TBR Challenge: Caprice by Amanda Carpenter (aka Thea Harrison)

The theme: Starting Over

Why This One: I didn’t have the theme in mind when I started, but it kind of fits. As a romance reader, I hope it fits.

From the Goodreads reviews this isn’t a fan favorite, and it’s not hard to see why. There’s almost no plot — all vibes, as the kids say. And the vibes aren’t all that good.

Caprice is the name of our heroine and she doesn’t know herself whether it’s “a case of the name predicting the personality, or the personality fitting itself to the name.” She’s whimsical, capricious, manipulative and an inveterate flirt, and she’s starting to realize that she’s in perhaps in a trap of her own making. She’s not a terrible person by any means, and many of her ploys throughout the book are for the benefit of her friends, though she’s never truly let those friends in. But her socialite lifestyle is shallow and she has no desire to change it, even while realizing something is missing.

In typical Harlequin fashion, Caprice’s feelings are upended by an attractive man named Pierce — another descriptive name, I just realized — and it scares the hell out of her.

She felt an inner lurch, and then was frightened. Foolish, foolish, for this man was a stranger and he didn’t matter any more than the others mattered. She shouldn’t fear him. He didn’t know her, couldn’t know her. She was glittering brightness, she was cool fire, she was laughter and gaiety, and malicious gentleness, she was Caprice. Underneath that, she was untouchable.

These thoughts happens right after Pierce tells her “everyone has a basic reason for doing something. Sometimes, with the more twisted or fanatic mind, you need to search deeper for the reason, but it’s always there, deep, underlying actions and thought like the still waters under the surface of this lake.” Which makes a lot of sense in terms of her character, but sets the reader up for disappointment, because we expect some powerful reason for Caprice’s behavior, some trauma, and we don’t really get one. (Though on the other hand, yay for avoiding that particular romance cliche?)

Pierce finds Caprice about as frustrating as you’d expect, but nonetheless courts her in spite of her hot and cold reactions, and in the end manages to make a pretty good argument for how their opposite attracts relationship could work. I still have my doubts about their ultimate happiness, and I wish there could have been more progress in Caprice’s understanding herself better and moving closer to other people in her life, to help create a happy ending. Instead it comes out more as “she just needed a good shagging” quite literally ala “Gone with the Wind.” The second half of the book is less interesting than the first.

It’s hard to believe this was published in 1986, because it feels like a time capsule — those who enjoy loving descriptions of clothes will be happy — but more like 1960 than the 1986 I knew. (Though coincidentally enough, I was just about Caprice’s age then, and it’s the year I met my husband.) The feel is so old-fashioned, I kept being surprised when Caprice could go off with a young man without a chaperone or be caught kissing him without a scandal. Were rich people really having innocent house parties in 1986?

Did We Read the Same Book?

I just finished The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams, which was very sweet and touching. The way the books I knew were discussed in the story kind of threw me at times, though, especially Pride and Prejudice. It reminded me of what Alexis Hall has been writing about in his blog lately: “the 1995 adaptation really doubled down on Pride and Prejudice as primarily a romance and that’s kind of what it’s been (and to an extent what Austen’s been) ever since.”

If it were just one character, it could be considered an individual response, but it’s so universal throughout, I got the feeling that Adams doesn’t much like P&P herself and certainly doesn’t know it very well.

Various quotes:

“So, Mr. Darcy, he likes Elizabeth Bennet, and she clearly likes him, but she spends most of her time being rude to him and vice versa.”

No.

“From the first moment you meet Mr. Darcy and Miss Elizabeth, you know that they’re meant to be together. The rest of the book is just the author trying to keep them apart for our entertainment.”

No.

“Isn’t it basically nineteenth-century smut?” Vritti laughed, sitting down at the table.

Mukesh’s face blanched. “Smut? Really? I am only a quarter of the way through. I haven’t seen smut yet.”

“Just you wait,” Vritti winked.

I suppose, since this is a religious family, this could referring to Lydia having sex outside of marriage? But it’s never addressed again and we have no idea how Mukesh felt about it when he got there. So, mostly No.

“Bossy Mrs. Bennet wants to marry her daughters off to rich men. But one of her daughters, Elizabeth Bennet, she wants to marry for love, not money,” he explained to Priya.

Okay, he’s talking to his young granddaughter, so maybe we’ll let that one pass.

