#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-

Review: A Christmas Vow of Seduction

It's interesting how reading tastes can change over time.  Harlequin Presents were not my jam when I first discovered romance.  I liked my romances to feature more of a "quiet intensity" and Presents, while intense as all get-out, are not quiet.  But these days I find that what Presents delivers is what I want to buy.  That intensity with just the right amount of angst and the older I get the more comforting I find fairy tales.  Maisey Yates is one of my go-to authors in this line precisely because she writes fairy tales.  But this one?  Yeah, this fairy tale was a little frayed around the edges.

Warning: Spoilers Ahoy!

A Christmas Vow of Seduction is the first book in a duet featuring two princes (brothers, naturally) of the fictional country Petras (vaguely Mediterranean).   Prince Andres is the spare and a notorious playboy.  He's rarely at the palace, choosing instead to reside in various penthouses around the globe.  He gambles.  He beds beautiful women. He leaves the pesky business of ruling and being respectable to his uptight brother, Kairos.

Kairos is trying to restore relations with Tirimia, a neighboring country that overthrew their monarchy in a coup.  The royal family was murdered - all except for Princess Zara.  She was six when rebels murdered her family, and a maid spirited her into the forest to be raised by gypsies (hey, I did say this was a fairy tale!).  Anyway, the rebels, now trying to be all "respectable government" find her and present her to Kairos as a "gift."  He's already married, he needs to open talks with Tirimia, and he can't send Zara back to her country.  So he figures it's high time his brother gets married.  Kairos is having no luck impregnating his wife (marriage in trouble alert!) and it's high time for Andres to grow up.

Andres doesn't want to marry Zara, no matter how beautiful or feisty she is - but he can't say no to Kairos.  Not this time.  Why?  Oh, there's the small matter that Andres got rip-roaring drunk, slept with Kairos' fiancee, thereby necessitating Kairos finding a new bride, the woman he's now locked in an unhappy marriage with.  So....yeah.  It's like that.

I will say one thing for this book, when Yates set her mind to writing a playboy ne'er-do-well hero, she didn't hold back.  However while I appreciated that, it also made Andres the most problematic aspect of this romance.  Naturally there are reasons why Andres is a manwhore.  Mommy didn't love him.  His father thought he was a screw-up.  He could never do anything right and finally when his mother finally concedes to bring Andres to an important event - he louses it up and Mommy leaves.  The only relationship he hadn't screwed up was with Kairos, but sick of waiting for the other shoe to drop, Andres decides to self-sabotage and sleep with his brother's fiancee.  Andres is a walking Poor Little Rich Boy wrapped up in First World Problems, and naturally his self-sabotaging ways come into play with Zara.

Zara is the truly interesting party in this romance, although the parts of her characterization never fully add up to a satisfying whole.

"I was born into royalty, in a position more vulnerable than I could ever have imagined when surrounded by stone walls of the palace.  Then I lost everyone and was taken away to the middle of the forest.  Then I was taken captive.  And now I have been delivered to you, to be your wife, and I have no choice, yet again.  Who am I? What am I to be? The pawn of whoever holds me in their hand at any given time?  I must be more than that, Andres.  I should like a chance to find out."

This is a heroine who won't go quietly.  She's very adversarial with Andres in the beginning (I should think! She's basically presented to Kairos like she is a fruit basket!) until, of course, she isn't.  There's an episode at an official function that ends with a frenzied sexual encounter and after that?  The sex temporarily declaws Zara. She's also one of those Romancelandia virgins who warrants acceptance into the Sexual Chapter of Mensa.

This would be where I started to get bored - until Andres falls back on bad habits.  Which would have been highly annoying if not for the fact that it allows Zara to open fire and not hold anything back.  The whole Boo Hoo Mommy Didn't Love Me nonsense?  Oh yeah, she totally calls him out. She calls him out on it all.  Andres isn't spared from any of Zara's wrath and it was glorious to read.  Simply, wonderfully, glorious.  Zara finds a backbone, makes a decision, and walks away.  She actually, truly, walks away.  And that's where I kind of wanted this to end.  Because Andres?  He's an emotional infant.  He's a child.  Zara honey, you can do better.

But alas, this is a romance.  So of course Andres has to win her back and of course he doesn't have to do too much other than show up and say "I love you" because Zara loves him and she's miserable without him and yada yada yada.

