#DeckTheHarlequin: The Queen's New Year Secret

I read category romance for a variety of reasons, but when it comes to Harlequin Presents, there's really only one reason.  I'm in it for the fairy tale.  Presents work best for me when they're a blatant, hit you upside the head with a sledgehammer, fairy tale.  And really, nobody writes an unapologetic fairy tale quite like Maisey Yates.  She's a master of it.

The Queen's New Year Secret is the second book in a duology featuring princely brothers for a made-up Mediterranean-sounding country.  I read the first book, A Christmas Vow of Seduction, last year during the holidays and it was....OK.  It had moments, but I never warmed to the hero and frankly, Yates has written better.  But she did a good job of setting up this book, which features King Kairos kidnapping his Queen, Tabitha, in the hopes of convincing her to not divorce him.

Five years ago Kairos was set to marry another woman.  Until said woman slept with his brother.  Which would be bad enough, but to make it truly a bridge too far the whole sordid affair was caught on camera and sold to the tabloids.  The wedding is literally weeks away and Kairos is bound by his misguided sense of duty.  So what does he do?  He convinces his PA, a poor white trash girl from Iowa who clawed her way through with single-minded determination and education, to marry him.  He lays it out as your classic marriage of convenience, Tabitha accepts, and they get down to the business of making an heir and a spare.  Except, you guessed it, barren desert.  No babies.  And the strain is taking a toll.

Tabitha agreed to the marriage for "reasons."  Kairos' proposal certainly wasn't one full of passion and devotion, so it's not like she was harboring illusions.  But five years of...nothing?  There's literally nothing there.  Kairos looks at her like he looks at a potted plant or a piece of furniture.  She's coming to the realization that while the idea of "passion" scares her (for "reasons") - she also can't stay in this loveless marriage slowly withering away.  So she confronts him with divorce papers on New Year's Eve and whoa boy - passion shows up.  Along with anger.  Before you can say hatefu-- "angry sex" that's what ends up happening on Kairos' office desk.  And wouldn't you know it?  Tabitha finally ends up pregnant.

BECAUSE OF COURSE SHE DOES!

But she's not about to call off the divorce.  Her marriage is a dumpster fire, and she knows it.  Unfortunately Kairos didn't get the memo.  He whisks his wife out of the doctor's office, takes her to his private, secluded island (because, of course) and tells her that they will remain there for two weeks.  He's hoping to convince her to stay.

What follows are a lot of angry, hurt words, a lot of communication that should have happened five years ago, and a hero who holds on to his secrets for entirely too long.  Tabitha bares her soul pretty early on and Kairos makes overtures, but it's always one step forward, two steps back with this guy.  The minute Tabitha gets close to exposing his vulnerabilities, he completely shuts down.  It's so intense with this guy it doesn't just take one secondary character to smack him upside the head....it takes TWO!

For her part, I thought Tabitha had interesting baggage (albeit slightly unrealistic given today's tabloid "news" culture - her secrets should have been unearthed EONS ago!) and she's the brand of HP heroine who gives as good as she gets.  The hero says some awful things to her in anger and she says awful things right back.  This isn't some mouse who slinks off to a corner when the hero is mean to her.  She's at the stage where she's well and truly done.  She doesn't know how she's going to leave, what she's going to do, where she's going to go - but she's leaving thankyouverymuch.

This is a talky book and the characters are both feisty in their anger - so it all does get rather exhausting after a while.  But it's a solid read in a soap opera sort of way, a slightly different feel from what I usually expect from a Yates HP (which would be, say it with me, the fairy tale).  Still, I don't regret that this was my last read of 2017.

Final Grade = B-

#DeckTheHarlequin: Maid Under the Mistletoe

A single Mom heroine, an emotionally wounded hero who has shut himself off from the outside world, and forced proximity during the holiday season.  Yeah, I was all in on Maid Under the Mistletoe by Maureen Child.  Unfortunately it ended up being an instance where the premise was the best thing about the story and the execution left a lot to be desired.

