"Three Princes," by Ramona Wheeler

The Protagonists: Lord Scott Oken and Professor-Prince Mikel Mabruke. Two princes from different nations under the mighty Egyptian Empire, they are also secret agents for the Pharaoh.
The Rub: When reports reach Egypt that the Nation of the Four Corners (the Incans) are working on rocket technology, Mikel and Scott are sent to see how viable this project is.

Fantasy Trope Checklist:

• Alternate Timelines
• Double-Crosses
• Magical Bond Animals
• Obviously Evil Monarchs
• Royal Intrigues

The Word: Three Princes is the most beautifully-written utter waste of time you'll ever read. 

The concept is original and intriguing - the novel's set in an alternate history (circa 1877 or thereabouts) where the Egyptian Empire never ended, but instead grew and thrived to become the dominant world power thanks to the successful marriage of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. Egypt is now a wide-spanning and mostly benevolent commonwealth, with only a few rebellious areas left (like the Osterreich empire, ruled by Victoria and Albert!) to threaten the world's safety. 

The characters sound diverse and interesting - Lord Scott Oken, a minor prince from the Egyptian province of Scotland, is a spy for the Pharaoh. His mentor, Professor-Prince Mikel Mabruke (from Nubia), has retired from information-mongering - but both are called back into action by the Pharoah's wife. The Incas, it appears, are working on a scientific project to travel to the moon, and Egypt wants someone trustworthy to travel to South America and see a) if it could work or b) if it could be a threat. 

What follows is a dreadfully slow, narratively hollow, but gorgeously-described imaginary travelogue as Mikel and Scott slowly and cheerfully make their meandering way from Memphis to Tawantinsuyu, by way of several decadently-appointed airships. A luxurious attention to detail is lavished upon their expensive accommodations, their entertainments, the profusion of bare-breasted South American women, and the bizarre technology of airships (cyclists and trained albatrosses are involved) - and almost none on the actual plot, conflict or character development. 

Wheeler stretches out a short story's worth of plot to a 350-page novel, and doesn't waste any of the precious, precious filler (like pages of description devoted to guest room furniture lovingly carved to look like naked ladies) on developing any of the characters beyond the most basic, repetitive strokes. Lord Oken likes sex with ladies. Mikel likes making witty comments to mask his inner pain. Secondary characters pop out of nowhere and make jarringly huge and sudden decisions for no reason, and with no context or development to explain the outlandish choices they make. The novel's main antagonist, for example, is present for maybe ten pages (out of 350) and behaves like a Disney villain who's survived a meth lab explosion. There is no rhyme or reason to his behaviour - or to why anyone follows him or takes him seriously. 

Neither does Wheeler sacrifice completely relevant scenes of frolicking dogs, babies and guinea pigs (for reals) to develop her own plot threads. A mention of a Queen Victoria-led conspiracy involving orchids and bizarre religious cults goes nowhere, and the vicious attack on Mikel at the beginning of the novel that can't possibly be coincidence - turns out to be mere coincidence and is never mentioned again. Um, okay.

I kept reading and waiting for the plot to pick up because Wheeler is a genuinely fantastic wordsmith - her worldbuilding and her grasp of setting and culture are astonishing and beautiful. Her evident talent and skill makes the appalling lack of a plot in this novel an even greater frustration. If you're interested in reading about two friends going on an expensive and largely uneventful exotic vacation, this is the book for you. If you actually require story, substance, conflict, or coherent drama of any sort in your fiction - you'd best look elsewhere.

Three Princes is an empty, self-indulgent non-story wrapped up in beautiful writing.
D

"A Christmas Bride/Christmas Beau," by Mary Balogh (Dell, 2012)

Mary Balogh's bundled Christmas Bride/Beau is an interesting book because it clearly establishes what Mary Balogh does well - and what she doesn't.

Christmas Bride is first, and it is excellent. Our heroine, Helena, Lady Stapleton, is the slutty stepmum who flashed her ta tas at the hero of A Precious Jewel and turned him into a misogynist. Now a wealthy, vaguely-scandalous widow of 36, she is cynical, jaded - and deeply, desperately remorseful for her actions thirteen years ago.

