Dirty little secret time - I secretly love to read romances with jackass heroes. You know the ones. The catch (and you knew there was one didn't you?), is that the only way I can "enjoy" a jackass hero is if he's paired with an equally headstrong heroine. No mealy-mouthed, afraid of her own shadow types. No, I need the chick who's going to tell the guy to his face that he's a jackass and for good measure knee him in the nuts (although this never seems to happen - romance authors must think it's a "mood killer")
And that's pretty much what I got with my latest dip in the Harlequin Historical pool - Her Dearest Enemy by Elizabeth Lane. The hero has a precious, pampered 17-year-old daughter who is in lurve with the schoolmarm's dirt-poor 18-year-old brother. Daddy is unthrilled about this, but so is the heroine (said schoolmarm). She was saving money for her brother to go to college back east, not hitch his wagon to some spoiled princess. So hero storms in to meet heroine, says awful things, tells her to control her brother (ha! he's 18!!), then proceeds to act like a jackass. Brother and Pampered Daughter are actually pregnant, and run away to get married. They come back to town, move in with heroine, while hero proceeds to cut them out of his life while secretly trying to "help" them (he hides money in her clothes when he ships them over to this daughter etc.)
Hero and heroine end up spending time together because of this new predicament. He says awful things, she says awful things, they bicker a lot, then (naturally) the sexual tension hits the red zone. I know I'm making it sound hideous, but it really works - trust me.
Unfortunately, it all takes a dive in the final 100 pages or so. Instead of the hero groveling (which is the only reason to read about jackass heroes in my opinion) the heroine is the one to apologize (oh honey, he's the one who should have bloody knees) and there's this big, unnecessary melodramatic ending involving the hero's daughter giving birth in a cave and a kidnapping. Completely unnecessary and tacked on. It's like someone told the author that internal, character driven conflict wasn't enough - that she had to punch it up with a "villain." So what started out as a B+ read, slips down to a B-.
Still love me a good jackass hero though.
3 comments:
Like Moonlighting? I loved the early shows when they bickered and snarked most of the time.
Do bees bee? Do bears bear?
I never watched Moonlighting - was David really mean to Maddy? Because the hero in this book says some really awful things to the heroine. I can't believe the jackass never groveled......
I love those kinds of relationships too!
I especially like it when there's a bit of a rivalry between the hero and heroine, so the arc of the story is about her trying to beat him in some sense (and because he's an asshole, you really want her to win).
There was a book I read a few years back that was a brilliant example of this and very similar to your description. I think it was by Laurann Dohner, but I might have the wrong author.
It was a fantasy romance, where the main heroine and anti-hero are on opposite sides of a war but he ends up saving her life by accident and despite the fact that he's a sexist asshole who has a very patronising attitude towards women, they have a sexual encounter midway through the book. Most of the story is her grappling with whether she likes him or hates him, but then they're forced back onto the opposing sides of a battle towards the end.
The ending scene is pretty brilliant as they encounter each other on the battle field, and he seems quite determined to fight her. He has the upper hand during the battle and she's struggling to fight him. But then he says something sexist like "How did you think a woman would possibly beat a man in battle?". That spurs her on and she outwits him and brilliantly disarms him then says something like "THIS is how a woman would beat a man" and slams her knee into his balls, making him collapse in agony, and ending the fight.
Such an awesome girl power moment!
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