Aleisha couldn’t tell if she was hungry or her stomach was actually doing somersaults. Elizabeth Bennet and her standoffishness would not be impressed with her.

Whut.

Mukesh could see all the characters he’d met along the way. There was Pi and his terrifying tiger, very out of place. Elizabeth Bennet, still playing hard to get, with Darcy a few steps behind.

WHUT.

TBR Challenge: No Place to Run by Jane Donnelly

The theme: location, location, location

Why this one: I’ve been on a bit of a Donnelly glom and this one fit nicely.

CW: Use of “gypsy,” somewhat stalkery hero, and heroine who berates herself for saying no to sex after being “criminally provocative” by, you know, kissing someone. (He, unlike many a Harlequin hero, gives her no hassle about it at all.)

Despite the title and a rather perturbing opening, in which Lucy gets a magazine cutting of herself and her fiancee marked, “So that’s where you’ve been hiding,” this isn’t romantic suspense, but a story with a largely internal conflict. As the book opens, Lucy has just gotten engaged to Mr. Right and is resolutely stifling any memories of her time on a Scottish island, when she met a man named Matt and… sort of married him.

“For a few years before the clearances the young folk were forbidden to marry unless they emigrated, so they married with the ring of rock. Like gypsies jumping hand in hand over the campfire.”

She said “Well, thank you for bringing me here,” and she put her hand through because it was irresistible, gasping when his fingers closed over hers. He loosed her within seconds and they both laughed and the singing cave took up their laughter.

As they spent more time together, this little ritual became meaningful for them both. But Lucy, the child of an aggressively unhappy marriage, desperately wants safety and security. Which seems perfectly embodied in Giles, her town’s Most Eligible Bachelor. Lucy’s life is perfect — except for the persistent fear that Matt might show up and ruin everything.

And then he does show up and does ruin everything… not in so much in deliberately stirring up trouble, but because somewhere inside, Lucy knows she’s doing the wrong thing. A conversation with Giles:

“I’ll see you this evening. I love you.” He added, “There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

“Now what could be possibly be wrong?” It was a lovely day. “Bye, then; I love you.” She put down the phone and sat looking at it for a moment. “I love you,” she said softly again. “Oh, I do hope I love you.”

This isn’t a popular book; a lot of readers find Lucy annoyingly wishy-washy. But Donnelly’s voice makes it work for me, and I think Lucy gets a good arc — not just throwing her cap over the windmill for love, but because she realizes that her life with Giles would be utterly stifling. And though I’m not usually a big fan of woo-woo, something about the connection between Lucy and Matt, that mystical pull deeply rooted in harsh history, enchanted me.

How (Not) to Ask a Boy to Prom by S.J. Goslee

I wound up really like this YA book, which reminded me of “Booksmart,” my absolute favorite depiction of High School. (Not counting the absurd magic of Don’t Care High.) It took a while to get there. Although the writing is instantly engaging, it’s also instantly confusing, with a huge cast of characters casually mentioned. And Nolan, our narrator, seems to passively drift through life, bullied by everyone including those closest to him. Drawings of dicks on his locker are a daily occurrence since he came out as gay at fourteen, as is getting deliberately bonked in gym class. (At one point, his gym teacher is literally, albeit humorously blackmailed with threats of a lawsuit.)

But perhaps the worst is his “soul-twin” and adoptive sister Daphne, who absolutely knows what’s best for him, including forcing him into a ridiculous “prom-posal” to the boy he has a crush on. Utterly humiliated, Nolan is rescued from an unexpected source: Ira Bernstein, “Bern,” who casually accepts the proposal. Although previously mentioned as low-key harassing Nolan after he came out, Bern is completely unfazed by the idea of being Nolan’s date or even faking a relationship.

As Bern and Nolan’s cross-clique dating begins to expand his high school world — previously limited pretty much to his best friend Evie and their Secret Awesome Sacred Art Club, and Daphne’s circle of friends, all of whom he thinks are unutterably evil — Nolan makes some surprising discoveries. For one thing, he’s seen at school as an “asshat hipster wannabe.”

“Which, for the record, I am nothing like a hipster at all. I have an appreciation for art that sometimes includes the absurd, but my outfits are born out of incredible laziness, not any sense of style. All my ugliness is a side effect of being too tired to care.”

For another, all of Bern’s friends are worried he’s going to break Bern’s heart. Because, apparently, he already did: Bern had asked him out freshman year, and Nolan assumed it was bullying and yelled at him. (Ouch, I felt this one. I’ve been there.)

