Well Now I'm Really Grumpy.

"You are my heroine. And by heroine I mean 'lady hero'. I don't want to inject you and listen to jazz."

-Liz Lemon

So I had this lovely post about romance novel heroines written, and then Blogger had a freakout and now it's gone. And I'm sad. Actually, I'm really sad because it was a kick-ass post.

I haven't read any books since Dead End Gene Pool, and it might be early next week before I finish another one. So instead of writing another boring review of... something... I think it's time we talk about heroines. Back in the day I wrote a Top Ten Heroes post (that ended up containing only nine heroes), but I've spent very little time talking about heroines.

Devotees will know that I am in the process of writing a romance novel (or twelve) in my spare time (read: never). The personality and strength of my main heroine, Lyla, is something I am terrified of getting wrong. Because it is ridiculously easy to go very, very wrong.

It could be argued that The Heroine is the most important character in the book, because in 99.9% of books the majority of the story's POV will be on her. Great strides have been taken to give the hero greater perspective in recent years, but the focus is still mostly on the heroine. And thank goodness, because the only thing worse than a flaming jackass hero is a too-stupid-to-live heroine.

Because I'm writing a heroine (or twelve) I have very definite ideas about what she should and should not do. She should not be (too much of) a bitch, but she should not be a spineless nitwit. And by all that is good and holy, if the hero is being a flaming rat bastard, she should not sit around pining and waiting for him to get over himself. Is he The One? Presumably-- he is The Hero, after all. But that doesn't mean that she can't go out and date and have fun without him. And if she does go out and date and have fun, he shall not come back from rat-bastardom and announce that she has been a slut while he was away.

Examples my heroine will NOT be following are:

*Any Diane Palmer heroine, ever. Seriously... speaking of putting up with rat-bastardom to excess...

*Most Sandra Brown heroines, who seem to be born lacking an "honest conversation" gene

*Sarah from Sarah's Child (the dude you're in love with asks you to get an abortion? Dealbreaker!)

*Lauren from Double Standards (grow a damn spine and stop being the pawn of every man in your life. Also, get yourself a "person." She'll make you stop acting like an idiot)

From past experience, I know I'm going to need a few days (or at least a 2 hour ride in the car to Scout Land) to formulate my Top Ten list. Know this: it will include Sydney Bristow. While I acknowledge that she is not a romance novel heroine, she is still a heroine, has romance, and is one of the models for how I want to live my life (minus all of the deceit, dead friends, and dead fiances).

I'll let you think over the weekend too. Because this here is going to be a proper discussion on Monday morning. Dig?

With the Rich and Mighty, Always a Little Patience

Every-so-often I take a break from romance novels. For non-fiction.

Yes, I'm a nerd, but I thought you already knew that.

At some point in the past few weeks I read a review, somewhere, about Dead End Gene Pool. So when it came across my library desk last week I decided to take it home and give it a shot.

Dead End Gene Pool, written by Commodore Vanderbilt's great-great-(etc.) granddaughter Wendy Burden, is a memoir about the life and times of a 20th century scion. The premise was intriguing and quirky: Her father committed suicide when she was young, and she spent her youth bouncing back and forth between her extremely wealthy and eccentric grandparents (old family money that had been expanded since the time of the Commodore), and her narcissistic mother whose only pursuits were the perfect tan and another husband.

Burden seems to have quite a detailed memory of the events of her childhood, though if those sorts of things had happened to me I might remember them with crystal clarity as well (at a certain point she indicates that she may be looking back on old diaries.)

It's a fun, if horrifying read-- a family servant tried to molest Burden at a certain point, and when she tells her mother, she's told to let the man have his kicks-- but not entirely riveting or shocking. In a world where Mackenzie Phillips writes a memoir to say that she had an incestuous relationship with her more-famous father, it's pretty difficult to shock and awe a reader with regard to effed-up childhoods.

As a memoir it was not particularly deep or thoughtful, more a recounting of events with little examination of the motives behind the actions. Burden's brothers are two dimensional characters whose presence is merely to illustrate how unwanted she was as the only girl in the family, and then to talk about the waste of their not living up to any expectations set for them. Her writing strength lies when talking about her animals, particularly the basset hound Obadiah, whose motives and personality received a far better analysis than the humans who own them.