When she meets Edgar Downes, a prosperous merchant, at a party, she is immediately and inexplicably attracted to him. Edgar, in order to fulfill a promise to his father, is looking to marry a well-bred lady by Christmas - hopefully one who's able to look past the fact that he's not a gentleman. However, he's drawn to Helena as well, and the two share an uncharacteristic but hotly passionate one-night stand. Then Helena gets preggers. Whoops.

Part of the reason I loved this novel is that it indulges one of my favourite tropes - the Witty, Troubled, Morally-Ambiguous Heroine. Helena is not a very nice person and Balogh doesn't sugarcoat her, but the majority of her bitterness is directed inward. She hates herself for what she did to a stepson who trusted her, and her self-loathing has caused her to retreat from all forms of commitment or happiness. It takes some reckless bravery on Edgar's part - combined with Edgar's endearing family and the Christmas season - to convince her to forgive herself and move on with her life.

Balogh ably balances dark and light in this novel. Helena's sarcasm and anxiety prevent the Christmas aspects of the story from becoming too cutesy or cloying - the gathering of holly and the creation of a kissing bough are adorable but Helena's observations keep the story grounded. For his part, Edgar is a very controlling hero who finds he's happier with a mature woman who can counter him than the dewy eighteen-year-old marriage prospects he was initially looking at.

Christmas Bride also has a superbly organized supporting cast of previous Heroes and Heroines who contribute to rather than clutter up the storyline. The novel even improves upon the story of Priss and Gerald from A Precious Jewel. Balogh has stumbled before when including Prequel characters (see the bloated mess of Simply Love) so this was a delightful surprise.

Christmas Bride hits all the right spots for a Christmas story - warm, loving, but spiced with angst.

Christmas Beau, on the other hand hand - oy.

The story is as follows - once upon a time, Judith and Max, Marquess of Denbigh were engaged to be married. It was an arranged match, and Judith found Max creepy, cold and heartless - so she ran off with another dude a month before the wedding. That marriage didn't turn out so well either, but now that dude's dead and Judith is preparing to celebrate her first Christmas out of mourning with her two young children, Rupert and Kate, and her self-pitying dishrag of a sister-in-law, Amy.

However, for the first time in eight years, Max has returned to London as well - with revenge in mind. During their betrothal, Max was madly in love with her, and was horrifically brokenhearted by her desertion. He now plans to inflict the same pain on her - by seducing her children.

Creeped out yet? Yes, he cozies up to her kids and tempts them with horsie rides, candy and fairs and invites them to his isolated manor house which he's filled up with Christmas trees and abandoned street urchins (for reals). And Judith - despite being royally grossed-out by his overtures - is simply forced to comply because, in this novel, any mother who doesn't utterly martyr herself for her children at every opportunity is a Horrible Person. Man up, Judith. Your kids are under six - they'll get over it.

Every character has something to hate about them. Max is an asshat of the highest order. So he was crazy in love with Judith - but not crazy enough to demonstrate or express that love in any way. According to Judith, he never even smiled during their entire courtship. But he still plans to punish Judith for not MAGICALLY cluing in to his Secret Squishy Feels.

Judith, meanwhile, is an insufferably short-sighted martyr who believes her children's immediate happiness is worth more than getting them away from a Creepy Stranger With Designs On Her. Her reasons for disliking Max during their courtship were perfectly valid, but the novel is determined to Teach Her A Lesson for not giving cold, unsmiling, silently awkward dudes the sympathy they deserve.

We also get a drippy secondary romance for Amy, the sister in law who simply can't shut up about how Unlovable and Ugly and Childless and Futureless she is, and some random dude who inexplicably finds her self-pitying whining charming.

It's strange - while Christmas Bride was all about how the heroine who has actually done something wrong should forgive herself and be happy, Christmas Beau was all about how the heroine should be stalked and mistreated until she's forced to apologize for her relatively minor sins as a teenager. No thank you.

Christmas Bride: A+. Christmas Beau: C. 

"The Burning Sky," by Sherry Thomas (HarperCollins, 2013)

The Protagonist: Iolanthe, a.k.a. "Archer Fairfax." A mysterious orphan with the power to work all four magical elements.
Her Angst: Since her country's Evil Overlords keep a sharp eye out for powerful mages they can enslave/destroy, she has to keep her own powers a secret.