This is where it started to feel like “Booksmart”: the discovery that things weren’t like the main character thought amidst offbeat high school fun going on. Rope ladders to the bathroom roof. Drunken games of spoons. Face painting with possibly toxic art supplies. Wild and crazy nights singing songs about math. And it shared with the movie a sense of underlying… safety. Even when Nolan is getting massively drunk on booze that smells like apples and gasoline — “Go with God,” the drink mixer says — I never really worried about him. (Oh! It’s almost another big queer party!)

The main flaw of the book is that I don’t think the author quite pulled off the very necessary first-person-romance skill of showing what the other person is thinking. I had to go back and reread sections to feel like I had some idea of what was going on with Bern. And Nolan isn’t just an unreliable narrator from self-absorption, but because he’s, as he puts it, “not good at feelings.” He tells us virtually nothing about his life before being adopted as a teen, and there are just a few clues that it’s left profound emotional scars, despite the fact that his adoptive family is just about ideal:

“This is bad. Daphne and I always get along. It’s how our family works. I don’t do any stupid shit, and Daphne and Marla and Tom all love me for it.”

I was sorry that there wasn’t more about this insecure attachment, especially not more disproving of it. I usually complain about books not being subtle enough, but I needed more here.

But overall, it was really a good time. Now I wanna go watch “Booksmart” again.

TBR Challenge: Sweet Treason by Patricia Gaffney

CW for book: Pretty much all of them, sans overt racism. To its credit, it calls rape rape.

The theme: Danger Will Robinson!

Why this one: Oh my goodness, what old skool danger doesn’t happen to this pair of obsessed numbskulls? There’s barely a peaceful moment.

Kate and Burke: they’re always either doing each other wrong, or just doing each other. She’s a Scottish spy for Bonnie Prince Charlie — primarily seeking revenge because of the English soldiers who assaulted her and killed her family. He’s in charge of delivering her to be tried. They spend the first part of the book at each other’s throat and the second half saving each other’s life, between bouts of sex and mutual torture.

It’s not a form of romance I’m especially fond of, though some of the wilder ones, like Gaffney’s Lily and Brenda Joyce’s The Conqueror, are so out there I can’t help but love them. But while Lily elicits cries of “Oh no he didn’t!” Sweet Treason is more like “oh, of course he did.” There’s endless drama but nothing really surprising. Kate is irritatingly stubborn and pettish and they’re both irritatingly obtuse. And it’s episodic in a way that often comes with lack of pay-off. A villain leaves with a sneer of “I’ll get you yet, my pretty!” and then is replaced with a different villain and never seen again. The ending leaves so many unanswered questions.

I enjoyed it more than it sounds. The prose and characterizations aren’t memorable in the way of later Gaffney, but she’s a good story-teller, and it’s not dull. And an old skool hero who’s also ridonkulously besotted is a fun combo. Put this one most definitely in the “to each their own, or if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you might like” pile.

Element of Risk by Robyn Donald

When it comes to Robyn Donald, my motto is always “go old skool or go home.” She overdoes the alphole sometimes, sure, but her books with kinder, gentler heroes are so boring. This one hit the sweet spot nicely, as well as being an amazing trainwreck of a story.

Perdita, a stunning model on the verge of retirement, gets a call she’s been waiting for for a very long time — the twin girls she gave up at birth eleven years ago have finally been located. But that’s not all… to her shock, Perdita discovers they were adopted by her beloved cousin Natalie and Natalie’s husband Luke… who is, in fact, their biological father.

I’m not sure I want to say much more about the plot, which only gets wilder from there. Perdita has to square off with Luke to get a chance to see the children (Natalie has conveniently died) and she’s just about perfect at it — intelligent, committed, truly wanting what’s best for them. Meanwhile, Luke is bitter and accusatory and just a step away from serious violence. He might be unbearable if she wasn’t so capable of holding her own.

(One not-so old skool element about this book I really liked, is that Natalie is treated respectfully as the girls’s mother. There’s none of the “now they have their REAL family” crap I’ve seen in other books. It might even be a little too good to be true, but I don’t care.)

The classic bleak moment, when it comes, is rather unusual — though precipitated by an event so over-the-top that I imagined Charlotte Lamb calling to tell Donald to tone it down a bit.  There’s a lot about the past that Perdita has to sort through and understand, before she can have a happy ending.

