Retro Review: Mastered By Love by Stephanie Laurens

When you've been reviewing as long as I have you can't be expected to recall every word ever written. I've done reviewing as a paying gig (not currently) as a hobby (that would be this) and as that person at the party who won't stop talking to you.  I've seen a million books and failed to be rocked by them all. Still, when a comment notification came up in my inbox I was surprised to find that not only did I fail to recall this 2009 review - I failed to recall being a member of the site it was on. (It's totally me though, my password and everything.) While it punches a little harder than I would generally swing on It's My Genre, Baby I am going to reprint it here because it makes me laugh. (My joy is your reason for existing, duh.)

Also, I think I was high. I believe I was doing a lot of Cytoxan in those days. (Kids, if it has the word Tox, like in Toxin, it's not going to be as much fun as you think.) Um, if you're Stephanie Laurens you might want to stop reading now. I stand behind really not liking the book, but I'm not wanting to pull the wings off butterflies or anything like that. Kthxbye. Oh no, wait, no Kthxbye yet. What is up with this cover? Is that the world's largest dental dam? She's naked and really happy - he's kind of on her hip bone - I dunno, it's confusing me. This color purple is the exact color of the book I once painted my nails to match so boys would notice me on the beach. Somehow I thought if my nail color and book jacket were in harmony, it would be hot. I wasn't the smartest kid. (I'm not sure this review is going to argue for my adulthood. Let's be real - I wrote part of it to the tune of Kidnap The Sandy Claws.)

Ironically (is it?) I get this reminder of why I stopped reading Laurens just as a Viscount Breckenridge arc showed up in my mail. Fingers crossed, kids. Fingers crossed.

Title: Mastered By Love
Author: Stephanie James
Genre/Historical Period: Regencyland
Grade/Rating: Is there a G?
Summary: An absolute chore
Part of a Series?: Bastion Club (Finale)
Would I recommend this book?: Oh hell no
Planning to read anything else by this author?: Not anymore.

OMGZ you guys I hated this book soooooooo much.

And if that was the entire content of my review, I'd have exceeded the quality of the book already.

I don't know - I think this book would be popular with a tween looking for a great deal of sexual description without having to be caught reading an erotic book. It has it all. Pages and pages of all. From 'she was sopping wet already' to crimson silk sheets and blindfolds, it's like a checklist of sexual cliche and excess description. She can summarize a major plot scene in two lines, decades of his life in three paragraphs, but its dozens of pages of sex, a few paragraphs to set up the next day, and then back in bed.

She forgot to include the romance. But it's not erotic either. It's just tiring. Like trying to be interested in a poorly shot porn video your friends made when you haven't slept in hours and don't really care. The prevailing feeling is how soon can I get away from these people? It leaves you emotionally fatigued and diminishes everyone involved.

There are GREAT building blocks here - a spinster running the dukedom, the sudden and unexpected death of the estranged father, an international plot centered on a master traitor and the cadre of spies who've been hunting him, (and honestly, by the time the spy is revealed you realize the only way he ever beat anyone was by their being bone stupid) and multiple base born adult children existing on their estranged brother's estate.

Why use ANY of that when you have crimson silk sheets? And you've decided to make your all powerful hero inept and bungling? His study of people, his abilities to guess what they will do before they know themselves, all out the window in favor of a generic Tru Hero Who Sux At Luv. And the mastermind behind all the traitorous acts of the entire series? A bumbling freak who talks to himself incessantly. Seriously, he CANNOT shut up. He spends a page and a half while he thinks the heroine is out cold deciding how to rape and kill her best - like Dustin Hoffman in Rainman as a deranged killer. THIS is the guy who outwitted everyone?? He leaves the most mindnumbingly obvious clue to their location, but it doesn't matter, because Our Hero And His Buddies are TSTL and with a force of at least - well - more than three - decide the answer is for most of them to hide outside and make no noise while the other approaches via Certain Death Trap alone. I can think of at least seven different ways to approach the situation that are less idiotic than the one they choose - but hey. That lets the heroine be drugged, assaulted, murder someone, and then go back to her party!!!! No harm, no foul!

Did I mention they were passing out TSTL candy like it was Halloween? Cause they were. Which made me think of Mr. Talky the Villain Of Self Soundtracking as the missing member of the Nightmare Before Christmas Trio -

Kidnap the Chatelaine
Take her to the mill
Throw her on the big stone slab
And monologue at will.

I'm breaking up with her. Meredith Duran and I have been flirting lately, I think it's time to offer her the spot on my auto-buy list. I hope Stephanie Laurens doesn't go all stalker on me, she needs to understand that when she does me like that I have to move on for my own self respect. I wish her luck, there's someone for everyone, right?