The Other Protagonist: Prince Titus. The ruler of the Domain in name only, he's organizing a secret rebellion to avenge his mother. The only thing missing from his plan is an Oblivious Empowered Orphan.
His Angst: He's bent on organizing this rebellion and freeing his people from the cruel reign of Atlantis - all the while knowing (thanks to a prophesy) that it will result in his own death.

Secondary Cast:

Master Haywood: Iolanthe's cheating, stealing, lying drug-addicted guardian - but don't worry! He has a magical excuse for being A Terrible Person so it's all good!

Kashkari: An Eton student from India who seems to know more than he lets on.

Wintervale: An exile from the mage realm who's also a student at Eton with Prince Titus.

The Bane: The High Commander of Atlantis - is supposedly 200 years old and impossible to be killed.

The Inquisitor: The Evil Minion of the Bane who investigates possible rebellions.

Angst Checklist:

• My teacher is a dishonest, cheating drug-addict but he has a magical excuse for it
• I have super magical powers and no one will tell me how to use them
• The power of fate
• Consent-optional blood oaths
• My mum foretold my death so I'm kind of bummed out
• Man this chick is way hotter when she's dressed as a dude - should I be worried?
• Cricket matches

The Word: Keep writing romances, Sherry Thomas.

Your romance novels are some of the best I have ever read. Not Quite a Husband, Private Arrangements and Delicious are exquisite stories with gorgeous details and fantastic dialogue. 

Unfortunately, for some inexplicable reason Sherry Thomas' skills with detail, storytelling, and character building do not translate into Young Adult Fantasy. After reading about a hundred pages of her first YA effort, The Burning Sky, with all of its cliched tropes, bland character development, and utterly absurd worldbuilding, I had to start skimming.

Our heroine, Iolanthe, is an Oblivious Empowered Orphan in a realm known simply as the Domain, currently under the cruel usurping thumb of Atlantis, an empire that likes to make mages who get a little too powerful disappear. Everyone in this world is familiar with elemental magic (wordless control of fire, air, etc.) and "subtle" magic (verbal spells using wands a la Harry Potter). Iolanthe, of course, has Way More Elemental Power than the average bear but, being an Oblivious Empowered Orphan (with a Destiny, no less!), no one's willing to explain her powers to her in anything other than Meaningless Riddles.

She's currently practicing minor magic in a small village with her inept, drug-addicted guardian, Master Haywood. When he ruins one of her potions because he's A Terrible Person, Iolanthe notices a scrawled note on her potion book that says a thunderbolt will make her potion as good as new.

Now, despite the fact that she has no idea who wrote that note, no one in their Domain has been able to cast lightning in a thousand years, and the only one who did it is a figure from folklore, Iolanthe decides to try poking her finger at the sky and shouting "Lightning!"

I'm dead serious. And it works. Because of course it does. 

Her magical lightning milkshake brings all the Evil Minions of Atlantis to the yard, and Iolanthe is barely rescued in time by Titus - the teenage Prince of the Domain. Rendered a powerless figurehead by Atlantis, Titus has been secretly scheming to topple their empire once he finds the Destined Oblivious Empowered Orphan. Now that he has her, he spirits her into the human world, where he disguises them both as male students at Eton. The rest of the novel plays out like a reverse-Harry Potter, with the magical students pretending to be normal in a famous British boarding school, as they try to dodge the spies of Atlantis and train Iolanthe to fulfill her Destiny as the World-Saver.

Now, okay, I don't mind hoary fantasy cliches so long as the Oblivious Empowered Orphan is a developed and memorable character. Unfortunately, Iolanthe is a pert Mary Sue for much of the novel. Despite a haphazard and impoverished upbringing in a series of podunk towns, she is inexplicably flawless at pretending to be a boy at an upper-class all-boy's school, is a star player at cricket on the first try despite knowing nothing about the game, and, oh yeah, can call down lightning by poking her finger at the sky and asking for it. 

Titus, meanwhile, is a fairly bland Mentor with Mummy Issues. He spends most of the novel whining about his responsibilities and what a Duplicitous Angsty Trickster he has to be to outsmart the Atlantis spies and keep his secret rebellion a secret. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. 