I don’t always enjoy Harlequin Presents like I used to, these hard days, but this was a fun trip back to when I loved them, the wackier the better.

TBR Challenge: One to Watch

CW for book: hate speech against fat women. Note also that this isn’t a genre romance and doesn’t follow their conventions.

The theme: Dress for Success

Why this one: It’s so perfect for the theme, I’m going to ignore my usual rule and count a library book. It was on my tbr for several months!

One to Watch initially delighted me. Told partially in the form of blog posts, tweets, and online chats, it’s got a relatable feel for modern life and gives us a winning heroine in Bea, a fat woman who loves fashion. Bea has carved out a space for herself in a very sizest field as the blogger @OMBea.

When a blog post about the sizeism and lack of diversity on her favorite show “Main Squeeze” (ala “the Bachelorette”) goes viral, Bea is asked to be the first contestant on the show who isn’t model-sized. She’s very dubious about romance, but producer Lauren convinces her that she doesn’t have to take the show seriously in order to “show America that plus-size women deserve to be the leads in their own stories.” And it doesn’t hurt that Bea will have something to take her mind off her heartbreak over her old friend and crush Ray, who slept with her and then went back to his fiance and completely ghosted her.

The book started to pall a bit for me when we get to the show. (Perhaps I would’ve liked it more if I watched those kinds of shows?) It becomes clear that despite her internet honesty, Bea is actually very insecure about her size, and finds it truly difficult to believe a man would want to be with her — which impacts the men contestants who notice her lack of sincerity. And there are constant reality show “surprises” that humiliate and freak her out, not to mention several disgusting contestants who mock and belittle her.

Not all of them, though. As Bea starts to make real connections with some of her dates, Lauren tells her she can’t make her feelings about any one man too clear, otherwise the audience will lose interest. It seems the author felt the same way, because Bea is truly undecided for quite a long way into the book. There’s nothing wrong with that… except that Bea seems to make promises to at least one bachelor that she might not actually decide to keep, and she has no compunction about it. (Meeting someone’s motherless kids in this context? On television? Seriously?! ) It felt very off-putting. 

I also got fed to the teeth with Bea’s insecurity; any time a bachelor made a move she didn’t like, she believed it was designed to humiliate her. I expected better from a book about a woman who dares to be openly fat on the Internet.

There are some nice surprises in the plot, including some interesting queer representation, and some much deserved and funny comeuppances. (There are not so nice surprises, too.) There are cute running jokes about celebrity tweeters, and I enjoyed Bea’s parents, who are basically Britta’s adoring and adorable parents from “Community.” (Bea’s father is technically her stepfather, and the theme of choosing love is important.) And the ending comes together nicely, a happy one especially for any fat girl readers. But because of my issues with what came before, I couldn’t embrace it as much as I’d like.

Still, as I looked over my bookmarks while writing this, and was reminded of aspects of the book I’d loved — perhaps my favorite is a suitor who punctuates an apology to Bea with endless profanity, so the show won’t be able to air it — my appreciation for it increased again. I think on the whole I’d recommend it.

The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams

Gavin, a successful but somewhat insecure baseball player, is devastated when his wife asks him for a divorce. That’s when his fellow players introduce him to their book club and “the manuals” — romance novels which help them understand what women need from relationships. With the help of a Regency called Courting the Countess, Gavin sets out to woo his wife. But he forgets the most important lesson: backstory is everything. Unless Thea deals with the pain in her history, they don’t stand a chance.

I had some issues with this story and it might have been the audiobook.The second narrator, who reads the “book within a book” sections, has a die-away upper-crust English accent which is very much not to my taste. But the main narration, while in a perfectly pleasant voice, may have done more harm. All of the women characters sound very bitchy, and the way the voices emphasize the “inherent” humor of manly men athletes seriously discussing romance novel tropes really put me off.

Still, there was a lot to enjoy. Unlike most athlete heroes in romance, Gavin has tremendous sweetness and vulnerability, and Thea loves him for it. At one point she overhears a spiteful member of the “wives and girlfriends” club mock Gavin by wondering if he even stutters in bed and she retorts, “yes he does stutter in bed, and it’s beautiful!” Thea’s continual rejection and mistrust of Gavin’s efforts make her seem unpleasant for much of the story, but it all comes together by the end.

 

TBR Challenge: The Passionate One by Connie Brockway

CW for book: a near rape, and maybe a whiff of homophobia.