Other than a few stand-out moments, this one just never came together for me.  Andres is too problematic and the power dynamic between the couple is really (really) skewered (and frankly pretty icky for most of the story).   On the bright side, the author sets up a barn burner of a marriage in trouble story for brother Kairos that I really need to read soon given it's a New Year's Eve story.

Final Grade = C-

Review: Bound to the Warrior King

Harlequin Presents were ALL ABOUT THE FEELS before New Adult was a gleam in it's self-published mama's eye.  That's the appeal of the Presents line.  At less than 200 pages a Presents can't waste time flailing about looking for emotional purchase.  The line, at it's best, means high intensity, strong attraction, and enough chemistry to burn off your fingerprints.  And because of this the line has a tendency to feature a strong "fairy tale" component.  Not in all of the books, but in a decent amount of them.  Bound to the Warrior King by Maisey Yates is a very, very good book - but the reader has to be willing to check reality in and collect it after the final destination.

Tarek al-Khalij (yes, we have a sheikh book) was never meant to rule Tahar (yes, we have a made-up country/royalty book).  The former sheikh was his brother, a monster who ordered the murder of their parents and then tortured Tarek.  At the hands of his brother's "tutelage," Tarek became a fierce warrior - living as a nomad, protecting his country's borders - while his brother debauched his way through women and drugs until the latter killed him.  Now Tarek is the sheikh and to put it bluntly?  He's barely housebroken.

Dowager Queen Olivia of Alansund is a young widow desperate to find her place in the world.  With her husband, the King, dead and her brother-in-law now ruler, Olivia is at a loss.  She desperately wants a home.  She wants to be useful.  And to her way of thinking that's another royal marriage.  Tarek seems like a good candidate....until she actually meets him.  But before he can throw her out on her butt, she suggests that he give her 30 days.  30 days to show him that he needs her.  She can housebreak him in the ways of being royal.  She can polish him up.  And she has 30 days to show him just how invaluable she can be to him and maybe, just maybe, convince him that a permanent partnership between the two of them would not be the worst thing in the whole world.

I've read category romances in recent memory where the author went a little crazy at The Trope Smorgasbord and the book reads like a hot mess.  Somehow Yates does the exact same thing and manages to pull it off.  I think because she doesn't overdo it on any of her ingredients.  This story features everything from subtle Pygmalion and Beauty and the Beast themes to Ye Olde Fake Royalty and Virgin Hero Ahoy! tropes.  She pulls all her ingredients together beautifully and not one overpowers any of the others.

Olivia is a complicated heroine and I suspect if readers will have issues with this story it may be with her.  She's an American who met her royal husband at university.  She's the sort of heroine who has a lot of polish on the outside but is secretly vulnerable.  In this instance, it's due to a lifetime of neglect from parents who were distracted taking care of her sickly sister.  Olivia is the sort of heroine who wants people to notice her, to value her, but when she opens her mouth to demand it, it comes back to bite her in the butt.  I could sympathize with a  teenage Olivia who just wanted her parents to acknowledge her birthday, but for some readers Olivia's baggage will likely come off as First World Problems.

Tarek's baggage is much more extreme - what with the Evil Dead Brother and the life he lived from about 15-years-old on.  His whole life is wrapped up in control and being the exact opposite of what his brother stood for.  Honor, duty, sacrifice for his country - these are all very important to Tarek.  But he's not exactly a "people person" - which is where Olivia comes in.  He's very much our Fairy Tale Beast - no polish, with rough edges, but underneath it all he's a good man, with a good heart.

What I really liked about their relationship is that from a sexual chemistry standpoint Olivia is the aggressor.  Tarek is all about restraint and control - which means denying himself his baser instincts.  Olivia is attracted to Tarek almost instantly, and having had a healthy sexual relationship with her first husband, knows exactly what she has been missing the past two years.  I don't read a ton of Presents, but Olivia making the early first moves on our sheikh hero felt very....different to me.  In a good way.  This, of course, ramps up the tension quite a bit and these two set off some serious sparks.  I found myself anticipating the consummation of their relationship and it's been a while since I've been able to say that about a romance (sad, but true).

Yates has written a straight-up Fairy Tale Fantasy.  I'm hard pressed to find much reality in this story, but the author owns it, and runs with it.  It's intense, it brings ALL THE FEELS, and I inhaled every single word of it.  Yates has quickly become my go-to author for Presents.

