owner/sociopath who we have come to know and... love? fear? in previous chapters of the saga. While not exactly a member of the Brotherhood, his ties are close enough (his sister is married to one of the more dangerous warriors, they all hang out in his club, etc.) , and they all respect him while guarding his illegal (in both the human and vampire worlds) secrets.

Rehvenge, apparently, is half sympath, Ward's made-up genetically determined race of sociopaths. In Rehv, the sympath and vampire sides vie for dominance to the point that he keeps himself... er... doped up on dopamine to numb out his more dangerous tendencies. Naturally when he meets The One, a nurse named Ehlena, his vampire tendencies become so dominant his sociopathic urges can no longer compete. I think. But more on that later.

Like all of the Brotherhood books, the romance is not even close to the point of the book. There are three main story arcs; that of Rehv and Ehlena, one following Wrath, King of the Vampires and the head of the Brotherhood, and one following John Matthew, a constant and constantly conflicted Ward presence since Book 2. The thing is, that these all manage to flow together, and beautifully. At times I didn't even want to hear about Rehv and Ehlena, because I was so caught up in all of the other things that were going on.

This is typical Ward. These books cannot be read out of order because the ongoing arcs are so massively developed in each successive book. Issues from Book 3 are still being worked out in Book 7, and if you missed even a step, you're in a whole lot of trouble in terms of catching up.

My only complaint about Lover Avenged is that, as weird as it sounds for a book that is 544 pages long, the ending is rushed. I'm not sure exactly how Rhev is going to handle his new drug-free existence, or if he even is, and I really wish he and Ehlena had had a bit more time to sort things out between them, rather than about 12 hours. All I'm saying is, as much as the other story arcs are great and wonderful and perfect, maybe a bit more attention could have been paid to the subjects of the book.

Rating:
Plot- 1 (Complex and titillating... But I'm not sure about Xhex and John Matthew)
Characters- 1 (If there was any more character, we'd all be in trouble)
Sex- 1+ (Rehv and Ehlena, Wrath and Beth... my goodness, is it warm in here?)
Style- 1 (any scene with V and Lassiter is worth the price of purchase)
Consumption- .5 (takes a while to flow, but once it does, watch out!)

TOTAL-4.5+