 

The theme: Family Ties

Why this one: It’s the start of a family series, and coincidentally, turned out to have some deeply messed up family dynamics.

This had its share of problems, but still hit the spot. It’s kind of old skool, with a tortured hero and a brave heroine to rescue him with love, and it does those well-worn roles very nicely.

Ash Merrick is the oldest son of a despicable English lord, who won a Scottish castle by betraying his wife’s people. Ash loathes dear old dad, but is forced to participate in his father’s nasty schemes, while trying to earn enough to ransom his younger brother from a French prison. The current scheme is to bring home his father’s ward, Rhiannon Russell.

After the trauma of losing all her relatives at Culloden, and being homeless for a time, Rhiannon has been living very comfortably with English relatives who adore her, and is happily engaged. The one tiny flaw in her cozy life is the constant need she feels to be grateful for everything she’s been given, and not to make waves. She was even chosen by her fiance, Phillip, for these exact attributes. But the arrival of the powerfully attractive Ash throws her for a loop.

Ash is also drawn to Rhiannon, and her engagement is the least of his worries. He can’t possibly marry, he’s a total mess of a human being, he’s pretty sure his father plans to make Rhiannon his fourth wife — and he’s also increasingly sure that someone is trying to murder her.

The story kind of goes off the rails here. Ash convinces himself that Phillip is gay — whether this is true or not is never stated, though you could make a case that Phillip is enamoured of Ash himself — and is the person trying to kill Rhiannon, so she can’t expose him after they’re married. So he carries her off to his father’s castle against her will, while caught between trying to make her think the worst of him, for her own sake, and being devastated when she does.

Despite the vagaries of the plot, the mystery element is well done, and there’s some very effective sequel baiting for the rest of the series. But the romance is the best part. Ash is a mix of two favorite hero archetypes, the utterly competent and the savagely besotted. He can half-kill himself with drink while still being entirely effective at espionage or combat, but here he is after their first kiss:

She turned away, gathering her skirts and bolting into the too bright light. And so she did not see Ash Merrick’s gaze follow her, or see him take his hands from behind his back and turn them over. And she did not see the bloody hands that had been torn strangling the thorny vines behind her so he could keep from crushing her to him.

Siiiiiiiigh…

Rhiannon isn’t quite as compelling, but she has a decent arc of reclaiming boldness and forthrightness along with her Scottish heritage. And Brockway writes lovely sex scenes of the all-too-rare “manages not to be very graphic while also avoiding gawdawful old skool words like ‘manroot'” variety.

Reading June 2020

CW: Many sober themes this month, including suicide.

 

Recurring themes: Apartments with views of Central Park. Magnolia as a name. Holding on and not letting go. The Boston Marathon. Hell’s Kitchen. Dead moms, so many dead moms. Suicide and assisted death. Narrating ghosts. Psychometry.

 

Spellbound by Allie Therin. A very enjoyable 1920s paranormal romance, somewhat along the lines of K.J. Charles. Hurt/comfort, with a young hero who’s had a terrible time because of his psychic gift, and a nice rich, tall, handsome hero who wants nothing more than to take care of him.

A Woman Like Her by Marc Levy. An easy, feel-good kind of story, which isn’t a bad thing right now. (But warning that a very traumatic event is referenced.) Seemed to have pretty decent disability rep other than a dubious ending; not so sure on racial issues. (Several main characters are Indian/Indian-American.)

Belinda by Maria Edgeworth. Kind of a great-grandma of the modern romance, with vast numbers of Big Misunderstandings and quite a few Evil Other Men and Women performing machinations. Also coincidences up the wazoo. The hero and heroine aren’t nearly as interesting as the heroine’s friend Lady Delacour, who is spirited and contrary and never loses her verve, even when “tamed.” Not as good as Austen, IMO, but entertaining.

The Phoenix Codex by Bryn Donovan. I’m really impressed that Donovan wrote a kick-ass warrior/demon hunter who’s also the beta to end all betas. Deadly and protective, but also openhearted, vulnerable, and a total marshmallow for love. Intriguing worldbuilding, but it doesn’t take away from the romance.

I Liked My Life by Abby Fabiaschi. A ghost tries to help her grieving husband and daughter find happiness. I liked it and found it moving, but also a tad manipulative — or perhaps I just prefer my own theory, that the mom killed herself because he husband’s a Republican. 😉

The Secret Loves of Geeks by various. Geeky people writing and drawing about love. Very queer!