Final Grade = B+

Note: I actually listened this on audio.  My first ever Presents listen on audio.  I walked into the experience knowing it would either be a success or an unmitigated disaster.  The audio version definitely drew the "over the top" feel that the Presents line can have into stronger focus - especially Tarek's dialogue.  I felt his dialogue fit well with his overall character but....yeah, a little over the top.  Also it took me a little while to get used to the narrator, Arika Rapson, whose voice was a little on the "breathy" side.  I'm not sure I'd listen to an unknown-to-me Presents author on audio, but since Yates was a known quantity?  I could roll with it all.  And I did enjoy it.

#TBRChallenge 2016: Feels Like the First Time

The Book: A Royal World Apart by Maisey Yates

The Particulars: Harlequin Presents, 2012, The Call of Duty series #1, Out of print, available digitally

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: At the time this landed in my TBR I had just discovered Maisey Yates. So when I saw this book in a pile of library donations I was sorting through, I liberated it. (To feel less guilty about it, I donated a couple of bucks to the Friends of the Library.)

For the purpose of this month's Favorite Tropes theme: this one features a Virgin Hero.

The Review: I know the popularity of the Presents line mystifies a lot of romance readers, so let me see if I can help.  Emotionally speaking, these are high intensity stories. Angst, drama, ALL OF THE FEELS, packed into a tiny 185 page package. I started and finished this story in one Saturday afternoon.  It delivered characters who grew over the course of the story and a climactic emotional "black moment" that literally bumped my reaction of this story up by half a grade.  Frankly, I felt a little hungover after I finished reading it - but in a good way.

We've got ourselves a Presents staple here: a fake royalty story.  Evangelina Drakos is a misbehaving princess of a tiny, made-up country that smells faintly Greek/Mediterranean.  Eva is tired of living in a gilded cage, so she acts in a way most sheltered, pampered 20-year-old women would - she rebels for the sake of rebelling.  What she fails to think through is that if she acts like a child, her father (The King) will continue to treat her like one.  Which means after her latest escapade (ditching her bodyguards in a casino) he's giving her a new bodyguard.  One not so easily distracted - Makhail Nabatov.

Mak has read the princess's file and thinks he has her pegged.  Spoiled brat who wouldn't know a day's hardship if it smacked her on the ass.  Needless to say these two are verbally sparring almost from the on-set.  He's all about duty and honor and she's some Poor Little Rich Girl.  Of course it's all more complicated than that.  Mak has built his own empire (hey, this is a Presents - so OF COURSE even The Bodyguard is a Gazillionaire....), loved and lost, and carries around a serious amount of guilt over past tragedies.  Eva is a woman who doesn't know who she is, and because of that her rebellion against King and Country is petty at best.  But at the end of the day she just wants someone to see her.  To listen to her.  Hell, at the start of the story she just wants to be a person who can go out and buy her own lingerie.  On the surface, Eva may have First World Problems, but deep down it's about identity, knowing who you are, and having people who love you support who you are.

It's a good thing Presents are short (185 pages y'all) because I think this book wouldn't survive the DNF Test if it were longer.  Early on Mak comes off as cold and unfeeling, Eva as a spoiled brat trying to get Daddy's attention.  And that's what the author wants to make you think of them.  Otherwise their growth over the course of the story, their attraction to each other, wouldn't have the same weight behind it.  Mak learns to open himself up to another human being and Eva grows up.  And it's because of the personal growth of both characters, and their romance, that the Black Moment towards the end has the impact it does.  It's good stuff.

I picked this book up for two reasons really: 1) I've liked Yates' work in the past and 2) Virgin Hero.  I love Virgin Heroes.  That said, when it comes to contemporary romance, if the hero is a virgin it's like the author, editor, whomever, feels like there has to be some Convoluted Reason Why the Sexy Hero Still Hasn't Gotten Any.  He's still a virgin because he was kidnapped and raised by wolves.  He fell into a coma and woke up to find himself on The Planet of the Apes.  Crazy Train stuff like that.  And naturally, Yates gives us a reason - although in Mak's case it's wrapped up in bad luck, incredible tragedy, and personal sacrifice.

Here's the thing though - this genre has existed for years never making "excuses" for why heroines are virgins, so the fact we feel like we need an "excuse" for why the hero is one kind of bugs me.  OK, it bugs me a lot.  This is why, I think, it's harder to find Virgin Heroes in contemporary romances than say, historicals or paranormals.  It's easier to accept right out of the gate in 1817 or on the planet Alltran that's ruled by the oppressive Zootron alien race.  I do think we're finally getting to the point in contemporary romances where we no longer have to make "excuses" for the heroine's sexual experience (although there's still a ways to go...) - I just wish we'd start thinking about the hero with the same sort of mindset.