Burden herself was more like a real-life Flavia De Luce, filled with diabolical schemes and a fascination with all things morbid and decomposing. In other words, she's wonderful to read about, but would have been an absolutely terrifying child.

As to her famous and infamous relatives, I would have preferred a more historical and deep look at them-- the last bits of the book, when Burden finally starts to unravel some of the secrets of her family's past, are the best parts. The tale of her grandparents' courtship found in their letters after they died would be fascinating, as would a further examination of the deterioration of her parents' marriage and the events leading up to her father's suicide.

Dead End Gene Pool is worth reading, but it felt like and introduction to something that could be a helluva lot more substantial. Let's hope she writes more.

In Which Jill Shalvis Cleanses My Contemporary Palate

Does that sound dirty? That might sound dirty.

I have done a lot of complaining lately-- complaining about weak contemporaries with seriously unusual plot-age, complaining about Kresley Cole and how much I love her but it's-just-not-how-it-used-to-be.

Behold, a positive post.

Jill Shalvis' Instant Attraction was recommended by SB Sarah, and as everyone knows, we take SB Sarah's recommendations very seriously. Even if it's a "this book is so bad, you must read it" piece of wisdom.

Instant Attraction did not fall in the latter category. Katie and Cameron are thrown together pretty literally when he walks in one night to find her asleep in his bed. This is not a new convention of romance, but Shalvis handles it with a perfect bit of realism. Cam's been gone for a year and his family lets her use his room, not knowing when he's coming back. Simple as. Now he doesn't pull the macho alpha-male thing and insist on sleeping in the bed anyway, and he is actually a little annoyed by Katie before things settle down, but he in no way assumes she is a harridan and becomes prejudiced against her for the rest of the book.

The reason that Katie is in Cam's bed in the first place is that after a pretty major life-trauma she has decided to live life "balls out," which includes accepting a temporary book-keeping gig at the resort Cam owns with his family in the Sierras. Cam, too has had a pretty intense life-trauma and has been on what amounts to a walkabout for the past year.

The pair essentially bond and come together in the recovery stages, helping each other along the way. While there is a fairly typical "I really want in your pants! But I can't! And we shouldn't!" vibe on Cam's end, both of them enter the relationship with the clear-eyed knowledge that the relationship will be as temporary as her job.

Naturally things evolve beyond that and Cam makes one of those miraculous heroic journeys that enables him to beat the heroine home to surprise her with his enduring and eternal love.

While the relationship between Cam and Katie was not in any way "weak" I do have to say it might have been the weakest part of the story. What really impressed me was the portrayal of Annie, Cam's aunt/maternal figure and her husband of 20 years-- they've hit a rough patch stemming from the complacency of middle age and she demands a divorce before he knows what hit him. Of course, he refuses to give it to her and they fight like cats and dogs, until they both straighten out, remember to appreciate each other, and have lots of sex in the kitchen.

Another could-have-been-cliche portrayal was that of Cam's ex-girlfriend, Serena. She is really bitchy and rude to Katie for the first three-quarters of the book, but never devolves into caricature. The best part for me was that when she and Katie finally came to an understanding, Serena's attitude didn't change-- she didn't suddenly become cute and squishy, but rather remained standoffish and abrasive, which went miles toward excusing some of her earlier bitchery.

Shalvis has set this up as a brother series (there are two more just like Cam for your convenience) and the heroines are set, too-- the local doc and the local mechanic are already giving Stone and TJ the runaround, respectively. For a second I was afraid that Serena was being setup to be a love interest for one of them, but I didn't want that for the same reason I don't want Xhex and John Matthew together. It's 100% fine for her to have slept with someone else, less fine for it to be someone we know, and really really not fine for it to be a brother.

Don't tell Boy Scout, but I already have Instant Gratification and Instant Temptation in my possession. More soon.

Notes on the JR Ward Book That Hasn't Even Come Out Yet

I am not excited about this book.

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.

By Popular Demand

Dear Boy Scout:

This one's for you. Now go harass someone else while you're bored on vacation.