After the death of his wife and toddler son, Sam Henry, an accomplished artist, gave up painting and moved to the mountains of Idaho.  He is in town so rarely that the locals have a running betting pool on when he'll show up again (the last guy who guessed right won $200!).  It's just him and a live-in housekeeper who cooks, cleans and lets him be (for the most part - she does mother hen him with her occasional nagging).  The fly in the ointment is that every December she takes off with a girlfriend for a month-long cruise.  But she tells him not to worry.  Her friend, Joy, is going to come and work as a temp.  Joy's apartment just had an electrical fire and it's going to take a month (at least) for the work to be finished and the apartment habitable again.  So really, it's win-win for everybody involved.

Until Sam actually meets Joy Curran.  For one thing she's young, very pretty, and has a 5-year-old girl, Holly, in tow.  Nobody mentioned Holly.  Or how pretty Joy was.  Or how sweet, nice, charming, and really a breath of fresh air that has begun to infuse light into Sam's dark and lonely world.

This starts out as a pretty solid read.  Sam is Beast to Joy's Beauty.  He's emotionally distant and she's bubbly and sweet.  Unfortunately it all begins to wear down after a short while because that's ALL Joy is.  She's sweet, and cute and naturally she's a great cook.  Sam basically lets her stay because she CAN cook and the idea of living on frozen pizza fails to appeal.  A heroine's worth that is wrapped up in large part because of her domestic skills is one that I would call grating.  Great, she can cook.  I need more than that and frankly, so should the hero.

Holly is a sweet kid and while she's a Plot Moppet, she's at least a realistic one.  She talks a mile a minute, in that stream of conscious way that young children do, and she's obsessed with princesses, fairies and fairy princesses.  So yeah, she's cutesy-wootsy - but hardly the most offensive Plot Moppet I've encountered in Romancelandia and after all, this IS a Christmas romance.

No, where this story slides from "OK, not my thing but still OK" to "You have got to be eff'ing kidding me?!" is when the author breaks the fourth wall and with a sex scene that makes me want to burn this book to the MF'ing ground.  Then I couldn't finish this slim 180+ page Desire fast enough.

Joy has a web design / personal assistant business.  It allows her to work from home and keep Holly out of day care.  For literally no reason that I can decipher (in other words, it does not move the story forward) the author tosses in this little nugget:

"Almost honey," she said, clearing her throat and focusing again on the comments section of her client's website.  For some reason people who read books felt it was okay to go on the author's website and list the many ways the author could have made the book better.  Even when they loved it, they managed to sneak in a couple of jabs.  It was part of Joy's job to remove the comments that went above and beyond a review and deep into the real of harsh criticism.

WHY?!?!?!?!?!  Yes, readers who e-mail the author or leave comments on the author's web site about why a book was "bad" are rude - but WHY IS THIS IN YOUR ROMANCE NOVEL?!?!?!  Because the romance what - needed a side of reading shaming to make us believe in the happy ending?  WHY?!?!?!?!?!?!?

OK, but really - Wendy, you're being too sensitive.  Roll on McDuff.  Just finish the book and slap this bad boy with a C and be done with it.  Well, that was until I got to the sex scene.

"Joy, the downside to things happening by surprise is you're not prepared for it."  She smiled.  "I'd say you were plenty prepared." He rolled again, flopping her over onto the mattress and leaning over her, staring her in the eyes.  "I'm trying to tell you that I hope to hell you're on birth control because I wasn't suited up."

OMG.....WHY?!?!?!?!?!??!!  ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME?!??!?!?!?  Because OF COURSE our SINGLE MOTHER isn't on birth control.  BECAUSE OMG OF COURSE SHE ISN'T!!!!!  I don't believe in violence but seriously, I want a gun. Or a knife.  Or a really heavy book that I can throw at her head.

But just in case I'm not insulted enough the author doubles down.  Golly, the hero DID have condoms.  They were just in HIS bedroom but they were SO HOT for each other they didn't make it that far and oopsie his penis fell into the heroine and they had unprotected sex instead.

OMG....WHY?!?!?!?!!?  ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME?!?!?!?!?  SERIOUSLY, THE AUTHOR IS TRYING TO KILL ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just can't even.  I'm done.  I want to run over the Mary Sue heroine, lose the Plot Moppet daughter in the woods, drop the hero off at the nearest remote cave to live out his hermit days and burn this book to the ground.  Merry frickin' Christmas and a bah humbug to you.

