Retro Review: The Prize by Brenda Joyce

God almighty I hated this book. It wasn't just my bitterness at the untimely end of the Francesca Cahill series, it was the blatant racism, the TSTL heroine and the right out of 1979 hero. There was just about nothing I liked going on. Don't believe me? Let's take a look back to October of 2004. (I'm here. It's okay. We can do this together.)


According to the enthusiastic foreword, Brenda Joyce has been convinced to return to writing the "kind of books her fans love" about times when "men were men". This requires that I be exceedingly bitter and retract everything I've said about Joyce growing into her talents. (If this new direction corrupts her Cahill novels I’m going to have to Take Action.)  Not only is The Prize a step (way) back to her early days of heroines loving men who abuse them, it’s filled with pointless mayhem, bewildering character motivations and out and out racism. 

The racism falls in the form of our heroine’s best, best, bestest friend, Tillie, the slave. (To my mind, this is always dangerous ground because the act of owning someone negates the open give and take of friendship, but I’m willing to allow for it.) Tillie’s husband is deeply concerned that the plantation is placed up for sale, and the slaves as well. Tillie is worried our heroine isn’t getting enough to eat at the expensive boarding school. (Tillie alternates between patois and proper speech, but she never does learn anything about birthing babies.) After our heroine COMPLETELY FORGETS the danger facing her best best friend Tillie for five long months, Tillie welcomes her back with open arms, concern for her well-being, and (by golly) a good meal. Later, when our heroine’s blatant idiocy has trapped them in a fire fight, with Tillie’s husband most likely dead, it’s our heroine who occupies Tillie's mind because that’s the kind of best friends they are. The kind where you have to protect this sheltered delusional nitwit or spend the rest of your life being raped and beaten by whoever owns you next while your children are god knows where. 

Don’t despair! Our heroine is about to fall hopelessly in love (for no apparent reason) with a cold, violent pirate driven to destroy her entire family. Ok, well, of course she tries to shoot him first, but then she freely offers him no strings sex because how can you NOT love a guy who is busy causing the death of countless others? And really, later you’ll find out it’s all because his baby sister was ‘killed’ and his father was beheaded by your uncle during an Irish uprising. It’s hardly his fault. I mean, his mother got over it, his brother got over it - someone had to be scarred for life!! Though his brother is in love with you, (apparently solely because you know how to let a guy bang you senseless and not even leave a buck on the pillow the next day) he is going to fight to help you save said cold thuggish pirate dude. Barely affected by learning of his six year affair with your aunt, whom you bravely comfort because you are Warm and Good, or of his tossing any skirt that walks by because it is Just Sex, (he totally gets by with the “I banged her and thought of you because she is nothing and you are virgin-like” crap) you offer yourself for misuse again and again against the day that - will it come? Could it come? Yes! One day he will stop trying to kill the man who killed his father and give their country estate to the son who tried to murder him and rape you so that the British will stop fighting the War of 1812 or something like that. Who the hell knows. Not Tillie - she’s too busy trying to keep off the auction block to figure your cracker asses out.

Review: Deadly Vows by Brenda Joyce

Ah, Francesca. You are so incredibly young and I have missed you so very much. What else would you do on your wedding day but run off to investigate a mysterious letter that threatens to expose you to ruin? If you stopped long enough to think it through, you wouldn't be the Francesca Cahill (Hart? Bragg?) we've come to love. So there you are, rushing off on your wedding day, planning to meet everyone at the church for a last minute slide into your dress and a picture perfect walk down the aisle. If we've learned one thing about you Francesca, it's that your plans always work out the way you expect them to. Can you leave a man at the altar and still marry him? Hart thinks not.

Deadly Vows is an absolute gift to fans of the Cahill series. There is all the nail biting "Francesca what are you thinking" action of the other eight books. Francesca continues to have more perils than the famous Pauline and Rick is still trailing behind her with his woeful face on. Calder seems to have had enough of it all, which makes sense. Calder's had about enough of everything. Thankfully, by the end of Deadly Vows the will she or won't she, does she or doesn't she is resolved (for now?) as well as the questions of Bertolla's pregnancy. If The Deadly Series ends here, it won't be the cliffhanger it once was. That said, there is no reason for Francesca to stop sleuthing. The series could as easily begin here as end, a reader could start with Deadly Vows and move forward, much as you can with one of Nora Roberts In Death books.

