DIRTY tells the story of Elle (Ella, Elspeth) Kavanagh, a junior vice-president of corporate accounting in the firm of Smith Smith Smith & Brown. The reader learns through Elle’s first person narrative that she lands big accounts, does lunches, attends meetings, but is never given a more detailed look at her professional life. Other than a fund-raising event in which she’s involved and her budding friendship with co-worker Marcy, there are no particulars about what her career at Triple Smith & Brown entails. As with so many other elements in the novel, her career functions symbolically to show how Elle has been emotionally frozen, and what the reader does learn is that counting is a tactic that gets her through stressful situations. One could assume from her choice of such a career that what she finds most stressful is life.
Elle lives alone. She is not close with any of her neighbors except Gavin, the teen with whom she shares a love of books and who helps her paint the dining room in her small Harrisburg, PA home. She doesn’t date, though until “three years, two months, a week and three days” ago, she did have sex with men she picked up, assignations “about filling an emptiness inside” and “chasing away the dark cloud” she was often unable to escape. She’s estranged from the family who lives nearby, and only talks to her brother on the West Coast occasionally. Her wardrobe is black and white, her house equally drab. She rarely smiles or laughs. She simply exists.
It’s into this existence that attorney Daniel Stewart, after a chance encounter with Elle in a candy store, finds himself drawn. Though Elle refuses to date, she agrees to continue seeing him. Though she refuses to call him her boyfriend, she returns again and again to his bed. Dan is every man, a regular man, one with a breathtaking smile and an eclectic selection of ties. Not overly tall. Not overly muscular. He is smart, witty, sexy – a man the reader has no problem imagining as real, and one about whom Elle thinks:

Sex had been a choice I made to ease an ache inside. I knew it. I knew why I did it. I knew why I looked like a librarian and acted like a whore.
Until now it hadn’t mattered. I’d met men who made me laugh, who made me sigh, even a few, very few, who’d made me come. Until now I had never met one I couldn’t forget.

DIRTY is a difficult book to analyze, and almost reads as two stories, the first being Elle’s sexual affair with Dan which leads to the second, her emotional catharsis. The first person voice, Elle’s voice, is distancing, her use of metaphor often seeming to be a literary tool of the author rather than naturally Elle’s. Her musings are not always comfortable. Her story is dark, her character flawed, the tone hopeless at times.
All of this demands the reader be willing to trust the author to deliver a story worth reading. Not all will be so patient as to wait for that critical pay-off, but for those who don’t mind the often uncomfortable ride, Elle’s journey is a fascinating trip. Hart shows her protagonist’s transformation from insular to involved through interactions with Marcy and her boyfriend, Gavin and his mother, Elle’s own mother and brother, and especially Dan. It’s through that relationship, one at first purely sexual which develops into one of uneasy emotion, that Elle slowly comes to terms with the incident from her past that has crippled her.
It’s a painful metamorphosis, a sorrowful one, and one Dan must suffer through as well. Witnessing Elle’s treatment of him is not easy. Neither is watching him take it. Yes, their sexual encounters are the stuff of men’s fantasies, but with Elle an emotional ice block, one begins to wonder about the root of Dan’s insistence on breaking her down. What about her has caused him to fall in love? Yet his being with her when she is finally forced to return home and face her demons, to deal with the physical life that was lost along with her own emotional death, is heart-wrenchingly beautiful. He is there for her, taking care of her without taking over.
As to the question of whether or not the novel’s success hinges on its eroticism, that call can only be an individual reader’s to make. The second half of the book, where Elle begins her emotional thaw, is a singularly compelling read, and interestingly enough includes fewer sexual encounters. That said, the erotic scenes which have come before are in a large part responsible for the reader’s investment in Elle’s personal journey, and ultimately play a part in its satisfying end.
You can visit Megan Hart here and buy her book here or here.

Throughout Garwood’s current contemporary series, the various law enforcement-minded Buchanan brothers have found the loves of their lives, usually as said loves are the targets of deranged killers. You got a better way to meet chicks? I thought not. Showing up in the periphery of the stories has been Nick’s partner in the FBI agent biz, Noah Clayborne. Also showing up is Nick’s brainy, computer geek sister, Jordan. In the previous novel, Slow Burn, brother Dylan Buchanan hooked up with Jordan’s best friend, Kate MacKenna, setting off the chain of events that make this book possible. See, I told you it would all come together.
Okay, so at Kate and Dylan’s wedding, Jordan meets a not-so-very charming eccentric MacKenna relative who tantalizes her with stories of the ancient Buchanan/MacKenna feud (this wedding comes complete with seriously bad historical mojo) and lost treasure. Right after that, Noah tells Jordan that she’s, basically, boring. Stuck in a rut. So naturally, she follows the mysterious MacKenna to Serenity, Texas to find out the story of this feud and maybe solve a mystery or two.
Before you can say “hey”, the dead bodies start piling up. Jordan, by virtue of having one them stowed in her trunk, finds herself on the wrong side of a jail cell. Luckily, she’s already called the FBI – the cavalry is coming, though I suppose since Nick and Noah fly to Texas, they can’t really be called cavalry. Nick soon leaves the scene, but Noah sticks around to protect Jordan and, well, you know. Fall in love with her.
Mid-review confession time: I have a weakness for Garwood’s ditzy heroines. Sure, sometimes she takes it a little too far, but when she’s on, she’s great at the funny, loopy, goofy characterization that make her heroines memorable. Jordan started out with all kinds of promise, but, alas, promise went unfulfilled. Garwood seemed confused about how she wanted to play this story – either harkening back to her historical style or latching on to her grittier, suspense style – and Jordan suffered for the lack of a plan. I couldn’t get a grip on her.
This uneven characterization made it hard to relate to Jordan. Is she a klutz? Is she really taking the fact that a dead dude is in her trunk in stride? Is she hot for Noah? And is she a computer geek who is never more than three feet away from her laptop? Though we see her solving petty little computer problems, we don’t see her engaging in her life’s work. And at the end, she boldly announces to Noah that she’s not giving up computers. Whoa there, missy. Like, was that even a possibility? Was that even discussed? Was that even – really – the reason for Noah’s challenge?
Ostensibly, Jordan’s goal is to move out of her comfort zone – and she certainly does that – but I wasn’t sure why that mattered. Despite Noah’s challenge, I never got the sense that Jordan was unhappy with her life. Even with the advantage of several books of back story, I still didn’t fully comprehend why she got on a plane and headed for Texas. With all due respect to Texas, this course of action rarely makes sense to me anyway.
Noah, unfortunately, suffered from his advance press. He’s been identified as a womanizer, serial playboy, you-name-it (Jordan calls other women “Noah Clayborne Groupies” and decides she won’t be one). Of course, most of this takes place in other books or the night before this book begins. Even this mostly hearsay and rumor. Garwood has been building toward romance of Noah Clayborne since book one of this series (Heartbreaker) by trying to make Noah mysterious and sexy and worth the wait. I always found this to be a little forced on the part of the author, and didn’t believe that Noah lived up to the (supposed) hype. The lack of “getting to know Noah” in this book didn’t help matters much.
This is the same fate suffered by Noah’s ancestor, Cole Clayborne. He came off mysterious and sexy in For The Roses, but when Come The Spring was published, readers felt let down. It was as if Garwood couldn’t find a romance (or heroine) to match the man she sees in her mind.
As with Jordan, Garwood seemed confused about the “type” she wanted for her hero. His antecedents were alpha males with buttery soft spots for the heroines. And huge protective streaks. Man, a good Garwood hero makes sure his little woman is safe and sound. This is often the source of conflict between her heroes and heroines. An overly protective alpha male coupled with a headstrong, smart female leads to fun battles of the sexes. And works better, I think, in a historical romance.
Noah is certainly alpha, but how? He carries a gun, he’s big and strong, he commandeers Jordan’s bed. But I’m not sure what makes him a hero (I know what I am told about Noah, yes, but show me, show me, show me). I think the scene where they’re heading back to Austin after the third body is found sums it up. Long car ride, lots of time to talk, and most of the discussion is summed up in a single paragraph. Rather than telling me that Jordan is telling a funny story, tell the funny story, you know?
What I’m saying is, give these characters something to do with each other now that you’ve given them a whole book. Noah and Jordan aren’t really working together to solve this mystery. In fact, there’s a whole ‘nother team working the case. They spend a lot of time traipsing from crime scene to crime scene and sitting on Jordan’s hotel room bed, but when push comes to shove, the build-up of the relationship is largely off the page. And then it’s presented as fait accompli — the whole Buchanan family is clear on the situation, while the reader is still scratching her head.
And that, my dear friends, is because Garwood couldn’t decide if she was going romantic suspense or straight romance in the mold of the historical novels that sowed the seeds for this one. She slides mini-chapters into the text to allow us to get into the minds of her criminals, thereby aiming for the suspense camp. But she offsets this by having Jordan pore over the MacKenna relative’s historical research; Jordan ends up reading bedtime stories – of ancient, bloody Scottish battles – to Cole. Presumably, these tales will have something to do with a future novel (the treasure is still missing, you see) because they didn’t add a thing to this one.
One big problem I have, generally and specifically, is that neither Jordan or Noah had a personal connection to the murder mystery. Jordan knew the first dead guy, the second guy fixed her car, and was, well, punched by the third. Those are not personal connections; Jordan and Noah simply don’t have a stake in the chaos surrounding them. They’re disconnected from the action. The fact that they’re not engaged in the story means the reader isn’t, either.
The core mystery is interesting. Garwood gives us a character who disappeared from his old life and is fighting to keep his past a secret. She does a good, if not-wholly believable job, of adding a second layer of villainry: the local blackmailer (who has a lot of equipment that, well, he couldn’t afford and didn’t seem bright enough to operate). The seamy underbelly of seemingly-tranquil small towns always makes for fascinating reading, though this feels forced into the story. There’s a missing treasure somewhere in Scotland that takes up a lot of energy, only to go unresolved (why is there bad blood between the Buchanans and MacKennas? Who knows?). Oh, and Jordan’s father, a Federal judge, is presiding over a racketeering case and is under constant guard.
The big question of this novel is why did it need to be written? Why did Jordan and Noah have to be featured in a full-length (hardcover) book? What is it about their love story that is so unusual, so compelling, so ultimately emotionally fulfilling that an entire series has built up to this moment?
I don’t have answers to those questions. I’m still puzzling over the first sex scene. I mean, one second, it’s just good friends hanging out in bed together, in a non-sexual sort of way. The next, Cole’s jumping Jordan’s bones. Where in the world did that come from? I honestly think something was cut from the manuscript – something that would tie this whole thing together.
If you’re going to read this series, I think you need to read it all, pretty much in order. That way, all the characters and their relationships make sense. The Buchanans and spouses comprise a big, rambling mess of a family – and I mean that as a compliment because the interactions between brothers and sisters feels natural and are, if you want my opinion, the best moments of the book.
Otherwise, you can find Julie Garwood here. You can buy Shadow Dance here or here.

