Rhonda Reads... Julia Quinn
I blame musewrangler. I would never have thought of reading historical romance novels if Jill hadn't pricked my curiosity. So I started to pick up a couple, every now and then, casually. They have been mildly diverting, but not always for the right reasons: for instance, how do these heroines fail to get pregnant until that magic ring pops on to their finger, given that they shag every five pages with nary a snifter of birth control?
But now I've found one that I really, actually like. Julia Quinn is funny, cheeky, smart. Her characters are much more nuanced than the usual, particularly the men (they actually have faults! And real problems!). The central relationship feels like love, and not just dogs-marking-their-territory sex. Speaking of sex, if the two I've read so far are typical, there's one sex scene per book, followed immediately by the proposal - which some people probably find disappointing but it neatly solves the why-isn't-she-pregnant-yet puzzle. I'm not fond of sex scenes, anyway, they get repetitive after the third time (sometimes even at the first) so less is definitely more in my opinion.
The two I've read - What Happens in London and Just Like Heaven - work as stand-alones but there are shared elements which indicate that the stories all happen within the same milieu. The one that stands out the most for me is Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron, a comically over-the-top gothic novel which her characters end up reading (I don't think it's spoiling too much to reveal that Miss Butterworth's mother gets pecked to death by pigeons!). Just Like Heaven has more unresolved mysteries than What Happens in London: little side things that get mentioned, then disappear; I suspect that these are glimpses of the plots of other books.
The only thing that jars is the author's use of American spelling, particularly 'color'. Ok, the books are written third-person and Julia Quinn is an American, but her characters are early-nineteenth-century English aristocracy and to see 'color' instead of 'colour' doesn't feel right. (:/
So yes, I will be looking for more Julia Quinn, if only because I want to know who that governess really is, or what happens to the girl who wanted an eclair...
But now I've found one that I really, actually like. Julia Quinn is funny, cheeky, smart. Her characters are much more nuanced than the usual, particularly the men (they actually have faults! And real problems!). The central relationship feels like love, and not just dogs-marking-their-territory sex. Speaking of sex, if the two I've read so far are typical, there's one sex scene per book, followed immediately by the proposal - which some people probably find disappointing but it neatly solves the why-isn't-she-pregnant-yet puzzle. I'm not fond of sex scenes, anyway, they get repetitive after the third time (sometimes even at the first) so less is definitely more in my opinion.
The two I've read - What Happens in London and Just Like Heaven - work as stand-alones but there are shared elements which indicate that the stories all happen within the same milieu. The one that stands out the most for me is Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron, a comically over-the-top gothic novel which her characters end up reading (I don't think it's spoiling too much to reveal that Miss Butterworth's mother gets pecked to death by pigeons!). Just Like Heaven has more unresolved mysteries than What Happens in London: little side things that get mentioned, then disappear; I suspect that these are glimpses of the plots of other books.
The only thing that jars is the author's use of American spelling, particularly 'color'. Ok, the books are written third-person and Julia Quinn is an American, but her characters are early-nineteenth-century English aristocracy and to see 'color' instead of 'colour' doesn't feel right. (:/
So yes, I will be looking for more Julia Quinn, if only because I want to know who that governess really is, or what happens to the girl who wanted an eclair...