Review: It Happened One Season by Mary Balogh, Stephanie Laurens, Candice Hern, Jacquie D'Alessandro

Anthologies don't get much respect. I've read some fantastic shorts, (Edith Layton and gingerbread, oh my god. I don't remember the story but the gingerbread and his aversion to it was so evocative that it's never left me.) some not so fantastic shorts and some dogs. I'm still attracted to them. I want this to be awesome, because the premise is awesome, but it's not. It Happened One Season is made of average. It's not bad, none of the stories caused me to storm off in a huff. It's not great, there's no gingerbread moment here.

I think the story that might stay with me belongs to Candice Hern, but for the wrong reasons. She's done one of my favorite things - the Regency Heroine With A Disability - but she's done it with some tedium. Phillippa has a pronounced limp and Nat has PTSD from the war. The problem is that Phillippa is perfect. Patient, understanding, gracious, pretty, it goes on and on. She's also disabled and that is her only interesting personality point. Her disability is mentioned, dwelled on, discussed, reiterated, it's a giant neon sign in the reader's face that obscures all else about this couple. I give Hern huge points for it, but by the time they dance awkwardly to the cheers of society I was ready to break Phillippa's other hip.

Stephanie Laurens is turning out some great shorts. (I'm not into her full length books of late so it confuses me.) Here she has hit another triple, if not a full home run.  Jacquie D'Alessandro gets a little complicated. Her hero feels responsible for the death of her heroine's brother while the heroine, Penelope, has lost her position as a governess due to an affinity for classical sculpture. While the tale of a women trying to survive on the fringe is welcome, Penny gives it up in about half a second when Alec sweeps in to rescue her. From there it's Alec's weird guilt, let him allude to it and Penny's independence, let her abdicate it. I thought it was going to be epic but D'Alessandro blinks. Alec isn't going to be relating a friendly fire incident in these few pages. (It's good but not great.) Mary Balogh brings her usual style with a damaged widow and the impatient soldier who fell for her on a battlefield far away. Theirs was the most satisfying on the romance front, but it's a familiar path for Balogh and it felt a bit familiar. Overall, I wouldn't go Agency pricing for this one. Anthologies trade for pennies after a few months, It Happened One Season is unlikely to be an exception.

Review: Royal Weddings by Stephanie Laurens, Gaelen Foley & Loretta Chase

I don't really understand this marketing.

Avon isn't the only imprint offering short stories to celebrate the wedding of William & Catherine of England, but I still don't quite get it. These weddings are royal in name only, as none of the couples concerned are themselves royal. To earn the Royal Weddings moniker, the events take place during other weddings - but not at them. I know, I already said the marketing confused me. So let's ignore it. Is this worth your cash? Yea, I think so. This isn't a bargain priced full anthology, these shorts are super short, but it's two bucks. What's two bucks these days? (Ok, yes, it could be lunch. I give you the point.)

Stephanie Laurens and I have been planning to break up. I read the final book in her last series and just couldn't bring myself to read The Black Cobra Quartet at all. Imagine my surprise when the best, most satisfying short is hers. Taking a woman who's drifted into wedding planning and a French aristocrat, she delivers a tasty bite size treat without annoying me at all. It's like running into an ex at a party and realizing they don't make you feel vaguely sick anymore, but not quite waking up at their place the next day.

Gaelen Foley wasn't for me. We split up during her India series and I'm not even sure what she's done since. In this one she takes the set up of a happily (from the outside) married couple and their failure to talk. While she gets the biting internal conversations down, the story itself did nothing for me. Pout, have sex, change jobs. Or something like that. Mostly it felt like an erotic short which works for plenty of people but bored me. Gaelen, we weren't meant to stay together. I know you don't miss me. It's ok. I still have Loretta.

Loretta can call me up at 3 am, ask me to meet her in a pouring rainstorm in a dodgy area of town and I'll have my keys in my hands before she stops speaking. (At least, she can right now. I'm fickle, the future is uncertain, void where prohibited by law.) Her couple were supposed to be at the wedding of Princess Victoria and Prince Albert (Now there is a setting - go to the wedding people!! Describe it! Be there! Discuss it! That's your marketing... oh never mind.) but instead find themselves... elsewhere. It's such a short and so beautifully constructed I don't want to tell you anything about it. It's like someone starts folding up a paper and I yell "Goldfish!" before they've even got to the tail. Ultimately, it left me wanting. The characters were ready for a full length book, or at least a longer novella. I enjoyed every bit of it but it's like settling down with a lovely dessert, slowly savoring it, licking the fork between bites and suddenly someone walks up and says "Wow! I love this cake - thanks for sharing!" sticks a fork in and takes the rest away. It was perfect, but it's gone.