Final Grade = D 

#DeckTheHarlequin: Never Christmas Without You

Never has it been more obvious why a book would be in my TBR than with Never Christmas Without You by Nana Malone and Reese Ryan.  Two novellas, both Christmas themes, both with friends-to-lovers tropes.  Shut up and take my money.  But what started out working fairly well for me slid downhill the further along I got into the stories - to the point where the Ryan entry hit my Big Honkin' Red Flag Rage Button.  You know what this means.  Yep, spoilers.  There shall be spoilers.  Consider yourselves warned.

Just for the Holidays by Nana Malone

Justin Morrison is from a hotel-owning-running-whatever dynasty.  When his father passed away, Daddy Dearest, cut Justin out and left the hotel business to Justin's cousin, whom naturally he cannot stand.  Justin took this rage and opened his own boutique hotel. All by the time he's 25.  And of course it's a big success.  Because that's how things work in Romancelandia.  Anyway, his grandmother, whom he adores, has a medical episode that sends Justin into a panic.  She'll be fine, but she lays down the law.  He will come home for Christmas and he will bring his girlfriend with him.  Minor problem: there is no girlfriend.  Justin made one up so his grandma would stop trying to set him up with every eligible female that crossed her path.  What to do?

What he does is rope in his BFF, up-and-coming artist, Alex Winters into the charade.  She's hesitant for a couple of reasons: 1) she's a terrible liar and 2) she's secretly been in love with Alex forever.  Of course he's clueless because, well, he's a man.  And now she's agreeing to spend the holidays with him and his family playing happy couple on Catalina Island.

This actually starts out pretty great.  There's a bit too much "tell" over "show" in the early going, but Justin and Alex have a spark and it's the kind of set-up tailor made for a Hallmark Holiday Movie.  The story is set in both Los Angeles and on Catalina Island.  You've got this big ol' family, the root of Justin's baggage, and a family matriarch who doesn't suffer fools gladly.  I was rolling with it until a completely unnecessary throw away piece of dialogue that drove me insane.  Justin and Alex are at the point where they're acknowledging there's a spark between them that goes beyond friendship when the idiot says this:

"You're the sexiest woman I've ever known.  You don't even try.  Most girls I know, it's all smoke and mirrors.  Hair extensions, nails, make-up.  These women look like completely different people when I wake up with them in the morning."

EXCUSE ME?!?!?!  Maybe this is just me, but I hope all those "fake" women Justin has been wasting his time with come back like the Ghost of Christmas Past and claw out his eyes with their fake nails and strangle him with their hair extensions.  But maybe that's just me.  This kind of thing drives me bonkers - the tearing down of every other woman to illustrate to the reader (like a damn sledgehammer upside the head) that the heroine is a "real woman" and that she is "The One."  Ugh.  Romance authors, for the love of all that is holy STOP DOING THIS!

I know this is a crazy thing to nitpick about, but it was like a bucket of cold water and the story never quite recovers.  Especially when Alex goes running off and starts listening to nonsense from the villainous characters.  So what started out as a solid B read?  Yeah, not so much.

Final Grade = C

His Holiday Gift by Reese Ryan

This is part of the author's Pleasure Cove series and features prodigal son, Dash Williams.  Dash agrees to meet his long lost BFF, Mikayla Mitchell, at a coffee shop.  They used to be thick as thieves, until Dash decided to date her step-sister Jess.  Given that Mick, the geeky girl in their school, had a major crush on Dash this went over as well as expected.  Dash is happy to reconnect, until Mick drops the bomb.  Jess is dead and her 6-year-old daughter, Maddie, is probably Dash's kid.  Needless to say, Jess is portrayed as a conniving, manipulative piece of work so Dash had no clue he had a daughter.

This set-up is rife with problems, but Ryan sure can lay on the Drama Llama.  For one thing, Mick just takes Jess's word for it that Dash is Evil Incarnate - never mind that Mick has no illusions of her step-sister's character.  I could buy this somewhat because Dash hurt Mick THAT badly, so she was set-up to believe the absolute worst of him.  But once Jess is dead?  Yeah, no.  Yes, Mikayla is raising (and adopted) Maddie, but the kid has a father.  Mikayla may think Dash has washed his hands of Maddie but once Jess is dead?  All bets are off.  The child's mother is dead and the father should have been looped in on that minor detail pronto.

