Wow, I've been really negative lately, huh? Don't worry, I plan on having very positive things to say about Jill Shalvis' Instant Attraction as soon as I finish it. Whenever that will be.
But in the meantime, I want to talk about Lover Mine, the upcoming (and possibly last?) book in JR Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood series. I doubt very much that this will be the last book in connection to that series, but as of Lover Mine, all of the principals have been paired, coupled, and shacked up.
And it's this last one that, for me, is going to pose the biggest problem. Summaries tell us that it is finally the story of John Matthew, the youngest Brother, and Xhex, the bodyguard of sociopathic club owner Rehv.
I do not like these two as a couple, which I'll get to in a minute, but first I want to talk about John Matthew. He's the "brother" of the queen of our vamps, only he's not her brother, he's the reincarnated version of... her father. No one knows this, and there have been no hints that anyone even suspects this, and I am curious to find out if this is finally revealed in Lover Mine.
Quite aside from John Matthew's, er... old soul, he's an eighteen-year-old boy. Not a two-hundred-year-old dude immortalized in the body of an eighteen-year old. He is straight up eighteen years old. Personally, I don't like my heroes to be that young. Now John Matthew has been through a lot in his young life, and again he has an "old soul" (though he doesn't even know this, apparently), but I have very little interest in seeing him find his The One so soon. He's definitely not mature enough, and his head is definitely too effed up (for various reasons) to be an effective partner at this time.
As for Xhex herself, I don't need for my heroines to be virgins (unless it makes sense), but I definitely don't want them to have already slept with someone else in the series. In addition to the fact that I don't like Xhex (she's a little manly for me), I really don't like the fact that she had sex with Butch in a previous book. Perhaps this is a double standard on my part, because I certainly don't hold this against Butch, but I can't change the fact that it really, really bugs me.
Xhex really needed to remain Xhex, the bodyguard at the club, not the sudden victim/heroine of one of the series' final chapters. To a large extent, I think Ward is trying to subvert cliches of the genre-- the hero is young and virginal, while the heroine is older and tougher and more experienced. I actually have no problem with that in general (see: No Rest For The Wicked, Dark Needs At Night's Edge, and heck, even Lover Awakened), but for these two, it simply doesn't make sense.
They are a temporary couple at heart: she's supposed to introduce him to passion (done), he's supposed to save her (coming up in this book), and then she's supposed to continue her stance that they are not meant to be together. He gets hurt, but moves on and eventually finds the one he's really supposed to be with. Too much thought? Too much thought. But this is the way I feel about this couple. I don't understand how or why they're supposed to be together. Hopefully Ward can convince me.
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