The Rest Falls Away centers on a young woman, Victoria Grantworth, whose story begins with echoes of another universe and another heroine. Victoria, just like Buffy Summers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has been chosen as a Venator, called to fulfill a vampire killing legacy. Where Buffy juggled slaying with high school (the obvious metaphor being high school is a horror filled with monsters), Victoria hunts vampires while also husband hunting among the ton (metaphor open to interpretation). Buffy and Victoria embark with the same setup, but the immediate allusion to Buffy quickly falls away as Gleason sets up a universe, conflict, and story arc that would indicate this book is the opening chapter of a several-books-long larger story.
The world building and unfolding are measured; not slow, but there is the constant sense of something larger at play. It is as if the first book in the Gardella Vampire Chronicles sole purpose is to establish instead of being a self contained story. This makes for a read the reader must decide early on to stay with, as little is laid bare (or is explosive enough to seize attention), in the opening pages. What eventfully comes into play amidst the introduction of characters, plot lines, and morsels of backstory is that fledging Venator Victoria must keep the Book of Antwartha (an ancient text containing unspeakable evil) from the most powerful of vampires: Lilith. This task is in addition to staking the rank-and-file, learning a new way of life, and not giving up on her old one. Victoria is up for all those challenges. She is something unto herself: a young woman who frets over dresses, dances lightly, and falls in love easily, all while being ruthlessly practical enough to hide her vampire-killing stakes in an up-do.
It’s the falling in love aspect, the most expected of turns in romance, where Gleason throws the clockwork frame away. In the typical Regency, Victoria’s hero would emerge from the ton; in a typical paranormal her hero would emerge from, well, a coffin. Gleason, however, chooses instead to force elasticity into the romance leaning aspects of The Rest Falls Away. A clear hero does not emerge in this chapter of Victoria’s story. There are three men in her life, all possible candidates for hero: Phillip, a Marquee and member of the ton; Sebastian, a character of some mystery, whose allegiances are not quite clear; and the emotionally damaged yet rich (depth-wise) Max, a fellow soldier in the war on vamps. In this early chapter of Victoria’s story, Phillip emerges as the front runner for her affections, but it’s clear that Phillip is a symbol of Victoria’s non-Venator past, something that cannot be held onto (though in a deliciously flawed and selfish move, Victoria attempts to have Phillip in her life only to face the most dire of consequences for those actions). Sebastian is, again because this is so early in the tale, easy to root for as he is the most sexually forward of the three and because there is so much yet to uncover regarding him. Is he a good guy or bad guy? Time and books to follow with tell (though it would seem that if Phillip is the aristocracy, and Max is a Venator, the options for Sebastian’s character are clear). In the long run our money is on the easily ired Max to stand happily with Victoria at the series’ conclusion.
What is absolutely certain is that Victoria’s story will need to be read until that conclusion (whenever that might come). Knowing what happens to her and the universe she inhabits becomes imperative in The Rest Falls Away despite a somewhat distant narrative style. Gleason relies heavily on dialog and action largely eschewing the internal dialog that is the hallmark of most fiction and the result is an experience more like watching TV than reading a book. It’s a different and surprisingly successfully style.
Hopefully the genre bending framework and surprises that Gleason lays as groundwork here in The Rest Falls Away will continue on throughout the series. The series next installment can’t hit shelves soon enough.
You can visit Colleen here and purchase this book here and here.

In Fern Michaels’ “The Christmas Stocking,” principles Amy Baran and Guss Moss have relationships with their parents (dad for Guss, mom for Amy) that are strained at best. Childhood hurts, adult misunderstandings and life-long missteps have left each parent and child with little to say to each other and wide bridges to cross when both Amy and Guss go home (separately) to straighten out their parents’ lives. What follows isn’t a romance between Amy and Guss so much as it is the tale of a daughter mending a relationship with her mother and a son doing the same with his dad. That Amy and Guss meet along the way is coincidental rather than the story’s focus; a point made all the more salient by the fact that Amy and Guss don’t meet until page 59 of a 115 page story. By whatever loose definition there is of romance, “The Christmas Stocking” does not fill it.
“The Ghost of Christmas Past” by Beverly Barton isn’t only about Christmases past, but also the ghosts of romance past. There is an old fashioned romance (circa 1980s) feel to this that isn’t retro chic or hip as much as it is a testament to why romance has – and must – continually evolve. When Katie Hadley wrecks her car on an icy mountain road, she is rescued by don’t-call-me-a-hero retired solider Mack MacKinnon. Thanks to a well timed storm, Katie and Mack spend the days leading to Christmas stuck in Mack’s remote cabin. That ever-the-good-girl widow Katie and angry-for-no-reason Mack manage to fall in love shouldn’t be a surprise…despite the fact that Katie still loves her dead husband and that the only break in Mack’s anger is to utter skin crawling sexual come-ons. On their first night together, for instance, Mack suggests: You could do a striptease for me then we could get hot and sweaty. Mack’s come-ons are not only inappropriate, the swift transitions from resentment to innuendo are jarring. On occasion, under skillful guidance, these stock elements can come together and create magic. “The Ghost of Christmas Past” isn’t one of those occasions. There’s no Christmas magic here.
Joanne Fluke’s Sugar and Spice entry “The Twelve Desserts of Christmas” is something of a Hannah Swensen Mystery adjunct – Hannah is there, but without the requisite murder, or anything else to do. This is yet another novella in the collection that stretches the definition of romance paper-thin. The story is, ostensibly, about Julie Jensen and Matt Sherwood, two private school teachers who stay at school over Christmas break to watch over the children who don’t have anywhere to go for the holiday (as if one kid in a romance weren’t bad enough, this story has six). At story’s opening Julie and Matt are already hot and heavy with one another so there aren’t a lot of places their tale could go. What plays out, then, is mostly a cookbook (those would be Hannah’s scenes in which she bakes for the kids), heavy doses of kids plotting against adults, and conflictless forgone conclusion romance, which, perhaps mercifully, gets the least page time of all. In the end, the novella raises the question of why Fluke doesn’t just write cookbooks and be done with it.
If there is a bright spot here (or maybe just brighter in relation to what precedes it), it’s Shirley Jump’s “Twelve Days” wherein coworkers Natalie Harris and Jake Lyons play Secret Santas to one another and a group of homeless children. Their story focuses in on the fits and starts of their romance, is rife with conflict (Jake is one of Natalie’s bosses, a notorious playboy and Natalie is shy to the point of stuttering in Jake’s presence), all the while being somewhat marred by flip-flopping of the characters (one moment they are gung-ho for each other and the next they are pulling back with head spinning quickness). What’s nice is the sense of investment here that is lacking in the three previous novellas, and the willingness to stretch – even if that’s just a bit – beyond the expected. “Twelve Days” is adequate, not fantastic, and not memorable, yet still the best offering of this anthology.
Sugar and Spice is, overall, an opportunity lost. This anthology could have been the sort of holiday read perfect to enjoy by the glow of Christmas lights. Instead, the collection’s focus is misplaced on recipes and the 3D ornament gift from the authors and the publisher (a giveaway bonus inserted in the middle of the book) . A better gift would have been solid, holiday-themed fiction.
You can visit Fern here, Beverly here, Joanne here, Shirley here, and purchase this book here and here.