Despite me overthinking the Virgin Hero in a contemporary romance thing - I liked this story a lot.  It started out a little uneven for me - mostly because the heroine does come off as a spoiled brat, and the hero does come off like an emotional brick wall - but as it progresses, as the author develops her characters and the romance, I really fell into this one.  One afternoon, lying in bed reading, don't bother me unless your hair is on fire, fell into it.

Final Grade = B

Novella Round-Up: Australian Bust And Cookies

I seem to be doing better with my reading slump and in an effort to build momentum I decided it was time to stop ignoring the small mountain of novellas in my ARC pile.  First up is Jazz Baby by Tea Cooper, which takes place in Sydney during the 1920s.  Plus, you know, look at that cover!  How could I not I want to try this?  Unfortunately I ended up DNF'ing it 30% in.

Dolly Bowman has left the country to make a life for herself in Sydney.  She lands a job at a "boardinghouse" and immediately runs into WWI flying ace, and childhood crush, Jack Dalton.  He's horrified to see Dolly and she's annoyed with him for interfering with her new job by talking to her boss.  Never mind that her new boss is a madam, the "boardinghouse" is a brothel and Jack just wants to make sure pretty lil' Dolly isn't asked to give up changing sheets and mopping floors in favor of working on her back.

Oh, where to begin?  The gaudy furnishings, red wallpaper, a house full of lavishly decorated bedrooms, and single women who work through the night were apparently not enough of a clue for ol' Dolly.  Seriously, it takes her more than 24 hours to realize she's working at a bawdy house and even then she's totally fine with it.  In fact she starts befriending some of the girls - sort of the bordello equivalent to the lady of the manor being BFFs with her housekeeper.  But whatever.  Dolly was also apparently physically abused by her father, but this revelation comes out of left-field and dropped like a bomb on the reader through Jack's internal musings.  It just didn't jibe with the wide-eyed innocent brain-dead picture of Dolly that was being painted for me.  Then there's the fact that Dolly has a brother who was in the service with Jack and was declared missing-in-action when his plane crashed.  Who does Jack see in a seedy bar one night?  The long lost brother of course!  In a town the size of Sydney.  What are the odds?  I was kind of over it at that point and there wasn't anything on the Kindle screen to make me want to keep reading so.....

Final Grade = DNF

Breaking All Her Rules by Maisey Yates was short, sexy, with just the right dollop of angst.  It didn't change my life, but for a Chocolate Chip Cookie Read (which is where quite a few novellas fall for me) it was just what the doctor ordered.

Grace Song has spent her entire life overcompensating for a screwed-up junkie sister.  Which means she's been the very model of over-achievement.  However, having just gotten reprimanded by her boss for being "rude" to a client who was sexually harassing her, and mixing up her phone with the sexy cowboy she shared a NYC cab with?  Her day is not going well.  Until she goes to the posh hotel where the cowboy is staying to retrieve her phone and she finds him half-dressed.  Ooooh, la la!

Zack Camden is an artist, which is why he's in New York - on business.  It was impulsive to share a cab with Grace but now that he has?  He wants more of her.  He hasn't felt this alive in a long time.  Because, naturally, Zack has a deep, dark, sad past.  A past that means he hasn't had sex (with anyone other than his hand) in six years.  And he didn't even miss it all that much until he's trading verbal zingers with wound-tight Grace.

So let me tell you how nice it was to read a romance about a guy who wasn't a Duke of Slut.  Also I liked that Grace's sense of over-achieving is there because she doesn't want to disappoint her parents who are already dealing with her junkie sister and all the heartache that brings.  That's probably cliche, but hey - it worked for me.  Also the dialogue here is really fun.  Lots of banter early on and the sexual chemistry really cooks.

The declaration of love that spurs us towards our Black Moment was a little abrupt for me - I suspect because we're talking novella and a two week time period on the story.  But the Emotional Stuff that follows?  Is really, really strong.  Rip your heart out in places strong.

It wasn't all about the end result.  It was about all the things that had happened on the way.  It was about the fact that she was happier with the person she was now, than the person she'd been the day they met.

And at the end of the day, that's why I read romance.

Final Grade = B