the dream is gone away
Other authors I've been reading in between have ranged from excellent to fucking awful gouge-my-eyes-out.
Celeste Bradley shitted me so badly that I don't think I even finished the book. Clumsily written, irritating characters, and look I was so annoyed I've forgotten everything else about the book. Duke Most Wanted I think it was.
Gaelen Foley pissed me off because her heroine was all helpless waif to be rescued by the big bad rake. That was One Night In Sin.
Stephanie Laurens I know I used to read way back when but I couldn't remember her style or plots at all so bought one because it featured a marriage of convenience, always a trope I like. Devils Bride. It started out quite promisingly but oddly enough I ended up hating it and hating her style.
Firstly because our hero had eyes of palest green and she kept going on about how clear they were and how our heroine could read every emotion in them. Which made me explode with indignation to the Aunt: "That's bullshit! You can't tell anything from pale green eyes, they're bloody completely unreadable, this is SO annoying!" Oooh. Clearly I haven't met the right person with pale green eyes. *lol*
And then urgh, her style became so olskool. I can't really pinpoint it but there was a distinct lack of humour and the sex was all intense without much lightness or tenderness. All very one note is what I mean, no sense of realism. Which, yeah, I know it's a romance and therefore a work of fantasy but come onnnnn, human relationships haven't changed that much over millennia. People still laugh and argue and fire up and capitulate and contradict themselves, whether we're talking William Blake or Bridget Jones. To be fair though, I didn't actually check when this was written so maybe it came across as olskool to me because it was olskool. So no more Stephanie Laurens for me, thanks.
Around the same time, I found these beautifully designed doubles with these gorgeous textured covers, two novels by two separate authors in one book sort of thing. Not sure what the thinking there is but what the hell. I took another punt.
And oh jesus fucking christ. The Wagering Widow by Diane Gaston? Pretty much made my blood pressure shoot through the roof. It was so BADLY written I couldn't believe someone had actually paid money to publish it. So amateurish, the characterisation was horrible, the language clumsy, the plot laughably execrable. It was a complete affront to my brain, the kind of reading experience that feels like your intelligence is slowly being raped and humiliated into stupidity. I was so horrified I did actually finish it just to see if it would redeem itself at any point. It didn't.
And maybe that's why the other novel, The Bridegroom's Bargain by Sylvia Andrew, seem rather good in comparison. Certainly I felt some soothing relief reading the well-constructed sentences. I clearly didn't find anything objectionable in the narrative because I have no memory of it and that's a good thing because whenever my eye falls upon the book, I shudder violently in response to Diane Gaston's name. Gah. I really hate to be so personal about another writer but holy fuck, how can that shit be allowed?!
I've been eyeing off the Little Black Dress series cos they have such cool covers and cos I've been wanting to try contemporary romance but am still a little skittish cos I'm so invested in Regency romance. When I asked the Heyer fan at Dymocks about them, she said the quality was quite iffy across the range but she didn't mind Rachel Gibson.
And as luck would have it, I came across a three-novella collection that included Stephanie Laurens and Rachel Gibson, Secrets Of A Perfect Night. Two Regencies and a contemporary. I took a punt. BAD punt! I didn't finish the Stephanie Laurens one cos it was so boring. I can't even remember the Victoria Alexander story and that says enough.
But one thing I'll say about Rachel Gibson: she has made it blindingly clear that I utterly loathe romances set in modern America. The humour was obnoxious, the fashions were awful --- why was she wearing a sheer bra? Who the fuck wears a sheer bra? How about some class, omg?! --- and yeah, I finished that story with a sense of awful relief, feeling like I'd just had teeth pulled. Urgh. *shudders*
Having said that, though? Yesterday I finished a Regency romance from the Little Black Dress series, Rules Of Gentility by Janet Mullany. And it was delightful. Pure fluff, nowhere as authentic or valuable as Loretta Chase or Anne Gracie, but it was written with such a sense of play that I quite enjoyed it.
There were touches of scandalous Regency in terms of a mistress and a child and a near brush with death. Still overall, it was very much Bridget Jones meets Regency cos the style was first person present tense --- oh yes! --- and switched chapter by chapter from hero to heroine which could have been a bit too anachronistic but which I found enormously refreshing. Also, pretty funny as in absurd rather than witty. I was a little disappointed at the lack of sex and maybe never quite got over the hero being called Inigo. That just made me picture Mandy Patinkin every time. Not quite as hot as it could have been. *lol*
The Heyer fan did tell me she was really surprised to see a Regency in that series. I'm hoping it won't be a one-off cos I'd like to see more. I have bought another which I'm going to start today --- the premise sounds like it could be fun, contemporary not Regency --- and am still keeping an eye out for stuff set in England.