The plot is paper-thin and fairly frothy: in her first season, Josie Essex is labeled the Scottish Sausage, and plots to catch a husband among the ton despite her status as a pariah. The Earl of Mayne, or simply Mayne, fills his role as the Essex sisters’ convenient-man-to-have around by just being around and coming to Josie’s aid as needed. There’s an easily dispatched stumbling block or two: Mayne has the poor grace to show up in this installment with a fiancé, Josie runs afoul of a bit player wrongly elevated to bad guy status, and the ton is abuzz over the fictitious Earl of Hellgate’s suspiciously real memoirs. The success of Pleasure for Pleasure cannot and does not hinge on the story’s components, but rather, on James’ winning style and ability to breathe life into rich and fully dimensional characters.
Josie is witty and smart, but also marked by an insecurity that continually rears ups and – even at book’s end – is never fully conquered. She is at odds with her body, struggles to accept her flesh, and continually compares herself to thinner women. Unlike heroines who suffer from body dysmorphic issues, Josie sees her body as it is. Her struggle is to see the beauty that is there as well. Mayne is a leading man who, like other heroes, is rash, but unlike other heroes is rash with his heart and affections. That is not to say his feelings are entirely misplaced – as an early scene between Josie and Mayne displays wherein he willingly dons a dress to bolster Josie’s fragile ego – rather that Mayne doesn’t thoroughly understand himself. At story’s opening, Mayne has given up his playboy ways and intends to marry the beautiful, thin, perfect, Sylvie. Sylvie, in herself, is a triumph of a character. It would have been easy and route to make Sylvie horrible and clear enough to all that she is the wrong woman for Mayne. Instead, Sylvie is likeable, drawn with subtly and nuance. She’s a woman of her own mind, with her own thoughts.
In addition to the main romance, a secondary romance plays out between the unlikely pair of Darlington (the chap who hangs Josie with the swinish nickname) and Griselda (the sisters’ long time friend and chaperon). They make an unusual but engaging couple. Darlington is caustic, Griselda’s actions are brazen, each is at a point of change and wanting nothing more than to be loved. With Darlington on the path to redemption (he is not unworthy of it) and love, the villain that emerges is Thurman. One time friend to Darlington, Thurman is a pretender to the thrown that should be Darlington’s. Quite without motivation, Thurman fixates on Josie and comes to blame her for the loss of his friends and position. He is an ineffectual bad guy due to a lack of action and, worse, a lack of a reason to be.
The many and varied characters are a multitude of riches that lift the plot up even while threatening to drown the proceedings with their very numbers. The story struggles to settle into the quick gait it should. The focus early on flits between Josie and Mayne to Griselda and Darlington to Thurman to, well, it seems everyone gets a turn in establishing the story. Mayne and Josie’s time together is insignificant for the first two-thirds of the book, and as James is too methodical a storyteller to allow great leaps of love to happen without the much needed time together, Mayne and Josie feelings develop slowly.
As always, James uses literature and romance for the crucibles they are and recasts stories and characters to fit her means. As such, Pleasure for Pleasure features staunchly traditional romance roles – the rake and virgin with a considerable age difference between the two – mixed liberally with key points from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream. The refashioning succeeds and marries nicely with James’ refusal to hand feed the reader. A working knowledge of Shakespeare will enhance the read, but it isn’t necessary to stay abreast with either the characters or the story. What is good to keep in mind, however, is that while James is never oblique, she demands the reader keep up with her. The signs, turning points, and denouements are subtle, but they are there.
Pleasure for Pleasure is charming and enjoyable. Further, it’s a shining example of how a strong narrative voice and fully developed characters can buoy a lackluster plot. James writes jaunty, delightful romance novels, and Pleasure for Pleasure is no exception to that.
You can visit Eloisa here and purchase this book here and here.

Here’s the deal. I read To Die For, the book that made its sequel Drop Dead Gorgeous possible. Not that To Die For needed a sequel, and, frankly, had one never materialized, the world would still function with clockwork-like efficiency. On the other hand, Drop Dead Gorgeous is such pure fun that I’m glad Linda Howard made what could be construed (by the Great Unwashed) as a gratuitous gesture. To think, I could have spent the afternoon working or something.
In the first novel, someone was trying to kill Blair Mallory. In the second novel, same song, second verse. The first book (which Blair, as narrator, informs the reader should be read for the backstory to this book; in television, it’s called breaking the fourth wall. In books, it’s called snark) ended with Blair happily involved with hot, alpha cop Wyatt Bloodsworth. In the previous novel, he’d dumped Blair after a few dates because he rightly determined that she was topping the high-maintenance scale.
So true. Blair is exceptionally high-maintenance. In our first novel, Wyatt moved beyond this fact, aided by the fact that Blair is also hard-working and results-oriented. Sure, she was in the murderous sights of her ex-husband’s new wife. Did that stop her from accomplishing her goals? No. Which means that in Book Two, Wyatt is reconciled to the fact that she’s who she is and he’s feeling indulgent…as long as she meets his 30-day deadline to plan and hold their wedding. No more trying to schedule around family commitments.
As punishment, she puts him in charge of the flowers.
Galvanized into action, Blair moves at warp speed. Quite literally when a car deliberately tries to mow her down in the mall parking lot. Blair ends up with cuts, bruises, and a nasty concussion. You try to plan a wedding with your head spinning, and not in a good way. Also, recall that overnight stays in hospitals wreak havoc on tight schedules.
Ostensibly, Blair hasn’t (recently) pissed anyone off enough to ignite murderous rage. No evidence, no motive — what’s a cop to do? Oh, right. Tell his high-maintenance fiancee that he’s a busy dude and not at her beck-and-call. Yes, I can see all the women out there cringing. Blair doesn’t take this brush-off as well as he hopes. Yet, even as she senses she’s being followed, she also continues with her wedding plans…even as doubts creep into her mind.
She’s proven right in a big way, and I appreciate the fact that Howard didn’t go into a whole Big Misunderstanding subplot that would have destroyed my faith in humanity. Possibly one of my favorite things about this author is that she lets her characters act like grown-ups. They can be downright petty and irritating, but they don’t belabor the point merely to extend the page count.
This isn’t a new-fangled Linda Howard suspense novel. The someone-else-wants-to-kill-Blair subplot isn’t as violent or compelling as it was in the first novel (or most of Howard’s recent works). It is the exploration of the relationship that fascinated me.
Like To Die For, Drop Dead Gorgeous is written in the first person. Everything we see and understand is filtered through Blair, and I like how Howard balances her tendency toward violent action with Blair’s very real interaction with the real world. Blair is the type who notices a bad dye job on a hospital nurse. She’s the type who grows angry when she’s not allowed to participate in a crime scene investigation. She’s the type who realizes that an extreme haircut involves a certain level of sexual compromise. She’s the type who gets really angry when someone comes between her and her dream wedding. And her running dialogue remains true to character.
Linda Howard has a great first person voice. She doesn’t go too far into melodrama, nor does she go too far into easy jokes. One of my favorite aspects of Howard — and the one that only I seem to focus on — is her humor. She’s funny. She’s really funny. Funny is hard, and she’s good at it. This may not be the deepest, most intense book she’s ever written, but it was a sheer pleasure to read.
In a way, Howard goofs with romance stereotypes left and right. Blair is, sure, a heroine, but she’s also petty and mean. Wyatt is a jerk. Once a romance hero and heroine declare everlasting love, it’s supposed be pure perfection forever. This is the epilogue I’ve always wanted from a novel. No miracle babies, no simpering appearances in subsequent novels.
After the last book ended, these two alpha characters are still jockeying for position and trying to figure out how real life works. They do underhanded, sneaky things — Blair manipulates Wyatt into a remodel — and they try to find common ground even as they plan their wedding. You read these books and wonder how in the world fighting, sparring, unmatched characters are going to last beyond the final page. This is how it happens.
They grow up together.
My biggest complaint with this book was the big scene with the would-be murderer. Said villain sneaks into the garage while Wyatt isn’t looking as he backs out of the driveway. Wyatt looks. He pays attention. I’m sorry, he does. Sure it all worked out just fine, but I didn’t believe this scenario for a second.
I’m not going to quibble. This isn’t my favorite Linda Howard book (still, yes, Open Season — surely someone want to lovefest this one with me). I probably won’t even reread this one. But if, oh, there’s another book featuring one of Blair’s sisters, I’m going to put aside my usual crankiness and pick it up. Linda Howard has earned my sequel trust — and we all know I don’t bestow that easily!
You can find Linda Howard here, okay, you can’t. No website. You can buy Drop Dead Gorgeous here or here.

For professional as well as personal reasons, I went with the latter book.

Scoop is the story of a wanna-be investigative reporter (something we’ll explore in detail in a moment) who foils a suicide attempt, only to learn that the wanna-be dead guy doesn’t quite make it after all. Before and after the dude is offed, people are very intrigued by the conversation our heroine, Cauley MacKinnon, had with the man. You know, people like the FBI, Customs, criminal gangs, reporters. This is very curious to Cauley, and when she’s nearly killed by one bad guy, she decides to play detective.

Oh, what a bad ideas we tend to have when we are stressed.

