Review: The Rana Look

The Sandra Brown tear continues, this time with a book recommended by friend of the blog, and TBR Challenge participant, Eurohackie. The Rana Look is another of Brown's category romances, published as Loveswept #136 in 1986. Even with a preposterous plot I was surprised how well this one held up, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. It's still a forty-year-old category romance. While in some ways this was a step forward, there were still plenty of steps taken backwards.

Rana Ramsey is a successful model who chucked aside the glitz and glamor of the lifestyle thanks to a stage mother from hell. When the straw breaks the camel's back, she heads south to Galveston, Texas where she's renting an apartment from an elderly landlady and supporting herself as a textile artist. However thanks to her unique look, to stay truly hidden and away from the prying eyes of the public, she takes to disguising herself with frumpy, oversized clothes, tinted glasses, no make-up, and she's started eating like a normal person, so she's put on about twenty pounds. Life is going well for Rana until her landlady's nephew arrives to upset the apple cart. 

Trent Gamblin (no, I am not making that up...) is an NFL quarterback who has a few weeks until spring training and his injured shoulder just isn't healing properly.  The problem is his lifestyle. Trent is Mr. Good Time, partying and playing it up in Houston, women falling at his feet, the world being his oyster. Now on the wrong side of thirty, he knows his playing days are numbered and he wants to go out on his own terms. Which means getting out of Houston, away from temptation, and nursing that shoulder. His aunt has a vacant apartment in Galveston, that seems like a solid plan - until he meets Rana who he knows as "Miss Ramsey" and then "Ana."

Rana hits the ground running in the prickly department. Frankly she starts out as bit of a over-sensitive bitch, and then you realize why she's like that. She takes one look at Trent and just KNOWS the type of guy he is. The ego on this guy is amazing. He's used to women falling all over themselves and here's dowdy spinster Miss Ramsey who looks like she stepped in something smelly every time she's around him. So, naturally, because he's a jerk and bored he thinks he'll get his jollies by seducing the spinster - that is until Rana calls him out on ALL his bullshit and seriously just read this book if only for that scene (Chapter 3, you're welcome).

Original Cover

After this dressing down our couple settles into a friendship, even though Trent freely admits he has no clue how to be friends with a woman. To that end, our guy is still far from perfect, he throws out the requisite "prude" and "frigid" insults when Rana doesn't fall right into bed with him, but at least he has the good sense to apologize (a couple of times actually) over the course of this book realizing what a jerk he's been. Also there's a fantastic scene at the end where one of his teammates dresses him down for using Rana to prop up his own male ego. The word "fragile" is actually thrown back in Trent's face which was so very delicious.

Of course these two have more in common then they first realize because Rana is hiding her true identity. She's never had any genuine affection in her life, no one being capable of seeing past her looks to get to know the real person. Trent's worth is wrapped up entirely in his ability to throw a football, what happens when he's put out to pasture before he even hits 40?  

Brown says some interesting things about youth and beauty culture in this book that feel downright progressive for 1986, but that doesn't mean there's still not plenty of grossness.  Rana's 5'9" and at the height of her career she was 110 lbs. Then when she starts eating more than just lettuce and water, she puts on 20 lbs. Folks, maybe it's because I'm 5'9" that I spent this entire book wondering how Rana was able to stand upright and be conscious.  At my skinniest I weighed in at about 125 lbs, had the figure of a No. 2 pencil, and was passing out from iron deficiency anemia. I mean, no two bodies are the same and modeling is, well, modeling but c'mon. Also, I'm not gonna lie, I felt some kind of way when a waitress at a Mexican restaurant Trent and Rana go to is described as "fat." 

Trent truly does seem to fall for Rana in her dowdy Ana disguise, but naturally when the truth comes out he gets all up in his man fee-fees, which just leads credence to the idea that it's all about stroking his ego and having a woman at his side who may just possibly outshine him gets him all butt-hurt. 

So, yes, this is very interesting but it was still 1986. However to liven up some of that grossness we are regaled with some fantastic fashion descriptions, right down to Trent wearing cut-off jean shorts and midriff baring T-shirts while working out 😂.

As much as I loved the completely over-the-top bananapants of A Treasure Worth Seeking, I feel like this one works slightly better because while the supermodel living as a spinster trope is equally as absurd, there's not a piling on of the bananapants.  Sometimes less is indeed more.

