Mini-Reviews: Wendy's A Big Ol' Meanie Pants

I have (somewhat) of a reputation for being a cranky reader.  Or, if not cranky, at least a "tough" grader.  But this year?  I've lost my mind.  For a variety of reasons, I'm in a slump. And part of that slump seems to be that I'm either reading books I really, really love or books that I really, really am disinterested in.  As in, they may not necessarily be "bad" books - they just aren't engaging me for "reasons."  And given the size of my TBR and the looming ARC pile?  I'm giving myself permission to DNF more.  Here are the latest additions to the DNF pile - one of which was written by someone I consider a friend.  See?  Wendy is mean even to people she knows!

I have read three books by Susan Meier and none of those books cracked out of my C grade range.  So why do I keep reading her?  Because of The Angst.  She can write angst really well.  But Her Brooding Italian Boss might finally be the book that has me saying, "Oh well, so long. We're just not a good fit for each other."  I got to 30% and called it a day.

Heroine has just found out she's pregnant by her ex.  Oh, and she's unemployed (or underemployed - I can't remember now. But suffice it to say money is a BIG issue).  Anyway, instead of hauling the Baby Daddy to the nearest courthouse, she's at a friend's wedding where she runs into our Hot, Emotionally Wounded By Evil First Wife, Italian Artist Hero.  Before you can say Rescue Fantasy (thanks in large part to Hot Hero's meddling Bazillionaire Father), she's working as his personal assistant and getting all fluttery around him.

Here's the thing with Meier - she's really fond of the Rescue Fantasy and she tends to lay them on pretty thick.  Like, with a trowel.  It was little annoyances at first.  Ho hum, another rescue fantasy.  How many times is the heroine going to fret about being "pregnant with another man's baby?"  And then, it happens.  We learn about Evil First Wife and I was DONE.  Fading from glory supermodel hitches to hero's rising star wagon.  She plays around on him - uh, a lot.  Gets pregnant with his baby (presumably), doesn't tell him, then gets an abortion.  Hero now a shell of a man because of her betrayal, but naturally everyone around him (including the heroine) thinks it's because he loved her SO MUCH!!!!

I found this conflict...annoying.  The shorthand that only women who are Pure Evil would ever have an abortion.  The genre has never been good with handling this particular issue well - but it's comical how totally Old School it is here and honestly?  I found it rather insulting.  So, I'm out.

Final Grade = DNF

So, yeah.  I've known Megan Frampton a long time.  In Internet years we're like 239 years old.  She was also my editor at Heroes & Heartbreakers for several years and brought me in on that project back when it was still "a project."  I knew going into this book what to expect from her "voice," so I started The Duke's Guide to Correct Behavior expecting a frothy, light read.  I called it quits at the 40% mark when I realized I just didn't give a hoot about the characters and what happened to them next.

Through a series of improbable circumstances (namely three people dying before him), the hero is now a Duke.  He's very whiny about this.  All he wants to do is travel, be footloose and fancy free, drink and bed a bunch of women.  Um, dude.  What exactly do you think Romance Novel Dukes do?  Anyway....

His young daughter arrives on his doorstep after the child's mother dies.  What's refreshing here?  He knew he had the daughter - she isn't a secret and he had been paying Early Victorian Equivalent Child Support to the Baby Mama.  But ye gads!  More responsibility!  So he decides to hire a governess through heroine's employment agency.  A Duke using their service is a major step up for them, but oh noes!  No eligible governesses!  No matter, the heroine will take the job herself.

And....that's pretty much it.  After 40%.  I do have a reputation for loving The Angst, but yes - I am capable of enjoying light and fluff.  But I also expect conflict in my light and fluff and there just really isn't much conflict to be found here.  Other than the hero having NO clue how to be a Duke, which seemed odd since it's not like he was born in a gutter.  The guy knows how society works, so him not having the faintest clue how Duke's behave just makes him seem stupid.  But anyhoodle....maybe conflict shows up later in the story?  Entirely possible.  But at 40% I just didn't really care about these people in their thinly drawn early Victorian (1840) world and.....done.  Have you seen my pile of ARCs?  Of which this was one and it came out in November 2014?

Megan is a friend (hopefully still is if she sees this blog post....), and if I had been reading a print edition I would have skimmed through to the end.  But I just can't seem to skim digital with any sort of efficiency, so I'm moving on.  I'm hoping for better with Frampton's more recent work and chalking this one up as a bump in the road.