Love Always,
Kate

Oh... Shiloh Walker.

You loyal readers (all two of you) will know that I have been trying my darndest to get into Shiloh Walker as an author. I'm not sure why I have this goal (I don't think she's been recommended to be specifically), but there is something about her writing which leads me to think that I should be reading all of her stuff. Only when I do read her stuff I find myself really frustrated. Like, really frustrated. Especially in the second half of the story.

Now this is not a scientific analysis-- I've only read three of her books. But nonetheless, I was pretty much "done" with all of them by the time the 3/4 mark came into view.

My most recent experience was with Fragile, the prequel to the sequel that I had read last week (really? was that just last week? ok, then...). This one covered Luke, the other twin (you can never just have a one-off story about one twin, can you? Nope, gotta cover both), also ex-military, but significantly less effed-up than his brother, Broken's Quinn.

Luke, now retired from Special Forces, is a doctor in Kentucky who falls for Devon, a social worker who is in and out of the hospital for various reasons as a result of her job (bringing in abused kids, their junkie parents, etc. etc. etc.) Devon is of The Dark Past, having been molested, raped, and turned to drugs all by the time she was thirteen. She's all recovered (as much as one can recover from that, I imagine), but standoffish about men. That is, until she meets Luke and his sexxorating finishes the healing process.

This is all fine by me. I liked the evolution of their relationship, I like the way they worked together, I liked the two of them as individuals.

My problem came when there was, you know... a conflict in the story.

Standard Heroine Is In Danger, Hero Must Protect Her plotline, with Devon being stalked throughout the book. Given her job, this is not an unrealistic conflict. A pissed off parent wanting revenge because his kid was taken away? Sure! Absolutely. However, in addition to that, another Mysterious Person From The Past watching her? Really? How many stalkers can this girl have? And is one not enough to create conflict that helps solidify her relationship with Luke?

I just didn't buy it. Nor did I buy the sudden and downright bizarre identity of the Man From The Past, who, by the way, is the one who killed the first stalker. Because he was interfering with the second stalker's agenda. Oops, spoiler alert. And no, I'm not kidding.

The longer the story went on, the less I liked the characters, and the less I understood why they were together. I suppose their relationship is depicted realistically for the circumstances, but honestly. His Alpha-Male chest thumping and her Independent Woman stupidity reached such a pitch that when they finally "took some time," I genuinely didn't see a reason for them to get back together. Which they do. After he saves her.

And without actually giving away the ending, I just have to say that I don't understand how that could possibly strengthen their bond as a couple. If I were her, I would run long and far. Not necessarily because of him, but because if what happened to her had happened to me, I would need some serious time. Possibly in a mental ward.

Maybe this all goes back to my major life-premise. The character's the thing. Shiloh Walker's characters are interesting, and they could be compelling if they were a little more developed. And things would be even better if they could be put in a reasonable situation. I'm going to keep trying her, but they're not going on my Keeper Shelf. Yet.

Pleasure of a Dark Prince Review-- Allayed Fears and Fresh Skepticism.

I finally finished Pleasure of a Dark Prince at 1:00 this morning, about 3 hours after I announced that "I probably won't finish this book tonight" to an unsuspecting Boy Scout. Well, he was unsuspecting, and also, I think, a little skeptical that I had the motivation to power through and get 'er done.

Ah, Garreth and Lucia. If we were waiting for Murdoch and Danii's Ice Capades for years, we had been waiting for Garreth and Lucia's for a millennia-- they were arguably the first foreshadowed couple in the series before everything blew up, seen in the Val Hall dungeon as Lachlain tried desperately to break out and get to Emmaline in A Hunger Like No Other.

Have I mentioned I prefer Lykae to Vampires? I mean, those Wroth brothers are something else, but they have nothing on the brothers MacRieve and their uber-sexy, no-longer-heartbroken cousin Bowen (though I think Bowen is a hero much helped by the likability of his heroine. Bowen might be a tool, but as long as he's Mariketa's tool, it's fine.) I mention this because there's something extra special sexy about the way Cole writes her Lykae as opposed to the way she writes her vamps-- they all have their The One (Brides, Mates, whatev), and all become physically affected when they find them. Not just sexually affected; the vamps get blooded (heart beat, more physical strength), while the Lykae's Beast gets a little more tempermental and starts running around and growling mine instead of... well, just growling.

