Here's the problem, it features all the problematic "stuff" readers have come to expect in romances featuring indigenous people and colonizers - and a novella is just too little room to adequately explore that. On top of that there's a heaping dose of dubious consent (she says "no," he convinces her otherwise...) and these two decide they're madly in love with each other at a lightning pace. It's wildly uneven. In order for a story like this to have a chance of working, it needs to be a doorstopper saga. Multigenerational wouldn't hurt either. As a novella? Nope. Also, the story itself is around 80 pages, but the Kindle edition clocks in at 152, which means you get a rather large excerpt for the second story in the series after this one ends. Not a big deal for me since I downloaded this for free, but I know that kind of thing really irritates some readers.
Final Grade = D
Our heroine is no raving beauty, but she's smart and well-connected, making her the perfect wife for our hero with ambitions to one day be Prime Minister. They've been married a year and she's feeling neglected. He's the type of guy who schedules intimacy with his wife (Wednesday nights) and the rest of the time he pays about as much attention to her as a potted plant. When her lady's maid leaves their employment to marry, he does have the presence of mind to hire his wife a new one (a French one!) but of course doesn't consult her on this matter in the least.
The moral of this story is that marriage takes work and if you neglect it, it will die on the vine. I liked that Babette basically tells the heroine, "Yeah, he's neglecting you but what exactly have you done about it? (The answer is nothing, the heroine is suffering in silence) You're both being lazy." Of course how do these two start to come together? A makeover of course. It takes the hero seeing the heroine all prettied up to start the process of getting his head out of his ass, and if I think about that too long I'm just annoyed. Look pretty girls or be doomed to a life of neglect from your husband.
Final Grade = C
The heroine (a Lady) is in her 30s and officially a dried up old spinster. When she was younger she fell passionately in love with a doctor's son - a mere mister. This was a scandal of epic proportions for her parents, so they pull all the strings and bingo-bango, the hero's exiled to India. Well, guess what? He's back. Her father may be dead, but her mother has a dang fit of apoplexy. With the youngest daughter having her first Season and Evil Mama determined to make an excellent match, the scandal reigniting is the last thing they need! Of course the heroine and hero are still hung up on each other, and as the story moves forward we learn the lengths the heroine's family went to to keep the two star-crossed lovers apart.
If you're a fan of the star-crossed trope, this one really worked for me. There's secrets, there's lies, and it's all in a short enough package (80 pages) that it never wears out it's welcome. There's also passion and sizzle between the couple, with some well done sexy-times to spice up the proceedings. It's the first book in a trilogy of novellas, with the youngest daughter and the heroine's older brother getting their own stories. I can't believe I missed this one the first go around (I read SO many of these Undones back in the day!) but I was glad to find it now.
Final Grade = B
7 comments:
Short stories to the rescue!
And the last one actually sounds good; I'm glad you had at least one that worked well for you for this month's entry.
Great solution for this month's theme. That first book sounds like it came from the 80s or 90s... I'm impressed you finished it (I guess?). I have read some of Jeffries novels and she's usually a B for me. Maybe I'll look this one up. I'm not familiar with that last one.
I'm not surprised that the Harlequin Undone is the best of the bunch you selected. HH has such a strong stable of authors that they rarely put a foot wrong (and if they do, it's spectacularly wrong, which makes me think it's a "just not for me" issue, LOL). Excellent solution to this month's theme - I looked long and hard at some novellas myself because those are usually the freebies on offer at amazon!
As much as my choice last month was a real winner, this month's was a complete stinker! I plucked the 2011 Kindle version of "The Tenacious Miss Tamerlane" by Kasey Michaels from the depths of my eTBR. It was just WAY too much: too many characters, too much forced farce (a character who only speaks in quotations? really?!), and way too much plot forced into a book that clocked in at less than 200 pages. The internal pace of the plot was so wacky that I suspect I was reading a reworked version for the ebook market instead of the original trad Regency version; this is confirmed by another reviewer remarking about a sex scene tossed in at the end for no apparent reason. BLEH!
I'm running late on my comment, but I did actually finish my read on time! And it was a good one. I think this was my first real hit with the TBR Challenge for this year. I picked THE MIDNIGHT BRIDE by Kati Wilde, the 2nd in The Dead Lands fantasy romance series.
I feel like the first thing I need to say is -- this series is absolutely bonkers. You have been warned. Picture something like Conan the Barbarian but with strong female characters and lots of over the top sexy times. This is not my usual jam, but they are novellas that read fast and I'm finding them great palate cleansers when I'm struggling finding a good read. This one opens up with our heroine, Mara, being the last in an endurance race to capture a magical prize she needs to save her family. Everyone in the race has pulled far ahead of her and the only one doggedly following is Drax, a warrior that is just as determined to keep anyone from capturing the magical prize. Yes, they end up having to work together. Yes, he is already pining for her and they quickly get to over the top sexy times. For me it works as quick read in a hammock on a Sunday afternoon. I think it speaks to some 80s part of me that grew up on things like He Man and Beastmaster ;-)
Definitely going to read more in the series, but with appropriate spacing b/c it could get old fast.
Onward!
AL: I can find the star-crossed trope tedious in longer books, but in this novella it was pitch-perfect. I really enjoyed it.
Jen: The Jeffries short story is well-written - I inhaled it in one brief gulp - it was only after I finished and started thinking about it that I realized I was annoyed 😂
Eurohackie: Oof! Yeah, that does sound like a case of Way Too Much! And a tacked on sex scene at the end of a traditional Regency? Ugh.
Jill: LOL! I love the He-Man and Beastmaster analogy. '80s childhood over here as well 😉
Also, yippee for finally landing on a hit with this year's Challenge!
The Jefferies novella sounds like something I would enjoy explored with more pages. Older and in a long term relationship, I love when marriage in trouble trope really digs into those emotions. Her prettying herself up to wake him up is such a waste. 30pgs?? That sounds lowly wild for this kind of emotion exploring.
I feel like I read a lot of those Undones! I don't think I marked them on GRs, so I'll never remember but for short stories, I do think they got the job done.
Whiskey: The Jeffries story could be really interesting as a novel - especially if the heroine went out and "got a life" outside of her marriage instead of waiting for a new lady's maid to show up to help "fix" things - but for 30 pages it's meant to be a bon-bon sort of read. It just doesn't hold up under any kind of scrutiny.
I need to take an inventory on the Undones I missed because I liked a great many of the ones I did manage to read! I should go back and pick up the rest.
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