Let us get the obvious out of the way: if you’re going to write a novel called Scoop, you have to acknowledge that, well, you have a lot of live up to. Specifically the Evelyn Waugh novel of the same name. Especially if you’re going to set your novel, even peripherally, in the newspaper business. Comparisons are inevitable. Just sayin’…

Cauley is one of those heroines who perplexes me. Literally. I can’t quite place my finger on her age, but I’m guessing around thirty. She’s divorced from her lyin’,cheatin’ doctor ex-husband that she helped put through medical school (if I followed the threads correctly). She left Texas, headed to California, got her journalism degree, and returned to Austin to work at one of the local newspapers. That gig didn’t work out because she ended up boinking her boss.

This means she’s now writing obituaries for the other paper in town. But Cauley really wants to be an investigative reporter when she grows up. She’s perpetually broke yet wears Prada. Men all over the book fall in lust with her, yet she’s a walking disaster area. I do not mean this in a good way. This is a woman whose house gets torched and refuses to make an insurance claim because she’s already made another claim recently. Good judgment is not Cauley’s strong suit, and it makes her a weak character overall. She’s also the kind of character who has a critical conversation with a man who ends up dead — a conversation that everyone wants to know about — yet can’t recall the basics. I mean, this stuff happens, you really wrack your brains. People are dying left and right.

Oh, and Cauley’s tortured with guilt because Scooter Barnes, a reasonably good friend of hers, is dead. He was, the beginning of the novel, suicidal. Apparently, that was his second suicide attempt. Somehow, Cauley talked him out of the first. She also talks him out of the second, but he ends up under observation. Like in a mental health facility. Yet Cauley spends way too much time agonizing over the fact that she didn’t get the man the help he needed. Hello? She convinced him to go to said mental health facility. That’s pretty much helping a guy get the help he needs. What more should she have done — vet potential psychiatrists? Schedule his appointments?

This is fake conflict. I don’t like fake conflict. Of course, looking back, most of the conflict feels forced. Cauley has some sort of rivalry with another reporter, but, shades of Stephanie Plum, this is because the other reporter was sleeping with Cauley’s then-husband. Her internal conflict, as noted above, doesn’t jibe with the story. And the external conflict, the meat of the plot? Oh dear.

This novel falls into that newish category of chicklit-mystery. Both elements were underserved here. Cauley is surrounded by a cadre of snappy friends (including, natch, the obligatory gay guys next door), but their purpose in the story is to serve as window dressing. They don’t advance the story. They don’t have distinct personalities. They don’t have anything to do but clean Cauley’s house before her dates and after her fires. Every now and then, Frazier tosses off the kind of good line that makes me see her real talent, but so much is buried in this mess of a story.

The mystery, which morphs from “why does Scooter want to kill himself?” to “why did someone kill Scooter?” isn’t well-developed. There is Nazi gold and murderous Argentinians and double-crosses, but I’m not exactly sure why everyone was so convinced that Cauley was the key to solving the mystery when she spent a good portion of the novel unable to recall key elements of her conversation with Scooter. Put another way, why did anyone assume she knew anything?

What’s even more interesting — if you’re me and trying to review this book — is the fact that the FBI is hanging around. A supposed Customs agent is on the case. Some guy that Cauley went to high school with is suddenly very eager to get her phone number. Sure, they all have a serious case of the hard-ons for Cauley, but something has to trigger the belief that she was given information by Scooter. I’m simply not convinced that her presence in the shed with him when he was trying to kill himself is sufficient.

Let me try again. If you’re a bad guy (and I know this is a stretch because PBR readers are like super heroes) and it appears that someone, even if she is the world’s most inept wanna-be investigative reporter, is clueless that a crime was committed, do you keep pushing and pushing and pushing until she thinks, “Wow. I think there’s some bad mojo here. I’m going to dig until I find it.” It’s like these people want to get caught.

It seems like I’m nitpicking, and I am. Most of the novel is consumed by people trying to worm information out of Cauley. She dutifully recounts her conversation to everyone she meets (this chick has no filter) — naturally forgetting a key fact until the plot requires her to remember it — and, frankly, there’s nothing worth cutting off an ear over. Eventually, she does the reporter thing and, sure, puts clues together, but none of them seem to be outside what law enforcement already knows. All things considered, I’m not sure why our master criminals couldn’t solve the mystery on their own.

Then there were things. Little things like Cauley parking in an adjacent parking lot yet walking across the street to the building (I had an ARC, so hopefully this was fixed in the final book). Bigger things like Cauley spending far too much time researching the ultimate 70’s vehicle, the El Camino, yet not doing a double-take when a colleague says she lost something important in the backseat of one. And even bigger things like the dated feel of the novel. The use of disks rather than CDs. The fact that an investigative reporter relies on Lexis-Nexis but doesn’t consider Google. The scene where a guy carrying what I am lead to believe is a gun that can level a building skips through airport security without pause. Uh, hello, Homeland Security? Even if a dude is pretending to be Customs, you don’t waltz through the screening process without some guff about the big gun.

Cauley is coming back in another book. It’s one of those series where the romance starts in one book, isn’t resolved, and carries over from book to book to book. And while I realize that nobody is really marketing this book as a romance, Cauley’s relationship with FBI agent Tom Logan is possibly the best part of the book. Things are interesting when he’s on the page. Also, so little page time was allotted to the man.

You can find Kit Frazier here. You can buy Scoop here or here.

Rest assured that this latter scenario rarely happens. But a week or so ago, I received a friendly reminder from a publicist suggesting that I should have received, read, and loved Elizabeth Hoyt’s The Raven Prince. Whoa there, I thought, you think I get around to this stuff in a day or two? You don’t know me.

And of course I’m also thinking that I’m going to show this publicist. You get all “you’re gonna love this book” with me, and I’ll show you. Take that and that and that.

Well, it works in theory. In practice? Let’s just say that I’m conceding the win to the publicist. Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation to maintain.

Our story is quite simple: widow Anna Wren needs money (don’t we all?). She takes the job of secretary to Edward de Raaf, Earl of Swartingham. Should be scandalous, a woman alone with a man, but this was the Georgian era when men wore powdered wigs and high heels and women could be alone with them without fear of reputations being shredded.

So anyway, Anna has good penmanship and soon comes to appreciate Edward’s finer qualities (to wit: manly figure, intelligence, and can-do attitude). She also begins to wonder why men get to have all the fun, while she, a hapless widow, is expected to remain sex-free. This wondering really gets going when Edward plans a trip to London to take care of his physical needs. One thing leads to another, and Anna decides that she’s going to take care of her own sexual urges with an unsuspecting Edward. Apparently, face-hiding masks can be very effective. Who knew?

Anna is wise, mature, self-deprecating, and totally poor. She’s not boring, however. Due to her apparent inability to have children (bonus points for guessing the ending based on this clue), her husband cheated on her before his untimely demise, and she’s still feeling the sting from her loss of pride. This does not stop her from living life to the fullest. Nor does this stop her from acknowledging that she’s a sexual being trapped in a small town with few prospects. Also, very little privacy. She’s chafing at the boundaries of her world, but realizes there’s not much more she can expect from life. Working for the local earl for the princely sum of three pounds a month is beyond thrilling for her – of course, she takes the job before she meets said earl.

Edward, ah, Edward. I feel like there’s so much to say, yet so much I’d rather let you discover yourself. Let’s just say that there’s an unwritten rule in romance: the first male and female characters you meet are, in theory, going to be the hero and heroine. Edward shows up in the first scene, and I was quite certain that there is no way this man was the hero. Can’t be. He’s described in terms that suggest a strong absence of physical beauty and a really nasty temper. This man, I thought, is going to be some sort of villain.

Edward, it turns out, is not a villain. He does indeed possess a rotten temper and is scarred – the remnants of the smallpox that killed his family many years before our story begins. He’s also the proud keeper of the world’s ugliest dog. Being rich and powerful does have its advantages, and Edward has returned to his ancestral home, ready to start a family. He even has a well-bred fiancée waiting in the wings.

While briefly taken aback by the presence of a chick secretary, Edward’s devotion to his Agrarian Society (tell me that British men haven’t always been weird) is such that he’s willing to overlook gender flaws. Plus he appreciates that Anna is as willing to banter with him as she is willing to fight with him. As the reader of this novel, I appreciated the fact that both the banter and the fighting were well done. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it in the past, but, just in case I forgot, I’m not terribly fond of dull back-and-forth and even less fond of arguing pretending to be unresolved sexual tension.

I am, however, fond of these elements when they reveal character. Anna’s attempts to find a proper name for Edward’s dog serve as a lovely example, as they show that Edward is not overly impressed with himself:

“Do you think ‘Duke’ is a good name? she asked.

His face blanked for a second before it cleared. He glanced at the dog in consideration. “I don’t think so. He would outrank me.”

It is through his humor and intelligence that Edward, like the Raven Prince of the title (see also: Beauty and the Beast), becomes beautiful in Anna’s eyes. The effects of smallpox are visibly evident – and, in all fairness, probably quite evident throughout polite society, so Edward wasn’t that unusual a sight – yet Anna quickly moves beyond noticing them. There were times when it felt like Hoyt was working harder to remind me that his man was scarred than necessary. I’d moved beyond his physical appearance as well.