Kresley Cole has put a lot of thought into the psychology of the Beast-- how it's a primal entity almost separate from the Lorean it inhabits, taking control almost without any thought or choice from the, er, carrier. The Beast's mate is everything-- he will literally follow her to the ends of the Earth to ensure that she is safe, or, if she's in no danger, to ensure that he can continually get in her pants. The full moon in Cole's mythology does not portend a beastly turn-- that can happen at any time-- but rather a frenzy of sex for those mated, and a potential frenzy of violence for those not. The Beast can appear at any time depending on the danger and threat level surrounding the Lykae, but he is guaranteed to appear and seek his mate at the full moon.

Garreth and Lucia, like all of them, are beset by one problem after another that Keeps Them Apart. Naturally there is a lot of fooling around in the forest, lots of arguing that ends in fooling around in the forest, and lots of Nucking Futs Nix running around and confusing the hell out of everyone.

I enjoyed Garreth and Lucia's story more than I thought I would-- when the story opened with Lucia's binding to an ancient god of... something (I don't know what, but whatever it is it's GROSS), and consequentially her flight to Skathi, who turns her into a mythical archer, threatened with paralyzing pain if she misses her target-- I was a little leery of the fictional mythological infodump. Fortunately this resolves itself and we are able to coast along on what we already know for most of the rest of the book.

One day in modern times Garreth is playing rugby with the demons near Val Hall (as you do... I think this would have been a perfect opportunity for some pre-bound Cadeon and Rydstrom banter, but hey... I have a weakness for demons almost as strong as my weakness for Lykae. So I'm biased. Whatever.) He sees Lucia and he's done. Down. For. The. Count. We kind of already know what happens next. He busts into Val Hall while Lucia is agonizing over a missed shot, helps kill the vamps who are trying to take down the house (in search of the already missing Emmaline... but you already knew that), then they use Lucia to bait Garreth back so they can in turn use him as bait to get Lachlain to bring Emma back.

And we all know where that ends up.

It's not until the 1/3 mark that we start to actually get fresh story, starting a year after the Lachlain-Emma love connection and finding our hero and heroine on a boat in the Amazon, searching for an aptly named Dieumort. Those of you who don't speak French can go look that up. I'll wait.

Problems ensue, blood is spilled, Lucia and Garreth finally consummate things on the forest floor (3 for 3 on first sexorration in the woods for our Lykae! Woot!). They yell, they make up, they fight vamps, they Find The Treasure. Happily Ever After (though only after some minor "I thought you were dead" torment. Really, it was minor, for which I can't decide if I'm sad or happy-- if this was a Judith McNaught, he would have thought she was dead for 50 pages. But this isn't Judith McNaught, and that's why we like it. I'm just saying a little more torment wouldn't have been out of order. Sigh).

A couple of things: At a certain point Lucia is held with a knife to her throat by a vamp and Garreth... is almost unaffected. Now that's not true, but let's review how other Lykae reacted when their mates were threatened, shall we? Lachlain, as I recall, beheaded two vampires and a demon hybrid when all they did was cause Emma to scream and run away. Mariketa the Awaited was kidnapped by Colombian mercenaries (silly humans!) and Bowen destroyed everyone in their compound (not to mention the poor bastard whose stray punch hits Mari in Dark Needs at Nights Edge). Lucia is held with a knife to the throat by one of his mortal enemies and Garreth growls... "Let her go"? Disappointing. And honestly, a little against character. I get that he'd want to be careful of her, but come on. He didn't even let the Beast out. I'm not sure this goes along with anything written previously-- or even in this book-- to describe a Lykae's reaction to his mate in imminent danger.

Thinking about it, maybe neither of these plot points (the threat to Lucia and Garreth's convince-ment that she's dead) needed anything more than a bit of Garreth's perspective. Cole, who rocks socks at writing the male perspective, suddenly stops writing it in the last bit of the book.