Final Grade = B 

Review: A Treasure Worth Seeking

I've been on a bit of a Sandra Brown tear lately and, as I'm wont to do with an author who got their start writing category romances, I asked for recommendations.  Steve Ammidown from Romance Fiction Has a History recommended A Treasure Worth Seeking, which was originally published in 1982 as Candlight Ecstasy #59 (Brown's first editor was THE Vivian Stephens!) under her first pen name, Rachel Ryan. If anything, Steve undersold this one. Not only is it a ride featuring all the bananapants you could possibly hope for in a 1982 category romance, it's a really interesting book in a "history of the genre" sort of way.

Spoilers Ahoy! Look, you've had since 1982....

Erin O'Shea is in San Francisco because she has finally found her long lost brother. Erin and her brother were adopted, separately, as children, Ken being a toddler, Erin only an infant. The man who greets her at the door is strikingly handsome and sure he doesn't resemble her all that much, but she's just so excited to finally meet Ken! That is until "Ken" lays the mother of all smoldering kisses on her.

Ken is, of course, not Ken. He's Lance Barrett, Treasury Agent. Millions of dollars were embezzled from the bank where Ken works (his father-in-law is the bank president, talk about awkward!) and Ken, naturally, has vanished. The Treasury Department has set up camp in his home and the conveniently vacant home across the street hoping Ken will be in contact with his wife. Frankly Erin's story stinks to high heaven. A gorgeous, young thing with a preposterous story.  Lance, in true 1982 Romance Hero Fashion, behaves accordingly from the punishing kiss, to patting her down, to telling her she can't leave until they verify her "story."

Erin's story is verified in short order, but she's not about to leave her sweet, frankly naïve, sister-in-law to the sharks, especially since her parents are simply vile. She's about as happy to spend more time in Lance's company as he is hers, and we're soon off to the races with a - not an Enemy to Lovers trope necessarily, more like a Instant Dislike Yet I Still Want to Climb You Like a Jungle Gym trope.

Let's get this out of the way up front - 1982. When you're reading a romance of this age you just need to be prepared for some problematic crap.  Lance has swings of wild jealousy, mostly related to Erin being sort of engaged (it's complicated).  She slaps him. He manhandles her. He doesn't rape her but in the heat of a physical argument she can't help but start swooning 🙄.  Yes, it's problematic. Is it the most egregious example of this kind of nonsense I've read in other romances with a much younger pedigree? Not even close. 

Original Cover

Where it's really interesting, besides the completely bananapants set-up, is with the risks Brown takes with the story.  There's a few scenes told from Lance's point of view, which was BEYOND rare for romances published during this period. It just wasn't done.  It's just a couple of scenes, but baby steps y'all.  Also, per the author's note, this is the first book where Brown slipped in a sort of suspense thread. It isn't a suspense thread in the traditional sense, we never really find out why Ken did what he did and the resolution to that aspect of the story, while a little surprising (in a good way!), isn't much of a brain teaser. 

Finally, abortion is actually mentioned. In case you didn't think the plot set-up was bananapants enough, Erin is, naturally, a virgin widow and after riding Lance like a stallion she ends up pregnant. Of course abortion is dismissed as quickly as it's brought up.  Erin is Catholic and immediately dismisses it as something she just "couldn't do" but there's also not any judgement towards "sluts" who may choose otherwise. Heck, just abortion being mentioned on page was kind of jaw-dropping, not gonna lie.

Would I recommend this book like I would recommend a book with a more current publication date? No - at least not without a list of caveats. That said, if you're interested in the trajectory of Brown's career or just the overall history of the romance genre, this was a really interesting book. Better still? It had enough of the bananapants to be a quick, entertaining read.

Grade = B

Review: Blind Tiger

Sandra Brown has been published for over forty years, and that kind of longevity, plus it being the early 1980s, it stands to reason she did publish some historical romance back in the day. But it wasn't many, and it wasn't until her 2009 release, Rainwater, that I took notice of her ability to write historical settings. My enjoyment of that book (I'll be blunt, it's a tearjerker that wrecked me) and the premise of Blind Tiger, led me to downloading the ARC, where it's been languishing on my Kindle since 2021. Y'all, I could just kick myself in the teeth for not reading it sooner. I have some minor quibbles (hello, me) but this book was a 500+ page ride I did not want to get off of.