Then there's the fact that Dash basically admits to his sister that the reason he's starting to notice Mikayla now, and not all those years ago, is because she's gone from ugly duckling to swan.  Our girl, she's stacked.  Is this realistic?  Yes.  Is it what I want in a romance novel?  No.  I want the damn fantasy.  I want the hero to have always been in love with the heroine but just too dense to realize it.  And Dash says this at the end, but given this previous conversation with his sister where he admits he's noticing Mick now because she's va-va-voom?  Yeah, it's harshing on my fantasy buzz.  Considerably.

But man, the drama is great.  And it hums along until the author hits on my biggest pet peeve in the universe.  The whole Biology Reigns Supreme In Romancelandia Ideal.  While out shopping for Christmas presents Dash sees Mick getting all misty over baby clothes.

He was trying to comfort her, but all she heard was him referring to Maddie as someone else's kid.  Maddie wasn't someone else's kid.  She was her daughter as much as she was his.  "You'll have kids of your own someday."

But wait, there's more!  See, Dear Reader, for reasons Mikayla believes she's incapable of having "her own children" and when Dash finally confesses he loves her she tells him her Deep Dark Secret and oh noes what if he wants more kids someday?  To which Dash says if they want to expand their family it's OK.  There's adoption, there's surrogacy etc. etc.  OK, Wendy getting less angry.  Wendy coming down off the ledge until....

THE EPILOGUE.

Take one wild guess what sort of epilogue we get with this story.  Go ahead.  Guess.  That's right.  NEVER FEAR!  Because the hero has AMAZING SUPER SPERM AND BIOLOGY IS ONCE AGAIN BACK IN ORDER!  HALLELUJAH!  PRAISE JEEBUS.

I get this is my baggage but gods I HATE THIS GARBAGE!  I have friends who were adopted.  I have friends who have adopted.  One of my nieces is adopted.  This ideal that still exists in Romancelandia that a woman ain't a woman unless she can squirt out 2.5 kids is the sort of conflict that belongs only in historicals and it's the only place I can marginally deal with it.  In contemporaries it's just flat-out rage inducing and makes me want a bucket of brain bleach.  What a disappointment.

Final Grade = D 

#DeckTheHarlequin: Redeeming the Rogue Knight

There's that old saying about the villain being the hero of his own story, which is why I think so many romance readers love it when an author dusts off a villain from a previous book, redeems him and turns him into a hero.  There's always that added anticipation of "OK Author, how exactly are you going to pull this off?" and it makes for sigh-worthy reading when lo and behold, they manage to do it.

Roger Danby served as the villain in one of my memorable reads from 2016, The Blacksmith's Wife by Elisabeth Hobbes.  Roger isn't a twirling mustache kind of villain - no, he's somehow worse.  He trifles with the heroine, tries to "c'mon baby..." her into bed, discards her for greener pastures, and when she finally settles into marriage with his half-brother he comes slinking back around.  I'd say the guy has the morals of an alley cat, but that would be an insult to alley cats everywhere.

So how exactly is the author going to pull this guy off as hero-worthy in her latest, Redeeming the Rogue Knight?  Well, it's going to take some doing.

After wearing out his welcome in Yorkshire the last time, Roger left to fight in France, eventually joining a group of mercenaries.  He and his squire, Thomas, are back in England to deliver A Very Important Message and recruit men.  They're enjoying the hospitality of a Lord when Thomas makes the mistake of getting caught in a compromising position with the man's daughter.  As they beat a hasty retreat, Roger takes an arrow in the shoulder when they are, naturally, pursued.

However, as luck would have it, Thomas grew up in the area and his family's inn is close by.  Unbeknownst to Thomas, his father is dead and it's only his sister, Lucy, and his nephew, Robbie in residence.  Ahem, his bastard nephew Robbie.  Lucy, you see, never had the benefit of a husband. 

Her brother has been gone for four years.  Four. Long. Years.  So long that she had given up on his ever returning.  And now he's back, bringing trouble she doesn't need to her door.  As if this weren't shocking enough, the man who is with her brother is gravely injured, but still manages to accost her with a punishing kiss (that she enjoys) and a grope (which she does not).  Needless to say their relationship does not get off to the smoothest of starts.