The ending of the book was intriguing, addressing all of my previous concerns about where this series is going. A small point though: By the end Regin the Radiant has been kidnapped by who Nix foresees to be "[someone I can't remember], the CIA or a berserker." Now the berserker assumption is a fine one considering that there has been one stalking her for centuries, but by the epilogue it is clear that it is not a berserker who has Regin and a number of other characters (including Carrow the Incarcerated, who is, we're told, the heroine of this summer's Demon from the Dark) for reasons unknown. These are good guys and bad guys, kidnapped on what is still the eve of the Accession.

Since Nix is never wrong, either we have a seriously pissed off berserker army, or the CIA is involved. Note to Kresley Cole: I'm OK with you taking a page out of Joss Whedon's playbook and bringing in The Initiative. Just don't screw it up, got it?

Finally, I'm not even close to breaking up with this series, but I have to confess that since Cadeon's book (Dark Desires After Dusk) I have been less and less thrilled and psyched and ohholyhell-ed by the characters and books. Maybe it's the re-hashing of past events because we have to backtrack for the perspective of our "current" heroes. Maybe this is all just taking too long. Maybe I'm tired of the Valkyrie getting to have all the fun. So, Note II to Kresley Cole: I love you, and I love everything you do. Could we maybe do one IAD book per year and save the other one for... something else? Like a contemporary? You haven't done a straight contemporary yet. Or maybe that rogue Sutherland cousin who we last saw heading to the West Indies? You remember the Sutherlands, don't you? They put you on the freaking map. Please consider going back to your roots.

Vote Nix for Goddess 2010!

I'm Finally Reading the Kresley Cole Book.

And of course, as soon as I picked it up and settled in, I started wondering why the frak it had taken me so long to start it in the first place. Garreth! Lucia! Nix! Lachlain! Emmaline! These are some of my favorite people. A Hunger Like No Other (Lachlain and Emma's book) is borderline my fave (tying with, well... all but Kiss of a Demon King, and maybe No Rest for the Wicked) and seeing that story from the other perspective (Garreth doesn't believe his brother is alive! And then he sees Emma's bite! ACK!) is fun for the whole family.

I'm not going to post a review right now, I'll wait til I've actually finished (at this rate... Saturday?), but I do have a couple of thoughts:

*Am I the only one who is really, really annoyed by Regin? I mean, she is a fine, distracting, humorous secondary character, but I don't think I would ever willingly read her book. And I hope Cole knows better than to write one. I mean, not everyone needs to be paired up in the end. Right?!

*I think we're actually going to get some Accession action in this one, which is good... if you'll recall my previous concerns, we are rapidly running down characters and nothing has happened in this epic supernatural battle that only comes around every 500 years.

*Garreth might be hotter than Lachlain. I haven't quite made a final call on this one yet, but there will undoubtedly be a post dedicated to the hotness of the brothers MacRieve.

Oh, and the next time I'm hesitating about reading a Kresley Cole? Someone please hit me over the head with something heavy.

Apparently I Can't Prioritize My Books.

On a blessedly stuff-to-do-less Sunday, I actually sat down and read a book. Yes, that's right. A whole BOOK.

Unfortunately it was the Shiloh Walker book that I ordered from Amazon following the Kindle-story incident. To clarify: the misfortune doesn't stem from the fact that it was a Shiloh Walker book, but more from the fact that I picked it over books that have been on the TBR shelf for far longer than that one. Case in point: Kiss of a Demon King by Kresley Cole, a book I am really, very excited about, but which I can't seem to pick up and read.

About this Shiloh Walker book, Broken. I stumbled onto an excerpt Idon'tknowwhere and decided to order it, once again making the mistake of ordering a sequel before the prequel. In this instance it didn't matter that much-- the hero, Quinn, is brother to the previous book's hero, and they both stand pretty independently, minus a few references to previous happenings that have nothing to do with the current story.

Quinn's a bounty hunter with a Secret Dark Past (really, I don't think he ever even tells our heroine about the things that happened to him), who runs into Sarah, his new housemate (also of the Secret Dark Past) and promptly falls into lust fueled love. Lots of inappropriate public sexual encounters ensue, blah blah blah, encumbered only by the fact that Sarah Is Hiding Something.