Content Warnings: Infant death due to illness, suicide, on-page (and brutal) sexual assault of secondary character.

Laurel Plummer grew up in a house with a disapproving father and too many mouths to feed, so when she saw her chance to escape, she took it by marrying Derby Plummer, a charming young man her parents immediately disapproved of. They married, her parents disowned her, and shortly thereafter Derby was drafted to fight in World War I. The war is now over and Derby is home, but a changed man. Never mind that Prohibition has made alcohol illegal, Derby is drunk more often than not and can't hold down a job, leaving Laurel and their baby, Pearl, in a very precarious situation. But things might be looking up. Derby says his father has gotten him a job back in his hometown of Foley, Texas, they just need to get their ramshackle Model T the 150 miles there. They do eventually make it, only for Laurel to realize that Irv has no clue that 1) his son was coming 2) that he had wife and 3) that he was a grandfather. They're not at Irv's shack very long before Derby decides to put a gun to his head and commit suicide.

With no place to go, and Irv being a decent sort, she and Pearl settle in to life in the shack outside of Foley. Then, one day, a stranger shows up. Thatcher Hutton hopped in a railcar looking to get back to the ranch he was working at in the Panhandle before he was sent off to war. He didn't plan of running afoul of the hobos he fleeced (fair and square!) in a poker game. He fights his way out of that scrape by throwing some punches and jumping from the moving train. He comes across Laurel as he's hoofing it into town, which is where his real trouble begins.

Foley is a small town, and even with oil fields sprouting up all over the countryside, strangers are immediately cast with a suspicious eye. So when the town doctor's wife vanishes without a trace, Thatcher is immediately suspected. A nosy neighbor saw the woman feeding him shortbread earlier that day and nobody buys his story that he was there because he saw an advertisement for a room for rent. The local sheriff eventually realizes that he's got nothing to hold Thatcher on (no matter how much the town mayor and the doctor are blatting) and he takes a shine to him. He reminds him of his son who died in the war. He also recognizes that the cowboy is observant, smart and would make a hell of a lawman. There's a storm brewing in Foley in the form of rival moonshiners and the sheriff, with crooks all around can use all the help he can get. 

Eventually what happens is that Thatcher finds himself with no place to go, so he stays in Foley until something better comes along.  Laurel recognizes that she can't raise a baby in a rickety shack, and convinces Irv they move to town and discovers that her father-in-law has a tidy, yet small, moonshine business on the side. When baby Pearl succumbs to pneumonia, our heroine is officially all out of f*cks. If Irv is going to support them illegally, he might as well make some real money. Laurel is soon the brains of the operation, but her business soon gathers attention from all the wrong sorts of people.

The best way to describe this book is historical fiction with romantic elements and a slow burn suspense plot. The romance here is obviously Thatcher and Laurel but it's never the engine driving the story and honestly one of the weaker aspects.  It's a mix of Insta-Lust with some adversarial mistrust thrown in on the side. Laurel is up to her pretty little eyeballs in the mess, Thatcher knows this, it's just piecing the whole thing together. 

This book clocks in at over 500 pages and it takes a while for the suspense to cook.  The missing doctor's wife comes into play fairly quickly, but the moonshine business simmers a bit longer.  Brown uses this time on world-building and it's all dynamite. I could feel the Texas heat and smell the dust before long. There's a wide cast of secondary characters but I had no problem keeping track of who was who because they all serve their purpose, and serve it well. This slow burn also builds up the tension as greed bubbles over into violence.

The older I get the more I've come to realize that what I want in my fiction reading is to get lost in a book. I want to be transported. Escapism is maybe part of that, but mostly I just want to be in the hands of a good storyteller and y'all, this story hooked me but good. It's not a story that will work for some readers, Pearl's death, while not violent, is very sad. There's a particularly brutal sexual assault of a secondary character once the suspense heats up, and Laurel is a very prickly sort of heroine. Justifiably prickly in my opinion but I can see some readers dinging this because they "don't like her." Well, she's not always likable. 