Celeste Bradley shitted me so badly that I don't think I even finished the book. Clumsily written, irritating characters, and look I was so annoyed I've forgotten everything else about the book. Duke Most Wanted I think it was.
Gaelen Foley pissed me off because her heroine was all helpless waif to be rescued by the big bad rake. That was One Night In Sin.
Stephanie Laurens I know I used to read way back when but I couldn't remember her style or plots at all so bought one because it featured a marriage of convenience, always a trope I like. Devils Bride. It started out quite promisingly but oddly enough I ended up hating it and hating her style.
Firstly because our hero had eyes of palest green and she kept going on about how clear they were and how our heroine could read every emotion in them. Which made me explode with indignation to the Aunt: "That's bullshit! You can't tell anything from pale green eyes, they're bloody completely unreadable, this is SO annoying!" Oooh. Clearly I haven't met the right person with pale green eyes. *lol*
And then urgh, her style became so olskool. I can't really pinpoint it but there was a distinct lack of humour and the sex was all intense without much lightness or tenderness. All very one note is what I mean, no sense of realism. Which, yeah, I know it's a romance and therefore a work of fantasy but come onnnnn, human relationships haven't changed that much over millennia. People still laugh and argue and fire up and capitulate and contradict themselves, whether we're talking William Blake or Bridget Jones. To be fair though, I didn't actually check when this was written so maybe it came across as olskool to me because it was olskool. So no more Stephanie Laurens for me, thanks.
Around the same time, I found these beautifully designed doubles with these gorgeous textured covers, two novels by two separate authors in one book sort of thing. Not sure what the thinking there is but what the hell. I took another punt.
And oh jesus fucking christ. The Wagering Widow by Diane Gaston? Pretty much made my blood pressure shoot through the roof. It was so BADLY written I couldn't believe someone had actually paid money to publish it. So amateurish, the characterisation was horrible, the language clumsy, the plot laughably execrable. It was a complete affront to my brain, the kind of reading experience that feels like your intelligence is slowly being raped and humiliated into stupidity. I was so horrified I did actually finish it just to see if it would redeem itself at any point. It didn't.
And maybe that's why the other novel, The Bridegroom's Bargain by Sylvia Andrew, seem rather good in comparison. Certainly I felt some soothing relief reading the well-constructed sentences. I clearly didn't find anything objectionable in the narrative because I have no memory of it and that's a good thing because whenever my eye falls upon the book, I shudder violently in response to Diane Gaston's name. Gah. I really hate to be so personal about another writer but holy fuck, how can that shit be allowed?!
I've been eyeing off the Little Black Dress series cos they have such cool covers and cos I've been wanting to try contemporary romance but am still a little skittish cos I'm so invested in Regency romance. When I asked the Heyer fan at Dymocks about them, she said the quality was quite iffy across the range but she didn't mind Rachel Gibson.
And as luck would have it, I came across a three-novella collection that included Stephanie Laurens and Rachel Gibson, Secrets Of A Perfect Night. Two Regencies and a contemporary. I took a punt. BAD punt! I didn't finish the Stephanie Laurens one cos it was so boring. I can't even remember the Victoria Alexander story and that says enough.
But one thing I'll say about Rachel Gibson: she has made it blindingly clear that I utterly loathe romances set in modern America. The humour was obnoxious, the fashions were awful --- why was she wearing a sheer bra? Who the fuck wears a sheer bra? How about some class, omg?! --- and yeah, I finished that story with a sense of awful relief, feeling like I'd just had teeth pulled. Urgh. *shudders*
Having said that, though? Yesterday I finished a Regency romance from the Little Black Dress series, Rules Of Gentility by Janet Mullany. And it was delightful. Pure fluff, nowhere as authentic or valuable as Loretta Chase or Anne Gracie, but it was written with such a sense of play that I quite enjoyed it.
There were touches of scandalous Regency in terms of a mistress and a child and a near brush with death. Still overall, it was very much Bridget Jones meets Regency cos the style was first person present tense --- oh yes! --- and switched chapter by chapter from hero to heroine which could have been a bit too anachronistic but which I found enormously refreshing. Also, pretty funny as in absurd rather than witty. I was a little disappointed at the lack of sex and maybe never quite got over the hero being called Inigo. That just made me picture Mandy Patinkin every time. Not quite as hot as it could have been. *lol*
The Heyer fan did tell me she was really surprised to see a Regency in that series. I'm hoping it won't be a one-off cos I'd like to see more. I have bought another which I'm going to start today --- the premise sounds like it could be fun, contemporary not Regency --- and am still keeping an eye out for stuff set in England.