This is a romance that offers sprinkles of both internal and external conflict.  Externally, we've got Roger's injury, the men who are pursuing him, and the message he has for King Edward squirreled away in his saddle bags.  Internally, we've got Roger's past (whoa boy...) and Lucy's tattered reputation.  She had other employment, but came home to the inn when she got pregnant, refusing to the name the father (although it's not kept a secret from the reader) and the only reason her father didn't disown her was because he was dying.  Needless to say, a woman with her reputation, with a bastard child, her inn isn't exactly thriving with business.

This will be a book that will likely divide readers as neither character is what you would call terribly "likable."  Anyone who read the first book already knows how problematic Roger is and he takes his sweet time redeeming himself into any semblance of decency for most of this book.  But you know what?  It works.  I would have loved more about his time in France, mostly because it would have sped up the redemption in the reader's eyes, but to have Roger go from smarmy to choir boy by the end of this book would have been too much.  Instead the author pairs him with the perfect woman and that's where the redemption comes into play. 

To call Lucy prickly would be the understatement of the century and I suspect there will be readers who will tar and feather her for it.  Our girl has had to make some questionable decisions and she spars with Roger for most of this book.  She doesn't trust him (at all) for at least the first half and after that it's wary at best.  I'm sure she'll be accused of being "too mean" to the hero but one, he deserves it, and two, when you factor in Lucy's past you can hardly blame the woman.

What I'll end up remembering most about this story are The Lady Truth Bombs that the author sets off like mini-grenades throughout the story (especially in light of current events). You know why Lucy is so mean to Roger?  Well, because he deserves it.  Even when he tries to do the right thing he's such a hypocritical ass about it that Lucy finally has to lose her last semblance of tolerance.

"I know you want me and you know I want you too.  I've resisted you and tried to ignore the feelings and desires I know will only lead to misery but it hasn't been easy."
... 

"But even if my heart did not race when you look at me in that manner, I won't be one of those women.  All men leave eventually.  It's just a question of time."

There's a certain amount of genius at play here.  Lucy, a woman who had sex, got pregnant, had her son, and is now living with the consequences of her tattered reputation is paired with Roger who has dallied, flirted, and bedded half the women in England and likely a quarter of those living in France.  Yet he is celebrated while she is the pariah.  Ultimately this is the internal conflict at play in the story that I found the most intriguing and made this romantic match-up rather delicious.  Through Lucy Roger sees what a monumental jackass he's been.

The pacing felt a little off to me at times, a bit too leisurely in the beginning and too much of a race in the closing chapters, but the romantic match-up is memorable and what the author says, through the character of Lucy, speaks to the female experience since...well, sadly, the dawn of time. 

Final Grade = B

Postscript: Sigh, I should probably mention that there aren't any sex scenes in this book since readers seem to get bent out of shape over such things.  Honestly?  I'm glad there aren't.  Given the baggage (Lucy's especially!) these two characters burning up the sheets would have felt jarring and out of place in the story's narrative.  Instead readers get some passionate kisses and a rather tender closed door scene that serves to build trust between the couple and bring them emotionally, closer together. 

#DeckTheHarlequin All December Long!

This is all Willaful's fault.  She casually announced on Twitter that she was getting trounced by a friend of hers in their Harlequin GoodReads group and put out the call for folks to join in on a Harlequin reading binge the month of December.

That, naturally, perked up my ears.

Next thing you know Willaful has convinced Elisabeth from Cooking Up Romance to organize the whole thing and we have an official hashtag #DeckTheHarlequin (for all your social media needs).  But even if you're not entrenched in social media - there's still plenty of opportunity to join in on the fun.

Elisabeth has created this entry form.  You can submit one for every Harlequin title you read and at the end we'll be drawing names at random for a series of fabulous prizes!

Check out Elisabeth's blog post for a list of prizes and further details.

The rules are simple.  Any Harlequin, from any line - it all totally counts.  And yes, this includes Mills & Boon, Carina, HQN, Mira, all the category lines, old titles, new titles - really, the possibilities are endless.

Lord knows I have enough to choose from between the Print TBR Pile of Doom and the dumpster fire that is my Kindle.  I hope you'll consider in joining in the fun!