The Deadly Series is long on soaptastic action, which there is no shortage of here. Everyone is embroiled in some secret, heartrending angst, except Francesca's parents. (I have to tell you, I expect one of them to come out with some drama soon.) Deadly Vows finds them doing little but fretting as Francesca tries to find a stolen painting, eludes a madman (or three), children are kidnapped, and plots are revealed. Even Francesca's brother chooses between the Irish seamstress he might love and the pregnant mistress he certainly doesn't. Being late to leave the city for the summer house hardly compares. (Since Deadly Vows closes as most of the characters head for the beach, I can't wait to join them there in the next installment.)

My complaint, and I must always have one, is the relationship between Calder and Rick. As the series goes on it makes even less sense to me. Calder is the wealthy half brother to the crusading older Rick Bragg. Calder has mommy issues like woah. Seems Mommy always liked Rick best (even though she was really telling young Rick to look after his baby brother what with her dying and all) and his half brother's father came to rescue them while Calder's father wanted no contact at all. Rick sees Calder as a self important selfish tool incapable of true emotion, which I can understand. Calder has money, he has tantrums, and he has issues with Rick while Rick has been charged with caring for the cranky little snot. Calder, on the other hand, sees Rick as a self important windbag using his good works as a cover for his lack of character. I get both of those views. Where it starts to fall apart for me is the brothers are both close to Rick's father and Rick's other half brothers. Calder feels unloved and unloveable, which he seems to blame on Rick. Wouldn't he feel more of a bond with Rick, who shared their mother's struggle and death, than his protected and pampered youngest brothers? There has to be more to the Calder / Rick drama than Calder being in a snit over Rick's dad wanting him. This needs a bit more oomph or a working out of issues to satisfy.

I may sound like I'm Team Rick. You'd be wrong, I can easily list what my problems are with both of them but it will have to wait. I can't detail my frustration with Francesca, her men, and their serious problems with adult life, until the next one. The Deadly Series joys lie in being spoiler free as it all unravels and then ranting about how ridiculous this or that person was during the book. It's the very definition of guilty pleasure, but no guilt is required. I'm ready to give all three characters a serious time out, but I'll be back for the next book as soon as I can get my hands on it!

Review: The Francesca Cahill Novels by Brenda Joyce

I am ridiculously excited about the return of Francesca Cahill. HQN is rereleasing the last two books in the series for readers who missed it the first time (and there are far too many of you) so they can get excited as well. I used to say that the Cahill series was for people who think they don't like Brenda Joyce. Until the Cahill series began I was a reluctant fan of Brenda Joyce. I read her books but I didn't respect myself afterward. (In fact, some of the most scathing reviews I've ever written are of Brenda Joyce books.) Then came Francesca.

Oh Francesca, how do I love you? Let me count the ways.  In love with a married man? In love with his brother? Befriending lesbians? (One of whom was your fiance's lover!) Taking street waifs under your wing? Hoping your socialite brother will stop his wandering ways to settle down with that nice Irish laundress? Standing over dead bodies while fighting for women's rights? Wondering how to hide street urchins from your mother while sneaking off to college? Wandering through the wreckage of your sister's marriage? Francesca, what don't you have going on? Although you use 'sleuthing' more frequently than anyone can tolerate and have a bit of the Mary Sue about you, I always regret closing the book and leaving you behind. It's not the murders that matter, it's your wonderfully convoluted life. You make Sookie Stackhouse look like an underachiever. When you left us I had to break up with Brenda Joyce. She made a triumphant return to the past while I longed for your future.

But now you're coming back, Francesca!! Will you (wisely) marry Calder despite his decadent orgies? Does he want you for yourself or because his brother Rick can't have you - tied as Rick is to the beautiful yet tragically crippled Leigh Ann? Or is there yet another brother in the wings? Perhaps a man we haven't yet met is waiting to step out of the shadows and capture your heart. Someone will be murdered. You'll throw yourself into danger as you always do. Stopping in at a dinner party to pacify your mother, knocking your brother's opium out a window, you'll arrive at the crime scene with a sweep of your skirts and a sniff of disdain. After all who better than you, society's darling, to handle the cases the corrupt New York police cannot?

Let's just start casting the films already. Are you Anne Hathaway or Taylor Swift? Is your arch self assurance born of innate skill or naive overconfidence? I think you've already grown a fair amount from that young ingenue who looked into Rick Bragg's eyes and mistook his shallow disdain for romantic depth. I can't wait to see where you go, and I can't wait to complain about how you get there.