Final Grade = DNF

Hot And Cold Running Books

I've read several books now by Susan Meier and I don't think she's yet to land out of the my "OK" territory.  So why then have I continued to keep reading her?  Because the stuff she does well, she does very, very well.  Case in point, The Twelve Dates of Christmas, which has a candy-coated shell hiding an OMG Angst Ahoy! dark chocolate center.  Parts of this story ripped my heart out, threw it on the carpet, and danced a rumba on it - and I mean that in the best possible way.  And then there was the other stuff.  The other staff that had me wanting to reach through my Kindle screen and throttle imaginary characters.  More on that in a bit.

Eloise Vaughn may have come from a wealthy family, but our girl needs a job.  She's fresh out of college, working crappy temp jobs, and has just lost one of her roommates to marriage....in New York City.  Is it any wonder she's stuffing crackers in her purse at a cocktail party so she has lunch for tomorrow?  On top of that, the holiday season is in full swing and Eloise is alone.  Her wealthy family disowned her when she married a completely unsuitable man.  She nursed him through a bout of pancreatic cancer, which inevitably took his life.  She's young, she's a widow, she's underemployed, and stealing crackers.  And then she literally runs into Ricky Langley, who crushes the crackers.

Ricky is an entrepreneur who is tired of being pitied.  It's been just over a year since his infant son died and he wants to reassure his friends, colleagues etc. that he's "fine," even though nothing will ever be "fine" again.  And that means making the holiday party rounds, of which Ricky has many invitations for.  He wants to avoid attempts at matchmaking, of which he's already had some run-ins.  When he meets Eloise near the buffet table?  It's fate.  She's attractive, personable, a snappy dresser - just the kind of gal his friends would be happy to see on his arm.  So they enter into an agreement.  He gets her protection to get through the holiday party whirl and she'll get his help in securing a more permanent job with a decent salary.

One thing I've discovered about Meier, as an author, is that she's a big fan of The Fairy Tale.  This one has Rescue Fantasy written all over it, but the author side-steps some of the more obvious pitfalls.  It's the kind of story that was literally made to be a Hallmark Channel holiday movie.  Eloise used to have access to family money, which means she has nice clothes with designer labels.  Clothes now several years "out of fashion," which in Ricky's social circle would stick out like a sore thumb.  So she "remakes" her clothes - altering them into her own designs.  Being Ricky's "fake date" is basically networking for her, until of course she starts falling for the man.

Another writing tic I've run across is that Meier's books have a bit of an "old-fashioned" feel to them.  Sort of like those category romances you read when you were a teen.  That comes into play here, mostly because of the wealthy circles the characters are traveling in.  Sometimes you just stumble across something odd.  Like when Ricky muses about buying Eloise a thank-you gift and thinks maybe jewelry or.....a fur.  Now do people still wear and buy furs?  Certainly.  But a young women in her 20s?  It's little things like that.  In another Meier read the wealthy family (including hero) referred to their hired cook simply as "Cook." 

Where this book really worked for me is with Eloise and her struggle over her feelings for Ricky.  It's heartbreaking.  Ricky is very tight-lipped about his past, under the guise that he doesn't want Eloise to look at him "differently" (as in, with pity).  So he keeps her totally in the dark even after she hears passing bits of conversation among his social circle.  She asks him.  He declines.  And in more will power than I would have, she doesn't snoop.  She figures, he'll tell her when he tells her - if he tells her.  She may care for him, but he obviously does not feel the same way about her.

But he didn't want her to know him, and he certainly didn't want to know her.  He'd listened to her story with bare minimum curiosity, and when she was done talking he hadn't consoled her.  Leaving her empty.  Feeling like no one.  Nothing.  Who'd have thought going out with someone could make her so lonely?

Which brings us to Ricky, who I felt was an ass for 95% of this book.  Yes, you lost your son.  Yes, that sucks.  But this guy is an inconsiderate douche.  Even though she respects his privacy, when a mutual friend mentions Eloise's past (at a bare minimum) - Ricky snoops.  Finds out she was married.  Gets all butt-hurt and confronts her about "being married."  And then she tells her story about her husband dying, her family disowning her, yada yada yada.  And even after all that, after Eloise bares her damn soul to him - he remains tight-lipped.  He comes off completely selfish and hypocritical. This, of course, does bring on some good stuff because Eloise eventually does get angry with him.  There are arguments.  And she's right!  It was good to read her smack him down.

The ending also leaves us on several problematic notes.  Ricky doesn't realize what a douche he is until a third party has to tell him.  Also the portrayal of his ex, the mother of his child, was completely Old School (party girl tramp yada yada yada) which especially galled since Ricky is held up as some fine example of fatherhood - when that means for him weekends and having the money to hire a nanny (dude, go sit at the back of the bus).  Also the resolution to Eloise's family estrangement was just - annoying.  Frankly I don't think this needed to be resolved - especially given the fact that over the course of the story Eloise makes peace with being estranged from her jerkface parents.  Couldn't we have just left it at that?