As with the previous story I had read, there are liberties taken with huge chunks of time that don't serve the story well at all-- to have them wake up one morning after the passing of one week in their relationship does very little for me in terms of plot development or the development of the characters. Suddenly there are holes to be filled in with regard to their routine and how they're doing as a couple-- to say nothing of the fact that despite the passage of time, they don't seem to know each other any better than when they started.

The ending worked for me as much as it didn't work for me (follow that?). The twist made it interesting and everything pulled together nicely (I do like a good, working red herring), but then there was a tidy little bow on everything. Followed closely by a severe and annoying lack of communication by Quinn and Sarah. And the last minute, heavy handed introduction of new characters, which really is a pet peeve of mine.

None of this stopped me from ordering the prequel to the sequel, nor will it stop me from considering Shiloh Walker books in the future. I highly doubt any of them will end up on the Keeper Shelf, but I'd be willing to read them anyway. This will be especially true if the author can stop being such a contradiction-- a modern writer with modern styles who really is stuck in old skool cliches. And not hiding it well.

On a maintenance front, Shotgun's alias has officially been changed to Boy Scout. It just fits better, no matter how much he wants to pout about it.

It Turns Out All I Needed Was a Quiet Evening. Or Two.

Well, Friday night (known in some circles as "date night") has become one of the only nights a week that I actually sit at home. Unless I'm driving. Or going to high school productions of AIDA.

Last night was supposed to be the first Friday 3D date night for me and Shotgun (which will be my boyfriend's new alias on this site. It's one of Michael Vaughn's aliases, duh... It was between this and Boy Scout, which didn't go over so well). At any rate, a stomach bug and general malaise kept us once again relegated to Skype dating, which was just fine for me and the completion of The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag.

I adore Flavia de Luce. Adore her with a capital A. Any girl who remolds her sister's lipstick to contain poison ivy (don't worry, it was well deserved), who rides around the countryside on a bicycle named Gladys, and who considers it her personal mission to solve local murders-- if only so she can know about them before the appear in The News of the World-- is my kind of girl. Somehow a middle aged Canadian (that would be award winning writer Alan Bradley) has managed to create and capture perfectly a ten-year-old English schoolgirl. And while Flavia's precociousness is sometimes over the top, she is nothing if not perfectly portrayed.

Having read the critically acclaimed debut of Flavia and the universe surrounding her ancestral home, Buckshaw, last year, I was very excited to hear that the sequel had finally arrived (a consultation with the author's website confirms that there are at least four books planned for the series). Between her truely hideous sisters, her absent minded stamp-collecting father, and the eccentric array of characters that surround her at every turn, I knew that the story would be nothing if not enjoyable.

I believe I wrote about this before with Sweetness, but if you'll indulge me a bit, I want to talk about why it is difficult for me to finish these books once I start them. I like them, and they're mysteries, for goddsakes. There should be a sense of urgency to, at the very least, find out whodunnit.

Hangman's Bag, though, like Sweetness, held no such urgency for me. In fact, I finished the book last night, and I still am not entirely sure I know or care what the central mystery was. Something about a boy found hanging in the woods five years ago, and a dead puppeteer who probably ultimately deserved to die. Or at least, have something really horrible happen to him.

The point of these books, for me, is not to be riveted on a plotline. It is to imagine riding with Flavia through the sunny country lanes, to have tea in the decaying rooms at Buckshaw, to envision what truely horrid concoction Mrs. Mullet has prepared for dinner, and the amount of eye-rolling poor Inspector Hewitt must be doing when he finds himself beset upon, at every turn, by a feisty pre-adolescent (by the way, the introduction of his wife, Antigone, is one of the highlights of the book for me-- I can't wait to see how Flavia worms her way into their garden for tea in the future).

So yes, once again, the character is the thing-- and I have absolutely no problem with that. In fact, I have to wonder if that's not becoming my number one requirement for liking a book. Who cares about the plot? As long as the characters are interesting and dynamic, I'm not sure I do.

So Then I Read a Shiloh Walker Book. Story. Kindle Thing.

