Review: Shadow Woman by Linda Howard

Howard and I had totally broken up. If Picasso had a blue period or Van Gogh a sunflower obsession, Howard has been exploring reconstructed women. Her heroines live under assumed identities, waking up in bodies that aren't theirs, reincarnated after the hero (!) kills them to begin their reinvention. I haven't begrudged her the theme. We broke up over the men. (Death Angel. Enough said.) Howard crossed from Alpha Bond style books to Alpha Hole abuse glorification. We couldn't be together. Enter Shadow Woman.

Let me set the scene. Me. The public library. An hour to kill with a dead e-reader. I decide to hate read Howard one more time, just for the memories. Like that I fell back in love. In Shadow Woman Howard takes the elements she hasn't been able to stop working with and frees them from the cycle of abuse. She still has a heroine with a vague memory she might have been someone else. She still has an Alpha hero who kills as easily as he breathes. The difference between Shadow Woman and her other recent books is so simple, so basic and yet so vital to my reading experience. It's respect. The hero respects the heroine. The author respects the heroine. The heroine is in a situation she chose to be in. She is forced to rely on her own instincts and intelligence to feel her way through a dangerous new reality. The heroine is not reformed or repentant, she is self accepting. This is about her reclamation of her identity as she comes to terms with past events. I kind of loved it.

Shadow Woman not a romance. It is a romantic suspense with the classic Howard elements. A cartoonish disregard for human life, covert groups, government conspiracies, the people who make paranoid people look naive. The hero and heroine don't truly meet until the last pages of the book. Their story is told by his distant concern for her and her struggle to remember him. This is a book about waking up crazy and slowly coming to understand that you are not insane but imprisoned. The heroine's struggle to define herself, to identify the core parts of her personality inside the shell, are the focus of Howard's tale. This is a book that reminds me why I started reading her in the first place. I'm going to pretend the last few years didn't happen and reinvest in Linda Howard. Shadow Woman proves that libraries still have a place in reader discoverability.

Review: Trouble At The Wedding by Laura Lee Guhrke

I have not been a big fan of this series. In fact, I completely forgot this was a series. (Trouble At The Wedding requires no exposure to the other Abandoned At The Altar books.) Guhrke working with Edwardian characters is brilliant. If you consider how distanced Heyer was from the Regency versus how distant we are from the Edwardians, it makes perfect sense. I can see my great grandparents in these characters, I can relate the things I know of them and their lives to the lives being led by these people. It allows for a familiarity that Regency books don't. While Guhrke is still working with many of the same fairy tale elements that historical romance is based on, this push forward makes them feel fresh. Additionally, there is so much social change and new technology available. (He can admire her car!)

This time around we have the title hunting steel magnolia Annabel versus Christian the (say it with me) Duke. Let's just go ahead and call him Duke, since every man in Romanceland is now a Duke. Anyway, it is very difficult for me to read an American character, especially a southern American character, without getting annoyed. (I imagine it's how the UK feels about every single romance we put out.) Guhrke has dodged that bullet. Her Annabel might drawl but she doesn't dither, she fights without being feisty and she is never going to be called spunky. This is an American without a chip on her shoulder. She wants to fit into British Society and she wants it bad. (Here we pause for a wrong note. Twice her family mentions that they are 'poor white trash'. It's unfortunate that the white is added. While it's a common phrase we are dealing with turn of the century Southern characters, which brings all the post slavery and nascent Jim Crow baggage along. Since this book, like most of Romanceland is All About The White People, tossing the descriptor in threw me out of the story. I have family of that era on both sides of the money tree and that phrase is not in their letters, diaries, or late life conversations. It is a phrase I associate with racists, and my Edwardian to Clinton Era cousin would have as well.)

Right, back to our tale. The Duke is broker than broke and he is offered a fair amount of cash to get Annabel to break it off with her intended fiance. (Where did her uncle get money? Never exactly answered.) Said fiance is (luckily for our Duke!) an uncaring creepster who just wants to be a billionaire so freaking bad. Our Duke isn't interested in marrying for money. He went down that road once before and his Princess Di didn't fare so well. Trapped on a luxury liner with the wedding party, he tries to wake Annabel up to the reality of life under Rumsford. Instead, he reminds her of her weakness for bad boys. Here the book might be the strongest. Annabel and Duke under the pressures of their conflicting desires are far more interesting than your average seafaring couple. It's not so much that the tale weakens when they hit land, but if all had been resolved on the boat I might have loved this one even more.

Annabel and England take to each other fairly easily. England has gotten used to American heiresses since Mr. Duke's time and Annabel is highly motivated. Soon she's realizing she might not have to marry to achieve her goals, she might have just needed the change of venue. Of course, that can't last or Mr. Duke wouldn't get the chance to realize he needs her. So it doesn't, and he does and there it is. I felt the ending was a bit rushed and I really didn't like the theming at the end at all but it was a sin I could forgive. I'd say the first 2/3 of the book was a great read and the last 1/3 had some high notes but dipped a bit lower. Avon has (at least for now) come to their senses on the whole Agency Pricing thing (ok, not completely, but they've stopped charging more than the paperback's going rate) so you can get the eBook for a reasonable $4.99 USD at the moment. On all fronts I'd say things are looking up for the Abandoned At The Altar series.

Review: The Ideal Man by Julie Garwood

Garwood's back.

(I don't know if you're going to be sorry or not. That's on you.)

I don't mean back like, "Julie Garwood has a new novel out." I mean back like "Oh wait, I really like Julie Garwood." Sometimes a favorite author hits a patch of books so not to my taste that I open them with a little sigh of resignation. It's like a friendship you can't quite end because the good times were so good and the bad times aren't that bad but the lunch date isn't something you're excited about. This isn't that book. This is the book that reminds you how much fun you can have together.

The Ideal Man is refreshing for what it isn't - there's no attempt here to reach outside of what Garwood does to reach a new audience. Julie Garwood is best at family relationships, character quirks, and books so ready to be Hallmark Hall of Fame films that they should come with a greeting card. Her books are a bowl of soup and a blankie on a miserable day. I read The Ideal Man after an intense surgery and it absolutely soothed me.

Possibly coincidence, possibly because the heroine of Sizzle was an absolute idiot, The Ideal Man features trauma surgeon Elle Sullivan as a child prodigy once driven from her home by an obsessed classmate. (You might scoff, but I jumped off the prodigy track and those kids are twisted.) Awesomely, that obsessed classmate has almost nothing at all to do with why Elle ends up needing protection from FBI Agent Max Daniels. Elle has a wonderfully self centered sister driven to say things like "Why can't you stop ruining my parties with people trying to kill you?" Every sibling of a romantic suspense heroine should be as free to express her emotions!

Max is actually protecting Elle because she witnessed a shooting and saved a life without even getting blood in her hair. Elle rings true both as an exhausted trauma surgeon and a distanced family member. Her parents work as frustrated working folks thrust outside their comfort zone by life's events. Her siblings are a bit trickier - but hey - I'd have problems if my parties kept bombing too. Max works both as an agent slightly outside his comfort zone and a man for whom family is foremost. Together they tell a smoothly entertaining tale for a late night read or a sunny snooze.