However, I wasn't necessarily reading this for the romance. Once the world-building sunk it's claws into me Brown could have taken this story in any multitude of directions and I would have been happy to be led around on a leash.  Am I happy that Laurel and Thatcher get their happy ending? Well, of course, I'm not a monster. But it was the historical fiction wrapped up with a saga-like bow featuring a compelling suspense plot where Prohibition has even normally law-abiding citizens happily and willingly breaking the law that hooked me. Here's hoping Brown keeps cooking up more historical fiction.

Final Grade = A-

Review: Out Of Nowhere

As an avid reader there are times that a book might not be firing on all cylinders for me that I can see a few cracks or have a few quibbles. I can recognize the book isn't perfect and yet? I don't really care. Something about it sucks me in, quibbles and all. My flippant response to the phenomenon is usually, "I knew I was in the hands of a pro."  That's how I felt while I was inhaling Out of Nowhere by Sandra Brown.  Is this book perfect? No. Did I still lose an entire Saturday reading it? Yes.

Content Warnings: Mass shooting, murdered toddler

It's a rare night out of the house for single mom and children's book author, Elle Portman. She and her two-year-old son, Charlie, are at the county fair.  Her BFF, Glenda, has just peeled off to catch the concert of a local up-and-coming country singer, and Elle is trying to maneuver Charlie's bulky stroller through the exit gates and battling the crowds coming in for the festivities that evening. 

Calder Hudson is a consultant who has just finished a job and has a big fat paycheck in his pocket to prove it. He's all set to celebrate with his TV news reporter girlfriend, Shauna - except he forgot she's at the county fair to interview a country singer and she's now put out that he's not rushing over there to support her. He, quite frankly, doesn't want to go - but he also wants to get laid. Shauna's petulant nose getting out of joint won't get him laid and Calder wants to celebrate his success.  He's making his way through the gates of the county fair when he bumps into a woman wrestling with a ridiculous stroller. He's knocking his way past her when he hears it. The pop, pop, pop of gunfire. Calder knows guns and he knows what gunfire sounds like.

It's mass confusion. A melee. The kindly old man next to Elle is the first to drop. Charlie's stroller is knocked away, Elle frantic to reach him, and that's when the man in the well-tailored suit steps in to grab at Charlie's stroller.  Then...the world goes black.

Calder wakes up in the hospital with a gunshot wound in his shoulder and the mother of all headaches thanks to a concussion.  He's being hailed a hero. His instinctive reactions once the shooting started saved some lives - just not Charlie Portman's. The precious two-year-old boy is dead.

Elle is physically fine. She knocked the hell out of her elbow, but did no permanent damage. But her son, her beautiful baby boy, the love of her life, is gone. 

This is a story of how two very different people, who would likely have never had reason to cross paths in their normal everyday lives, are brought together by a horrible tragedy. Elle is protected from the jump by her pitbull of a friend Glenda. Calder's support system is limited to Shauna, whose ambitions hit hyperdrive since she was on the scene when the shooting started. She's very much of the If It Bleeds It Leads school and she's a real piece of work. For that matter, so is Calder. To call this guy a son of a bitch prior to the shooting is underselling it. This is not a good guy. But then the shooting happens and the tragedy connects him to Elle - a woman he is gobsmacked by. 

It all gets very complicated when the cops realize that the guy they think did it, the guy they thought was a suicide - turns out to be another casualty.  They're caught with their pants down. The shooter is still at large and the scene is a logistical nightmare. As the story unfolds Calder and Elle get sucked further into danger. 

Right out of the gate let's start with the very tough subject matter. Charlie's death is on page, but not described with too much horrific detail. Although honestly, how much detail do you need for a two-year-old's murder to be horrifying? The author keeps the story in third person and does head hop, primarily between Elle and Calder, which helps with character development and understanding how each of them is processing their grief and trauma. The romance doesn't play off quite so well however. Even with a two month jump ahead in the timeline, it still feels a little fast - especially where Calder is concerned. He's drawn to Elle immediately and the whole thing comes off very Insta-Love. For her part, Elle is much more reticent when it comes to her attraction to Calder, but I also fully understood her falling into a bout of frenzied sex with him when she did. Take comfort where you can find it girl and there's Calder standing right there looking all hot and smoldering. 