This is a sexually tinged novel, and, to my surprise, the level of sensuality was high. Maybe it’s because these characters were quite evidently attracted to each other. This wasn’t a romance that felt like the author was painting-by-numbers. She created a true connection, and this made the scenes between Edward and Anna-in-disguise all the more intense, though I’m still having difficulty fathoming lovemaking while masked.

Of course, that might be revealing a bit too much about me.

Not surprisingly, Anna’s decision to seduce poor, unsuspecting Edward has consequences. I mean, you live in the same place your whole life and then take off with someone who is clearly not a lady’s lady, what do you think is going to happen? Well, for starters, your husband’s former lover – who isn’t so much wracked with guilt as she is desperately trying to conceal her red-headed child’s true parentage – is going to take notice and engage in a little blackmail.

While romance novel blackmail is a lot like a high-speed chase (the dude always gets arrested at the end, why they bother, I’ll never understand), you still feel for Anna. Why can’t she have a little fun, too? Why should that awful Felicity Clearwater get to be rich and have lovers while Anna has to suffer in silence? Go for it, Anna, I kept thinking.

And she did. And she enjoyed herself. And she didn’t feel a bit of remorse. Okay, a little remorse. She’d deceived Edward. But still…it was all good ‘til Felicity stuck her nose into things.

Throughout the novel, the characters and story moved in unexpected directions. Don’t get me wrong, Hoyt includes a good dose of standard conventions, right down to the righteous heroine saving the downtrodden whore, damn what the town thinks (yes, that is too a convention). Yet each time I felt like I’d read this or that scene before, I went in a new direction. The prostitute with a heart of gold wasn’t quite as nice as you’d think. When Anna storms off in a huff, she realizes she’s behaving like an idiot. Edward must clearly break off his engagement, but the father of his jilted bride-to-be doesn’t fight back in the way you’ve come to expect.

I like being surprised while I’m reading. There is something quite satisfying about being all smug and knowing exactly what’s coming next, only to realize that I don’t have a clue. There’s probably a proverb or something about pride and falling, but I don’t have time to search far and wide across the Internet.

Naturally, I have some quibbles with this novel – what, after all, is life without quibbles? Dull, I tell you, very dull. The two key plot elements – Anna’s decision to seduce Edward and Felicity Clearwater’s attempts at blackmailing Anna – were not as well-developed as they could (or should) have been.

There is an obvious attraction between Edward and Anna, right from the moment they properly meet. But this attraction isn’t built up to the point where Anna’s “I’m going to London and sleeping with this guy” actions feel entirely organic. I needed a more visceral response, more righteous anger as we approached Edward’s departure for London. A little more intensity, and I would have completely bought Anna’s decision.

Likewise, I didn’t feel Felicity’s fear or anger. She put a lot of effort into plotting Anna’s downfall, but it wasn’t quite developed enough. Off all the characters, Felicity came closest to being stock. Had more page time been devoted to deepening her motivation, I would have been a much happier camper – though having never camped, this is just conjecture on my part.

I also, and this is pure selfishness, would have loved to see more page time with Edward and his guy friends. There is a scene toward the end – the stupid guy scene where Edward tries to save Anna’s reputation even though, well, it’s all under control – where the three men interact with each other with the timing of a well-rehearsed (and funny) comedy troupe. I wanted scenes and scenes of these men. It turns out I’m going to have to settle instead for subsequent books featuring Edward’s buddies.

This brings us to the ending. If you’ve been following along, you realize that Elizabeth Hoyt does enjoy romance conventions. You know what happens. My consolation – and the reason I’m being mostly forgiving on the miracle birth scenario – is that the inevitable child is described in terms that suggest he’s a holy terror.

As you might have guessed, I’m strongly recommending that you go out and buy The Raven Prince here or here. You can find Elizabeth Hoyt here.

Me: Let’s do Outlander.
Anonymous fellow reviewer: I’d rather be staked out on ant hill and covered in honey.

Repeat ad infinitum with the occasional substitution of torture method and you get the idea. While it’s been frustrating to want to talk about a book and to not find that desire reciprocated, the polarization that Outlander has caused here is endemic of the schism it has created in the larger romance community. There are those who passionately love Jamie and Claire’s story, and those who hate the very idea of the books. I have to admit that I am addicted to the Outlander series…while I’m reading it. When I’m not reading, I ardently wish I’d never picked the books up. The never-ending-series that it has become weighs me down and dampens my excitement for the story.
(lf: Let me horn in here to say that as a fervent fan of Ms. Gabaldon’s, I too look askance at each new entry in the series. I’ve had Breath of Snow and Ashes on my shelf since it was published last year, working up the gumption to take a running leap at it. The Outlander books demand a huge investment in time and emotional energy and are not for the weak.)
Nonetheless, when Lorna joined us I knew the discussion that I was so impatient for would soon be underway. Years ago, the first conversation Lorna and I had – beyond, hello nice to meet you – was about the Outlander series. We were united in our general passion for all things Gabaldon while being divided by our thoughts on specific points. That seemed a lovely place to begin a discussion, and it was with great enthusiasm that Lorna and I launched into Outlander. We quickly found that our conversation about Jamie and Claire and all that happens to them, to be completely overwhelming. It’s nearly impossible to discuss Outlander while leaving all those other books and continuing storylines untouched; but we managed to, mostly. What follows is our very long chat about Outlander.