Thanks to a shout-out from SB Sarah earlier this week (including issuing a link to this blog which, previously, exactly 3 people have read), I have felt a particular pressure to write something lovely and witty and welcoming to potential new readers.

Only I couldn't think of anything to write about.

I have very little time to read these days, so the TBR list including 2 Vanity Fairs (though Michael Douglas might just have to deal with having a lower priority than Grace Kelly), a paperback pile that's at least 30 high (hello, library book sale!), and library books that, you know, have to be returned, are all vying for my 100% divided attention. In addition to the previously encouraging boyfriend who now suspects that I need to be checked into some sort of book-buying rehab.

I am currently reading The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, the second Flavia de Luce novel by Alan Bradley and it's as delightful as the first one. However, like the first one it is taking forever for me to finish, but it's due back to the library next Thursday, so fine. I'll be writing about Flavia and the sulfur injected chocolates next week.

Having spent most of last night in luxurious laziness reading Flavia, I made the mistake just before bed of going back to the Shiloh Walker book I had downloaded (oh yeah, add the downloads to the TBR list... dammit) and started reading on my miraculous Kindle for iPhone while waiting for an appointment yesterday afternoon. It's called Her Best Friend's Lover.

Full disclosure: I am a complete, lame-ass loser push-over for books that involve a) pregnancy (let's not delve deeply into that, shall we?) and b) soul-shattering, "I have loved you forever but haven't been able to tell you", aching, desperate love stories. If you know the ones I mean, you know the ones I mean. Her Best Friend's Lover included these elements, so saying I didn't like the book is way untrue. I liked the book the way I like watching Flavor of Love... when I find it I have to read it, in an embarrassed, "yes, I'm reading this, and no, I don't want to talk about it" kind of way.

All of that said, this book had some serious problems for me, quite aside from the bizarre editing errors that a sixth grader could have found and corrected.

First of all, it reminded me of another shameful book on my Keeper Shelf, Led Astray by Sandra Brown. Yes, I have two Sandra Brown genre romances on my Keeper Shelf. AND NO, I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. Both books feature a pregnancy based on... mysterious sexxorating, let's say. In Walker's book, the hero and heroine are BFF, he gets really drunk one night and they have sex, only he doesn't remember (first that it happened, then that it was her). She gets pregnant and doesn't tell him he's the father because she doesn't want to trap him... blah blah blah.

Sandra Brown's plotline (the heroine gets pregnant by her fiance's brother because he comes in the room, it's dark, and she thinks he's her intended... I told you. No talking about it.) at least has the excuse of being genre, and 80s, and, you know... Sandra Brown's plotline. Her Best Friend's Lover Kindle version was published in November 2009, and I would have expected a story that's at least more... modern.

Forgetting the stupidity of the no condom, no birth control thing (as discussed last time... it's what makes her special to him. Or something.), we need to discuss the stupidity of the characters for a moment. Like, Hi Dale (that's his name, Dale). You had a mysterious sexual encounter with a woman you can't get out of your head, and three weeks later, your best friend turns up pregnant. Not only that, but every time you... um... smell your best friend, it gives you flashbacks to your Mysterious Encounter. WHY ARE YOU SURPRISED THAT YOU ARE THE FATHER OF HER CHILD?

And you, Lauren (that's her name... Lauren). You know that you had sex with him. So can you please explain why you're jealous of an "unknown entity" and think that your best friend (now husband) is in love with someone else? Just because he's never mentioned his Mysterious Encounter to you directly doesn't mean that he has no memory of that night. Except that it does, because if he remembered, he would know it was you. Ugh.

There's a lot of torment and angst and a danger-riddled delivery (Dale also pulls the classic Sarah's Child douchbaggery and leaves on a trip during the third trimester, right around the time Lauren's not feeling well and showing early signs of pre-eclampsia. Duh.) and then more angst and "oh he doesn't love me because he's being distant" and "oh she doesn't love me because she's being distant" and "we are being distant because we're emotional wackjobs."

Needless to say, while the first half of the book had me all guiltily atwitter with the bad romance-ness of it all, the second half made it all a little... lame.

Because seriously kids. All you needed was one honest conversation, like, 9+ months ago, and all would have been fine.