Ultimately though, at the end of the final chapter, I'm not sure what is holding these two people together outside of their shared trauma. Not just the shooting, but the events that unfold after the shooting before the killer is brought to justice. The romance is further complicated by Calder's pre-shooting life and the fact that he's not a good guy. The trauma he's experienced from the shooting changes him, humanizes him, but there's ugly bits lurking under rocks that will eventually show up to complicate matters (as if they weren't complicated enough already).

As for suspense angle, the stops and starts of the police investigation, I thought, were handled well. The couple of instances of being inside the killer's mind I frankly could have done without, as well as our bad guy tipping the scales towards unhinged at the end.

Is it perfect? No. Did I care? Not in the least. Y'all I forgot how great stand-alone romantic suspense novels could be. I haven't been reading lately. Not much has been holding my attention or capturing my interest. This book did. I lost a Saturday reading it. I lolly-gagged in bed, inhaled every word, and barely came up for air.  No, it's not perfect, but I'm marking it as one for the win column.

Final Grade = B

Your Love's Coming Down Like

As a librarian, I "knew" about Rainwater by Sandra Brown months ago. I've never been a Sandra Brown reader (one of those authors I've just never gotten around to), and this book stuck in my mind mostly because it's a historical set during the Depression. Didn't mean I had any plans to read it though. That is until I read Rosie's musings on the book. That was enough to peak my interest, and knowing that I'm massively behind on my reading, I put myself on the wait list for an audio book copy at work.

The year is 1934 and Ella Barron runs a boarding house in Gilead, Texas. Her husband is not in the picture, and she has a 10-year-old son, Solly, who is autistic. Given the economic climate, she's making a passable living for herself and Solly, although her days are filled with hard work and her personal life is non-existent. That is until the local doctor shows up on her doorstep with David Rainwater. Mr. Rainwater needs a place to live and Ella has an empty room. After some haggling, Ella decides to rent him the room, only to find that his arrival on her doorstep is the first of many changes in her life and in town.

Unrelenting heat and drought have caused the local farmers and ranchers to make heartbreaking decisions in order to ensure the survival of their families. There is a local shantytown filled with desperate men and families who have nowhere else to go, that has caused much sneering among the more well-off townsfolk. Plus, being 1934 Texas, local race relations are....well, what they are. Into this mix is the villain, Conrad Ellis, a vile, hateful bully who arrives on the scene to stir up a mess of trouble.

This is not a romance novel (as we currently define the genre), and while having never read Brown, I still know enough to realize this book is a departure for her. How willing the reader is to roll with this will determine how well they like the book. Frankly, by the end of the first chapter the author has set the tone, and anyone who is left with the hope that they're going to get a Care Bear Rainbow Ending? Yeah, good luck with that.

I'm a reader who hates to feel manipulated, and I've read books of this ilk in the past where stuff comes flying in out of nowhere, like the author was told by someone they had to make the ending depressing at the last minute. I didn't get that feeling with Rainwater. For one thing, Brown pretty much lays her cards out on the table with the first few chapters. As the reader I knew how it was going to end (to a certain extent), it was just a question of the journey the author was going to take to get there.

I suspect many readers will have issues with this "depressing" tone - and while the setting, time period and aspects of the story are heartbreaking, I never felt like Brown was burying me in sadness. This is probably because the character of Ella worked so well for me. Her thoughts, her actions, her undying devotion to a son she so desperately loves but cannot reach, and her feelings for Mr. Rainwater. Frankly the tension between the two main characters is some of the best I've encountered in my recent reading, putting more than a few romance novels I've read this past year to shame.

As I mentioned, I listened to this on audio, and it's hard to say if I would have had the same reaction to this story had I read it. It is a slower story, that simmers through the first half and hits full boil towards the finish line. But I found it to be just about perfect, aided by the excellent narration of actor Victor Slezak. I was riveted to this audio book from the first CD and had to resist taking it out of my car this weekend to finish it up in the privacy of my home office.

I suspect that Rainwater is the kind of book that will divide readers. Rosie hasn't graded it yet because she needed time to think on it, and Keishon, while giving it a B, didn't write the most enthusiastic review for it. But for me? It totally and completely worked. Everything about it. From the audio production, to the narrator, to the story, the bittersweet heartache, just everything. Wow.

Final Grade = A