So, what are we left with?  A hot-and-cold running read.  A yo-yo read.  Just when I was ready to throw up my hands in frustration?  Meier would ramp up the angst, and break my heart all over again.  I was totally all over the place with this book.  Part of me wanted to pull out my hair, and part of me wanted to fall into a swoon.  How the heck do you "evaluate" that as a reading experience?  In my case, I'm taking the easy way out.

Final Grade = C

A Spoonful Of Sugar

I might have mentioned a time or two (or three....) that I judged a local RWA contest recently.  That's how I came to read my first book by Susan Meier - whose book Nanny For The Millionaire's Twins, won first place for category romance.  I did have issues with that particular book, but Meier slathered on enough angst and tugged at enough emotional heartstrings, that I knew I'd try another book by her.  Which is how I came to pick up Single Dad's Chrismas Miracle.  Besides the fact that I'm a sucker for Christmas stories, the author once again slathers on plenty of angst.  Unfortunately, just like the first book I tried by her?  The execution didn't really work for me.

Growing up in an abusive household (Daddy is a jackass), Althea Johnson ran away to California before the ink was barely dry on her high school diploma.  She became a pretty good teacher, but not good enough to survive budget cuts.  She's now on her way back east and her well-meaning sister (see: A Father For Her Triplets) has offered to give her a job in her bakery.  But Althea doesn't want to work in a bakery and she's not all that keen to go back to the hometown where her father still lives.  So through a friend of a friend she takes a job homeschooling Clark Beaumont's troubled son, Jack.

Clark's wife died in a car accident three years ago, when their daughter Teagan wasn't quite six months old.  It was only after the fact that Clark learned his wife was having an affair.  The "other man" literally threw himself on the casket at the funeral and started wailing.  So yeah, there's been a tiny bit of gossip - to which Clark's response has basically been to isolate his kids in their house.   Jack's now rebelling and Teagan doesn't speak out loud.  Clark, in such a deep state of denial, doesn't really see there being a problem.  Teagan is "just shy."  Jack is just being lazy and not showing initiative.  Althea, wishing someone had seen something, done anything, when she was growing up tormented by an abusive father is determined to save this family.  But can Clark and Althea keep their relationship strictly professional?  Because heaven knows they both think they're too damaged to move on to any sort of romantic entanglement.

Yes, what we have here is your basic Mary Poppins romance.  Althea swoops in, with her drive and determination, takes the kids into town, bakes cookies with them, shows Clark the error of his ways, and everything turns out rosy in the end.  Well, sort of.  The only thing keeping this story from collapsing under the weight of a mountain of sugar is Althea's baggage.  Part of me thought she probably should have been more screwed up, but certainly she's not one to hop into healthy relationships.  Prior to Clark, her boyfriends consisted of a series of "beach bums" who mooched off of her.  Of course they also didn't beat the crap out of her like Daddy did - so there's that.  So it's easy to see why she fights her attraction to Clark the way she does.

What didn't really gel for me was Clark's baggage.  Dead Wifey was having an affair for a year prior to her death.  Teagan is six months old.  Clark has real fears that Teagan ain't his kid - but instead doing anything about it, he lives in fear that The Boyfriend will just magically show up one day and take her away.  He doesn't talk to a lawyer.  He doesn't get a paternity test.  He basically just works and keeps his kids at home.  All the time.  He doesn't quite succumb to Magical Thinking, and I get that he would be afraid, but this Other Man is dealt with in a very perfunctory manner.  A guy who bursts into tears and throws himself on his lover's casket at her funeral, in front her husband and family - does this sound like a guy who would just go quietly into that good night?  Especially when he accuses Clark of not giving his wife the divorce she asked for (when in reality - she didn't - but Clark doesn't tell Other Man that).

The angst, while intriguing, just never quite came together for me.  And while I am reading a romance novel and I do want things to be rosy and sunny in the end?  For me, none of the problems that these characters faced were dealt with in a manner I felt were realistic.  Jack's problems are solved by Althea taking him out of the house and promising him that if he gets his grades up he can go to public school.  He's a boy who is angry and resentful of his father, and that's all it takes to turn him into a perfect kid?  And why exactly doesn't Teagan talk?  Yes, she would be shy since her only playmate is her big brother, but kids don't just not talk for a no reason.  All it takes to fix that is Althea swooping in, letting her pick out a gaudy wreath for the front door and putting pretty barrettes in her hair?  Color me skeptical.

At the end of the day this ended up being an OK read.  I had issues, but I kept flipping the pages and zipped through the story at a fairly fast clip.  There's a lot of promise here, it just never felt fully executed and delivered to me.  Would I try another book by this author?  After two C reads in a row?  Maybe if the right back cover blurb came along.

Final Grade = C