In Which We Finally Find Out What Happened with Cat and Leo

YAY CAT AND LEO!

In other words, I also read Married By Morning by Lisa Kleypas this week.

And yes, it has been a very good week. But let's not all get too excited about my prodigiousness, shall we?

As some of you may remember (or may be trying very hard to forget), I finished Tempt Me At Twilight in October (in the sun, in the mountains... sigh) which ended with a helluva cliffhanger: the ever contentious Leo and Cat having a confrontation about "what happened."

Married By Morning begins with the "what happened" and progresses from there, revealing to the world the relationship between Cat and Harry Rutledge (the hero of the last book... they're brother and sister) (Oops. I mean SPOILER ALERT), and sending Cat and Leo down the inevitable road of foreplay, arguing, and Happily Ever After.

I love the Hathaway family, I love the world they live in, and I love the way they tie into all kinds of other books (spun-off from the Wallflowers, which themselves spun-off from Again the Magic, one of my favorite Kleypas books). I have to say, though, that at no time was I excited about this book. Sure, I finished it in about 24 hours (including work and Scout arguing time), but it wasn't because I was hell-bent on finishing it. It was solid and quick to read, and it was good. Bland, plain old good. Like a favorite recipe you can rely on to save the evening meal.

It called forth for me several better Kleypas books (prostitution from Someone to Watch Over Me, assault and lechery from Dreaming of You), and in the end, matched none of its influential predecessors for sheer sighworthy-isn't-that-wonderfulness.

The next book is presumably (hopefully?) the last book in the sequence-- the youngest Hathaway daughter Beatrix will be Love(d) in the Afteroon at the end of this month, and presumably by someone working at the zoo where Leo is supervising the expansion of the ape house. Once again, inevitable.

Which might be a big part of The Problem. Nothing is surprising about Kleypas' books anymore-- her historicals, anyway. Everything is pretty paint-by-numbers, and though there is nothing wrong with them, their infinite readability is not what will win their places on the Keeper Shelf.

In the same way that I hope Tessa Dare does not expand into paranormals, I hope Lisa Kleypas will refocus on her contemporaries. Those have been fresh, exciting and consistently surprising. And if making those a priority brings a fresh eye to (later!) historicals, I would welcome them even more.