wd: I’ve read and re-read Outlander (my favorite, selected scenes, usually out of order, as the mood strikes me); this might be the first time I’ve read Outlander from start to finish since the first reading. I’m rather struck by how different my feelings are this time around. With the first read I expected Outlander to be a standard issue romance novel and I alternately chaffed and thrilled to the deviations it took from, what I believed to be, form. I found this time, without that expectation, it’s a much better read. Where before I thought the story should have been edited down quite a bit (boiled down to the Jamie and Claire parts), now I’m less inclined to believe that and instead appreciate the richness and texture of the story as a whole. What I have finally come to understand about Outlander is that it isn’t a romance (just what Gabaldon has been proclaiming for years). Romances deal with people falling in love, but not being in love or staying in love. Romances lead their couples to the precipice of the hard part – life together – and then leave the reader as though that is the end of the love story. It isn’t and through Jamie and Claire, Gabaldon tells the story (that begins in Outlander and continues through the series) of a couple who fight to stay in love.
lf: You’re right. I don’t know remember how we got there, but the first thing we established was our mutual admiration for Ms. Gabaldon. The second, I think, was our disagreement on the best of the series—you contending for Dragonfly in Amber and me firm in my belief that Voyager is the best.
Like you, this is the first time I’ve read Outlander in its entirety in years, and though it is fifteen years old, it’s as fresh as the first time I read it. I had come into the series when Voyager had been published, and being the obsessively linear person that I am, I had to read books one and two before I touched book three. For me, Outlander was the beginning of the story that would end on the last page of Voyager, and I started it with that in mind. Even so, I had preconceived notions; I too believed it was a standard love story between Jamie and Claire with some sci-fi/fantasy woo-woo thrown in. I read the first chapters, and wondered who the heck Frank was and what was he doing being married to Claire. Then Claire fell through the rabbit hole and I don’t think I surfaced until I turned the last page. As you (and Ms. Gabaldon) pointed out, Outlander is not a run of the mill romance. The romantic elements are there, but they are just a bit skewed and somewhat off-kilter, which keeps the story out of well-traveled ruts. For instance, instead of Jamie being the typically world-wise, older and more experienced man, it is Claire who is older, more worldly (at least as far as her language is concerned) and sexually experienced. And there is Claire’s husband Frank. He’s not the typical “dumpee”—you know, the shallow, vain, adulterous, wife-beating psychopath. Frank is a good man, and Claire acknowledges that he is. She just loves Jamie more and makes her choice accordingly. The result is bittersweet, unlike many romances, both contemporary and historical, where bad things happen only to characters who richly deserve them.
Which is not the case in the Outlander books. They are not comfortable, hot cocoa and jammies reads. They’re more cabernet and dark chocolate, complex with sharp corners and edges that Ms. Gabaldon refuses to smooth over and round out. Once again, there is Frank, who this time around I realized got short-shrift. The story itself is set just before the doomed Jacobite uprising, depicting a way of life that shortly would be no more. Claire’s stint as physician at Castle Leoch and the interlude with Jamie at Lallybroch is made all the more poignant by us knowing that they are the calm before all hell breaks loose, sort of like the Titanic just before it hit the iceberg. Or more apropos, the Lusitania before the torpedo struck.
wd: Outlander is full of sharp corners, isn’t it? And Gabaldon doesn’t mind running her characters – or her readers – into those cutting edges. The plot of Outlander (let’s ignore for a moment all that comes after this first book) is massive. The action takes place over nine or ten months, but good god, what doesn’t happen in that time? Claire stumbles into a circle of standing stones and is thrust back through time, leaving 1946 Scotland for 1743 Scotland. The time-travel element alone could provide book length conflict rife with fish-out-of-water and need-to-get-back-to-one’s-own-time scenarios. But, Gabaldon doesn’t allow this story to simply be about a woman out of her time. As you point out, once in 1743, the Jacobite uprising creates the ticking count-down to disaster and provides believable conflict amongst the Scots and between the Scots and the English (Claire is English which makes her situation with the Scots further sticky). All of which propels the story swirling around Claire and man she eventually marries, Jamie Fraser.
There is, as well, a massive cast of characters to flesh out this massive storyline. The people that populate Gabaldon’s pages are round and full of life and as such have motivations and actions that keep them all at odds with one another. So that, not only does Claire land in a point in time on the verge of war, she lands in the middle of the tangled and contentious interpersonal conflicts of the MacKenzies, the Frasers, the general populous of the Scottish countryside, and one notorious ancestor of her husband Frank: Jonathan “Black Jack” Randall.
Gabaldon’s canvas for Outlander is enormous, and yet she paints with a very fine brush. I think her finest strokes are dedicated to Claire’s character. How do you find Claire?
lf: First let me say that I agree with you that the book is massive, but not like concrete blocks massive. If I can get fanciful here, it’s as if we’re riding a huge stallion that has the bit between his teeth and all we can is sit down, shut up, and hold on. I know that we’re avoiding the yawning maw of the rest of the series right now, but while Voyager is my favorite, I think this is the best written of the bunch. It is taut, it is tight, actions flow into counteractions, and there is little if any wasted page space. (It’s also, I believe, the shortest at a mere 627 pages.)
Okay, back to Claire. Claire is a masterpiece of writing, both technically and story-wise. I read an interview some years back where Ms. Gabaldon stated that Claire sprung off the page (all right, computer screen) fully formed, a modern woman in a 18th century world. Now, I disagree about “modern;” Claire is not—and was not even when Outlander was first published in 1991. She is my grandmother’s generation, “born” in the same year 1917. Claire came of age in pre-WWII Europe, and she reflects that. But she also had a baptism of fire in the field hospitals of WWII, and she reflects that too. Add to it her strength and intelligence, and Ms. Gabaldon created a character who, when she walks into a room, you know she’s there. However, though her voice is clear, direct and powerful, she doesn’t overwhelm the story. One of the drawbacks of writing in first person is that the narrator can sometimes drown out the other characters as the reader is always in the narrator’s head. Claire is such a keen observer that the world and people around her are also clear, vibrant and three-dimensional with their own voices, mannerisms, foibles and scruples. Jamie sounds different from Dougal and Colum, different from Rupert and Murtagh, different from Old Alec the stablemaster, even though they all speak Scots and Gaelic, and go “mmmphm” from time to time.
Story-wise, Claire is also a marvel of writing and character development. As I said, she is strong. But the minute she steps through the standing stones, she has to dig deeper to find—and, boy, does she find—reservoirs of hidden strength to deal with first being stranded out of place and time, and later with her marriage to Jamie, his outlawry, and Jack Randall’s very unhealthy interest in her Scots husband. I think one of the most viscerally chilling moments is when Claire’s forced to leave Jamie in Black Jack’s hands in prison, and she retaliates by telling Jack the day and year of his death. And what is even more chilling is the way she did it. Without fanfare, without fuss, softly, her rage striking out like rapier, slicing Jack in half almost before he knew he’d been cut. And that’s how she manages all the difficulties and insults that are flung at her, with a ruthless practicality that’s sometimes driven by anger so hot that it’s cold. The only time that I felt her strength lacking was when she was betrayed by Laoghaire and she didn’t tell anyone about it. I wanted blood and retribution, or at least some hair pulling.
wd: That point of not blabbing about Laoghaire bothers me as well. But, I always come back to: when exactly did that have to come up? Jamie rescues Claire from the witch trail, in short order Claire tells Jamie the whole truth about where – or when – she came from, and the setting shifts to Lallybroch. It’s easy to see where Laoghaire’s guilt gets lost in the ongoing action.
I completely agree with you, Claire telling Jonathan Randall the day of his death (while Gabaldon keeps it from the reader, at least at that point) is a brilliant thing. Her knowledge is the only weapon she has and Claire uses it to do more harm and damage than a physical weapon could have. Here, and even in less charged moments, Claire is a commanding presence, but as you point out, not an overpowering one.
That Claire enthralls while not overshadowing is a point most salient, I believe, with Jamie. Outlander hints – with the ghost yearning for Claire through her 1946 bedroom window – that Claire doesn’t simply blunder through time. Her trip has a specific purpose: to deliver her to the love that defies time, Jamie.
Jamie has to match Claire on the page, and also be bold enough, larger-than-life even, to be the love so special and magnificent that it pulls Claire through the standing stones. Claire shows up on page one with no burden other than to be Claire (I do agree with you that Claire is a triumph and that it’s her appeal that propels Outlander and by extension the series), but from the onset, Jamie’s presence has to command, he has to be rather glorious.
But Gabaldon doesn’t take an easy path with Jamie. As you point out, he’s very young, twenty-three, until his wedding night with Claire, he’s a virgin, he has red hair (not a character flaw, just not what we’re conditioned to expect of our leading men), and he’s very much a man of the 18th century. I’ve always found those to be rather bold choices on Gabaldon’s part, and she goes on to make even bolder choices for Jamie, in large part, to draw contrasts between his time and reality and Claire’s much different time and place. As when, for example, Jamie beats Claire. Not repeatedly. But, the once is enough. He physically restrains her and takes a belt to her. (I hate that. How can I not?) Even still, I do respect that Gabaldon was brave enough to go where the story took her. Throughout Outlander great emphasis is placed on punishment, mostly public punishment, so much so that the reader has to know Claire will encounter it personally. And too, I respect that Gabaldon didn’t take the easy way out and make Jamie an overly enlightened man for his time, who would regard beating his wife as barbaric. You see that sort of thing in fiction set in the Civil War era, where characters who grow up surrounded by slavery have a suspiciously modern view of the system. It doesn’t ring true there, and I don’t believe endowing Jamie with a progressive mindset would have either.
Through all that, perhaps despite all that, Jamie emerges as the hero. He loves Claire fiercely, enough to make good on the vow he gives her on their wedding night: “the protection of my body.” That vow is put to an almost unfathomable test one night in Wentworth Prison. Jamie makes a trade with Jonathan Randall, Claire’s life in exchange for the use of Jamie’s flesh.
What follows is skin-crawlingly horrible and creates a mess that isn’t truly mopped up for several books to come. But through all that, I have my doubts about the organicness of Black Jack’s character. It seems a sexual masochist – with a specific predilection for Jamie – is too opportune a boogeyman to be roaming the Scottish countryside. Does Black Jack ring of convenience or truth to you?
lf: Hmm. Jamie’s ghost appearing as a sign of his and Claire’s “destiny.” The fact that they are destined to be together. I hadn’t thought of that, but it makes sense, especially as it’s their union that—to skirt that yawning maw again—produces Claire’s only child, Brianna, who, in Voyager, is alluded to having some sort of Scottish destiny of her own.
But, returning to Jamie, while I agree that he has some incredibly admiral qualities (both character-wise and, uhm, physically), I don’t think he’s glorious. Not yet. The potential is there, but he is somewhat overshadowed by Claire. In Outlander Jamie still has some of the loose-limb gawkiness of adolescence. He hasn’t reached the emotional, mental and physical maturity that he’ll have in Voyager, and the times that Claire yields to him in Outlander I get the sense that she does only out of expediency and not because she lost a match of wills. When Jamie wallops her (may I say here that I too flinched and cringed at that scene much more the second time around), her subsequent, after the fact acknowledgement that he was sort of justified is more along the lines of “there’s nothing I can do about it,” than “I was wrong and he was right.”
However, Jamie’s love for Claire is fierce, and there they are evenly matched. When Claire accuses Jamie of trysting with Laoghaire after their marriage, Jamie slams right back, asserting himself and his love. It is the one time where Claire truly loses a clash of wills between them—in the fight itself, in the makeup sex afterwards, and in the makeup makeup sex after that. And of course there’s the heart-wrenching scene where Jamie brings her back to the stones and walks away, thinking that he’ll never see her again. He acts out of his strength of character, leaving Claire space to make her own choice.
Okay, from the deeply sublime to the in-your-face. I suppose given today’s crop of genre villains, Jack Randall’s sexual pathology is rather stereotypical, but this was written when bookstore shelves weren’t cluttered with serial killers, sexual predators and other deviants. I remember being shocked the first time I read this at Jack’s lust not only for Jamie body, but for Jamie’s pain—and at how everyone in Outlander aware of that lust wasn’t surprised and shocked. Wearily disgusted, yes. But stunned in outraged amazement, no. However, this time through it was Claire’s shock that I felt—that someone who looked so much like her husband Frank could be so twisted, and that’s how I took Jack, the flipside of Frank. It was another blow (in one instance literally) that she had to ride in order to find her balance in a new world. I also read it as a wedge between her and Frank. Claire declares in the opening chapters her faithfulness to her marriage vows, no matter that she and Frank been separated for most of their marriage by the war. But then she later states that Frank and Jack’s features have become intertwined for her, creating an emotional distance between she and Frank—which then gives room for Claire’s attraction to Jamie to flourish. And, to once more sail dangerously close to the yawning maw of the continuing saga, there’s a reason for Jack’s openly displayed preferences.
But, back to the sex scenes between Jamie and Claire, leaving aside the fact that here too Ms. Gabaldon is a gifted writer, I was impressed with how she handled—or should I say Claire handled the initial physical intimacy between she and Jamie. When they first married, Claire had every intention of leaving Jamie and returning to Frank, yet during her and Jamie’s wedding night—and subsequent nights and days—Claire responds with an honesty untainted by coyness, guilt or shame. Now, admittedly Claire is at this point very much attracted to Jamie, but I don’t get the sense that she is indulging herself in something that is only technically not adultery. Instead, I feel that Claire’s practical ruthlessness has once more come to the fore, and the only way she sees to her goal of returning to Frank is through Jamie’s bed, so through it she will go. And if she does respond openly and honestly, well that’s because she is open and honest. Of course, her goals change when she chooses to stay with Jamie, but her response to him remains the same. What do you think?
wd: Sex is very important in Outlander, not simply the act, but the emotions that accompany the physical. Once Jamie and Claire marry, they have a lot of sex. Which is what one would expect of any newly married couple – circumstances aside. Though, I don’t know if I agree that initially sex with Jamie was a means to an end for Claire; I have to work through that one. Honestly, I can’t separate my emotions – what I want to be there on the page – from what is actually there. I want to believe Claire is as she is with Jamie because of their combustible chemistry, that larger destiny stepping in again. Though I must admit, that line of thinking sets aside Claire’s feelings for Frank, and Claire doesn’t do that – ever.
Circling back to something you said earlier, I too have more sympathy for Frank, now, than with any other past reading. There was a time when I was appalled at his very existence. Then I was further appalled that Claire didn’t immediately forget Frank upon laying eyes on Jaime. At some point, I came to understand that Gabaldon’s choice to side step what you point out as the typical “dumpee” attributes was an intelligent decision on her part. It would have been so easy for Claire to walk away from Mr. Why-did-She-Marry-Him-In-The-First-Place. Jamie wouldn’t have needed to be a choice for Claire to make under those circumstances, but rather an obvious conclusion. Frank’s only crime – at least in Outlander – is that he isn’t the hero. He’s an ordinary man. A good man. And fate repays his ordinariness and goodness by shafting him.
So maybe then you do have a point about the honeymoon sex, because even after choosing to stay with Jamie, Claire is rather steadfast in wanting her decampment to be her only betrayal of Frank. And too, it’s never really just sex in Gabaldon’s sex scenes. There is always an advancement of the story happening right along with the “mmmphming” and a rather fantastic amount of subtext as well. The scene you mentioned earlier, where Jamie finds Claire in a jealous pique over Laoghaire, that scene is one of my favorites of the entire series (yes all those other books too). The events leading to it aren’t all that unique, Jamie and Claire have been forced to marry and suddenly here is an opportunity to go their own ways, as it were. We’ve all seen that in hundreds of romance novels and the predictable outcome is that one of the principles will do something childish like storm out and then we’ll have to spend the length of the remaining story watching them warm up to one another again. But, that’s not what Gabaldon does there, when Claire says she has no claim on Jamie, he responds with:

“And what d’ye think a wedding vow is, lassie? Just words in a church?”

My breath caught the first time I read that. And it’s caught with every subsequent reading because Jamie doesn’t throw up his hands and say: the hell with you; but instead, through word and deed lets Claire know that he’s an honorable man of substance (an argument for his gloriousness, despite his youth).
The sex that follows is stunning not so much for what gets touched or how, but because this is really the first time they choose one another without respect to the marriage Dougal forced on them. The coming together here is physically rough and emotionally brutal as Jamie realizes that he can’t posses Claire without her possessing him as well and Claire realizes she will be forever stretched between the two men in her life. It’s also the first time Claire compares Jamie and Frank and finds Frank lacking.
Perhaps then, there is a greater motivation to those first sex scenes than just unflagging lust.
OK, are you ready for it? The elephant in the room? The rest of the series. We’ve both read through Fiery Cross (like you A Breath of Snow and Ashes has yet to compel me to read it). With this read of Outlander, I found my knowledge of the next 6000 pages of storyline to be a weight I couldn’t escape from. Were you able to read this first installment without the influence of what is to come intruding?
lf: Elephant in the room is an excellent description. It’s huge, it’s powerful, it has a distinct odor, and it doesn’t leave much space for anything else. I too was unable to shake off the “forward story,” though my haunting was more about people than events. As I read Outlander, I kept looking around for Fergus, and then would have to remind myself that he doesn’t appear until Dragonfly in Amber. I also missed the mature Jamie who could hold his own with Claire—and whose code of ethics had become flexible enough to accommodate a little sedition, some truth-bending, and general sneakiness. And I kept eyeing Jamie’s sister Jenny sourly, holding myself aloof from her character even though her betrayal of Claire doesn’t happen until Voyager.
But, the biggest struggle was reading Outlander for itself without comparing it to the rest of the series. Ms. Gabaldon has stated that her writing method is to produce segments which she then joins together with connective narrative—which is fine; whatever works to get the story on paper. In Outlander the “joins” are seamless; even looking for them, I couldn’t find them. However, in the later books, the joins are not only very prominent, but Fiery Cross reads as a series of vignettes only loosely connected. As I read Outlander, I kept becoming irritated that the leanness (okay, relative leanness) and forward-driving tension in the first book is by and large discarded by the time we reach Fiery Cross. It isn’t that it’s not well-written; Ms. Gabaldon’s craft remains at the top of its form in that regard. It’s that so much of it is unnecessary to the story. And that’s the elephant in my room. The bloated books that are to come, where the storyline is buried under so much lard.
Of course, none of that stopped me from reading Fiery Cross twice, then going back several times more and cherry-picking my favorite scenes.
wd: My reaction is very similar to yours. There were many, many story elements I couldn’t put from my mind as I read Outlander. As you point out, it was difficult to warm up to Jenny, knowing what was to come. I was shocked to see Dougal that first time in the crofter’s cottage as he’s long dead for the majority of the series. It was a bit hard to conceive that Laoghaire was once a girl only on the precipice of her viciousness. And countless other things, too.
I also found myself looking for foreshadowing, or perhaps reading in foreshadowing, in places I’m not sure were intended to foreshadow. As when, early on, Frank and Claire discuss having children, or the inability to have them, and Frank says he couldn’t love another man’s child. He thinks it isn’t in him. Or, simply the fact that Claire chooses to stay in 1743 with Jamie without ever seeing Frank again. On the first read, that seemed as though Gabaldon hadn’t allowed the story to go where it needed to go – at least I always thought Frank should get an in person goodbye – now, I wonder if, by Claire not voluntarily returning to her own time, we should have known the time would come when she’d be forced to go.
Like you, I also spent time with this read wondering where the leanness of storytelling went to. That seems odd to say about such a long book, but it is the shortest of the series and as you point out, the smoothest and most compact.
While reading Oultander, I felt a bit like Claire in the opening scene of Fiery Cross when she’s bedeviled by Frank’s ghost and tells him to go away. I felt bedeviled by the story and the telling that follows the first of the series and simply wanted that “yawning maw” to go away.
We’ve left many unturned stones in this discussion, but that seems rather fitting to me. There’s really only one more question I’d like to ask you: Would you do it? Would you give up hot baths?
lf: Hot baths vs. Jamie Frazier. Hmm. That’s a hard one. One thing I do know, though. No sex while traveling and without access to even cold water and hard cake soap. Each time that happened in Outlander, I found myself wrinkling my nose. Eww.
wd: I don’t think I could give up the hot baths, or my husband either.
You can visit Diana here and purchase this book here and here.

This is my second go-round with Rachel Gibson’s True Confessions, and it’s almost weird that my second reaction largely mirrors the first: I had a good time, but not enough to remember it a year from now. Which is a shame, because this time, as I read, I kept thinking, “Man, she’s a good writer.”

True Confessions tells the story of burned out tabloid – and by tabloid, I mean “aliens live among us” rather than “So-and-So is too skinny” sort of tabloid – writer Hope Spencer. She’s resting up in the town Gospel, Idaho after she loses her mojo. When it comes to making up Elvis sightings, mojo is all-important. She’s a city girl landing in Small Town, USA, which, naturally, catches the attention of super-hot sheriff, Dylan Taber

.

Attraction is instant (he’s a babe, she’s built and more, what’s not to attract?), and they spar and lie. They’re both hiding secrets. Dylan, in addition to being chased by every single woman in a forty-mile radius, has a son, and he’s protecting said son from the truth of his birth. Writers like Hope are the last thing Dylan wants sniffing around his neighborhood.

Hope is your typical fish-out-of-city character. What is it about smart women who dress stupid in novels? She’s all Diet Coke and dressing on the side and designer clothes and boots while she walks through piles of dirt. I liked Hope. Despite her desire to hide the truth about her work, she’s open and friendly and willing to take Gospel at face value. And she’s serious about her work. You feel her frustration when she can’t produce a usable paragraph, much less sentence. The nice thing about writers writing about writing is that the procrastination and lack of inspiration and desire to avoid the keyboard always feels real.

Dylan, on the other hand, had tasted the good times that come from being a Los Angeles cop, and decided he prefers Gospel to Northridge (and, yeah, I do appreciate that Gibson had her cop character living in the Valley). He has a son and the mother is alive, well, and not the maternal type. She’s also someone who has a lot to lose if the truth about Dylan and Adam (el kiddo) ever gets out.

This matters when it comes to the final black moment thingy. Dylan is a good old boy with that necessary edge of big city sophistication – no way would this story have worked if he hadn’t left Gospel. His outside world experience allows him to view his hometown with a necessary touch of distance. He’s one of them, but, being the sheriff, able to maintain a certain detachment.

Plot-wise, this book is weak (see below). Many of scenes feel like stock vignettes: Rachel is forced to care for Dylan’s son during an emergency, they take a romantic trip to the mountains, there’s a cute barbecue encounter. What separates these from standard-issue “get these characters together, now!” scenes is Gibson’s use of humor – her voice and style lend themselves to the slightly off-beat. These aren’t roll-on-the-floor funny, but the subtle, sly tone often sneaks up on the reader, making you laugh half a page later when the full impact of the joke sinks into your mind.

The humor also makes the confrontational tone of the hero and heroine’s interactions bearable. There is nothing less appealing than characters who engage in (lame) verbal battles because the author has confused squabbling with conflict. What these misguided authors see as cute and clever is more often irritating. Writing sharp, funny dialogue is an art. Writing sharp, funny narrative is an art. Gibson is good at both.

Hope and Dylan mostly spar because as their hormones are raging – and Gibson does a fine job with lust and the aftermath, this is a mostly good, strong romance novel, you believe, you really believe – they are hiding truths about themselves. Relationships are a funny thing, aren’t they? I mean, do you put the whole, unvarnished truth about your life story on the table the first time you meet someone? Or do you calculate the odds and reveal only what needs to be revealed? Or are there white lies, things you say to protect yourself in case this relationship is short-lived? Do you really want to leave a piece of you soul with someone you’ll never see again?

Hope lies about her job, her past, and the scar on her abdomen. Then slowly, depending on the person and circumstances, she reveals the truth. It’s a trust thing. She tells Dylan she’s had a hysterectomy after telling him a different story. He takes it in stride. It gave me pause and impacted my perception of the story, but that’s not my point right now.

The point is that you don’t tell strangers everything on Day One, and sometimes it takes a little while before you get around to confessing that you made stuff up way back when. So the lies between these two characters exist and are sorted out, one by one. Each onion layer of truth brings them closer together. Yet, at the end of the story, Dylan feels wronged about Hope’s lie about her career without taking the fall for hiding the truth about his son’s parentage from both his child and the woman he loves. He sees himself as the injured party without an ounce of proof about Hope’s wrong-doing. Yeah, I’m perturbed about this because when the truth about his son comes out in full tabloid glory, Dylan immediately blames Hope.

Without. Looking. At. The. Evidence.

Oh yes, definitely perturbed. Getting worked up. Maybe I’m not so lukewarm about this story after all. Dylan is a lousy cop if he can’t read people. Especially if he can’t tell the difference between a white lie and a whopper. He lets his ex blink her pretty eyes and make him think she’s changed (she hasn’t) while assuming the worst of Hope when she hasn’t really done anything to earn his wrath. Dylan jumps to conclusions when the news cameras show up in his town – his lack of trust in Hope at that moment really spoils the ending of this book. Dylan reconciles with Hope after he learns the truth about who betrayed his secret to the press – and she takes him back, just like that! No matter than he says he knew that he loved her before that moment, bottom line is that he makes the gesture a few pages too late.

It really kills what was a pretty good romance novel.

But, wait, I’m not done yet. Hope spends a lot of time and energy trying to sniff out the truth behind the suicide of the town’s former sheriff – a man who apparently suffered more than a few kinks – yet, oddly, the thread of that plot line is broken. At one point, Hope draws conclusions about what happened and its impact, but since she’s trying to write a serious news piece about the story, the fact that Gibson just drops the whole thing without tying it to the larger story makes it feel like word count filler. At the end of the day, who cares why former sheriff Hiram Donnelly killed himself? It doesn’t impact the current story (other than giving Hope an empty house to occupy) and there are no instructive lessons to take away. Gibson’s brief detour in the psychology of the Donnelly family is a story in itself, sure enough, but that makes the inclusion of the aborted sub-plot all the more curious. Why grill so much meat and then forget to serve it with the rest of the meal?

Gibson drops another character, Dixie Howe, in much the same manner. She seems important, but then, not so much. The way it works out, she comes off as a man-hungry caricature who doesn’t even get the dignity of a plot thread. I have a thing about filler and useless characters. If you’re going to make me pay attention to them, give me a reason. In a way, we’re seeing a fictionalized (but probably not inaccurate) microcosm of small town life, but even caricatures require story development.

Maybe this is the true limitation that romance authors place on themselves: determining that the overt story requires far more page time than it needs, to the detriment of the bigger story. Hope is probably going to live in Gospel for the rest of her life. Is she only going to find companionship with Dylan, his son, another couple, and the local grocer? Where was the humanity in the third tier characters? They’re on the page – give them some depth.

Then there’s this thing. The kid thing. I mean, I’m all for symmetry in fiction. I like symmetry. If life could be more symmetrical, I would probably spend less time doing stuff like, oh, trying to line things up. OCD, you know. But in my fiction, I don’t like perfect symmetry. It’s too neat. It’s boring.

Here’s how it works: Hope can’t have kids, Dylan has a kid. Symmetry. Conflict…poof (I’m assuming poof as the book doesn’t take me in to the future of these characters). It’s almost like serendipity, but tonight I had a conversation with a guy who described the time he and his almost-live-in girlfriend had the kid talk. Years later, they’re living together happily and still on the same “no kids” page, but it’s always at the back of his mind. What if she changes her mind?

And the problem is that Gibson almost went there. Dylan points out that Hope is getting a guy with a kid. Hope doesn’t counter with a “hey, you’re getting a chick with no uterus.” It matters. It deserves consideration, especially given the foreshadowing and build-up in the story. And, because I’m me and I live a fantasy world, I want it considered seriously. As in, we’re going go need to talk about this like non-horny adults.

Rachel Gibson is a bit like Stephanie Bond in my mind: I am sure she’s one book away from brilliance. One day, she’s going to find the right story, the right something, and we’re all going to be nodding our heads and saying, “Yeah, told you so.” Gibson tells about offbeat corners of the world and sucks you into her Idaho state of mind and it’s a part of the United States that has great stories, but I feel like she’s not quite ready to take a risk.

This is why I compare her work to Bond’s – both tend to use humor very effectively, but both tend to retreat behind the funny rather than using the funny to mine deeper emotions. Hope is many years away from her hysterectomy – scars have had plenty of time to heal. Likewise, she’s many years beyond her divorce; the wounds are barely throbbing. Dylan has been a single parent for seven years; he’s not crazy about the antics of his ex, but the initial rawness has passed. They’re pretty sanguine about their lives.

This leaves both of these characters in pretty safe places when the story begins. It’s going to sound like I’m a bit of a hypocrite here, but I dislike characters who carry their baggage to the point where they can’t see the forest for the trees. But I also, I have discovered in the course of this review, dislike it when characters are so far removed from their emotional conflict that it seems like convenient backstory. I’m sitting here wondering why Hope had to be sterile. Seriously, in the grander scheme of the novel, her inability to conceive serves as little more than a convenient out when, for the second time in Dylan’s life, the condom breaks. When I noted scenes that read like they’re out of the romance novel playbook above, this is the sort of thing that makes me bonkers: oops, no condom…that’s okay, honey, I forgot to mention that I’m on the Pill/the proud owner of a IUD/without uterus.

Letting the characters off the hook emotionally in this manner allows the author to escape going into uncomfortable territory.

Let me give an example (and, yes, it’s timeworn, I’m old, sue me). InIt Had To Be You by Susan Elizabeth Phillips, there’s a sex scene. Okay, maybe not a sex scene, but a seduction scene. It borders on way kinky and way, well, let’s just say (and if you haven’t read it, I don’t want to give it away because the reaction of romance readers who can’t take a joke has amused me for years, and I don’t want to ruin it for you), socially incorrect, in a “we don’t ever go there in romance, ever” sort of way. And Phillips follows this scene between the hero and another woman just a hair past uncomfortable – you believe this guy is breaking major taboos, and I’m not just talking romance-world taboos – before giving us the punch line. It’s painful and funny and completely important to the plot. The hero grows up.

That’s the kind of risk that I keep looking for in authors like Rachel Gibson and Stephanie Bond. Shredding the envelope. I want to be taken to an uncomfortable place and left there just long enough. Romance authors make an implicit pact with their readers – it will all work out in the end. But just because I get a happy ending doesn’t mean that I don’t want to bite my nails and raise my eyebrows on the journey.

But hey, I want to know what you thought about this book. And don’t forget, you can find Rachel Gibson here. And you can buy True Confessions here or here.