The magical worldbuilding is similarly overly-convenient. There is no cost to doing magic, and no barriers or limitations to what it can do. It can hem sheets and cook food. It can predict the future. It can teleport people over hundreds of miles. As a result, whenever Iolanthe and Titus run into a problem, there's always a Handy Magical Item on hand for just about every occasion. Magical typewriters, magical Dead Mother Prophesy diaries, magical wardrobes. It makes it very difficult for the author to establish true stakes when magic is capable of just about everything.

It also begs the question of why Atlantis doesn't just try taking over England and the human world, seeing as Thomas establishes how literally everything about Victorian England is inferior to the Domain - at one point, Titus worries that Iolanthe won't know what a salt shaker is because the food in the Domain is always perfectly salted. Really, truly. 

And on top of the by-the-numbers characters and nonsensical worldbuilding, the pacing is also fairly slow - lots of angsting and training and whining and Etonian hijinks from the other schoolboys. There is no real goal in this novel, apart from Not Getting Caught and Killed. Our characters spend the novel reacting instead of acting - and even the big climax is a reaction to the Bad Guys' initiative rather than any decision on the protagonists' part.

While I am a long way from taking Sherry Thomas' romance novels off my autobuy list, I doubt I'll be continuing with this series.

D

"Far Far Away," by Tom NcNeal (Knopf, 2013)

The Protagonist: Jeremy Johnson Johnson. A young boy in a small town who can hear ghosts.
His Angst: The bank is going to foreclose on his family's store and home, but his father is too depressed to even get out of bed. Plus this crazy redheaded girl is getting him into some pretty weird shit.

Secondary Characters:

Ginger Boultinghouse: An inconsistent, unstable Manic Pixie Dream Girl who wants Jeremy Johnson Johnson. For some reason. Is also dating Conk Crinklaw. Maybe?

Jacob Grimm: A lonely ghost who thinks helping Jeremy by tutoring him for university will heal his unresolved issues and let him pass on into the afterlife.

Conk Crinklaw: The rowdy son of the town mayor who inexplicably hangs out with and does favours for Ginger despite the fact that she treats him like hot garbage.

Jenny Applegarth: A frequently-divorced waitress who falls for Jeremy's father.

Deputy McRaven: A cruel and sinister character with an unnatural obsession for Ginger.

Blix: The kindly town baker who is known for his famous Prince Cakes - which are said to make you fall in love with whomever you look at when you eat your first bite.

The Finder of Occasions: The Big Bad - because he, uh, finds occasions?

The Tweets: I livetweeted my reaction to this novel here.

Angst Checklist:

• My dad's too depressed to parent me unless there's chicken pot pie involved
• Token Homophobia
• I Hear Dead People
• I Don't Understand Why This Teenage Boy I'm Tutoring Is More Interested In Boobs Than Studying
• Gossip
• Wild, Crazy Redheads
• Child Murder

The Word: I could totally do a cheesy pun about how "Far Far Away ... is how far you should run from this book!" but I like to think my blog is slightly too classy for those types of shenanigans.

Instead, let's just say Far Far Away is a cutesy, grating, and poorly-plotted tale that fails from the outset and just keeps getting worse.

Firstly - our main narrator is the ghost of Jacob Grimm (yes, that Grimm), who has wandered the world searching for a way to finish his unfinished business and move on to the afterlife. Upon discovering American teenager Jeremy Johnson Johnson can hear his voice, he decides (for some reason) that his purpose must be to protect, instruct, and constantly nag Jeremy about schoolwork. So yes, this story about contemporary teenagers is narrated entirely in the stilted, exaggeratedly "old-timey" voice of a ghostly adult scholar. Let that one sink in.

Jeremy is barely making ends meet by doing odd jobs around his village of Never Better, since his severely depressed father has not shaved, worked, or left the house in years. All of that changes when Ginger Boultinghouse, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl to end all Manic Pixie Dream Girls, decides to include him in a prank against the town's beloved baker that goes disastrously awry.

While all of this is going on, Jacob Grimm also has to keep an eye out for a mysterious, malevolent entity known only as the Finder of Occasions - who is supposed to be a Big Deal despite sounding like an entry-level position at Hallmark.

For the first half of this novel, there is little to no actual plot. Jeremy Johnson Johnson might as well be made out of Play-Doh for all the initiative he displays. He's just a Good Boy With a Pure Heart^TM. He cares for his depressed father without complaint. He does all his schoolwork. He always tries to make the right decision. He has no real desires or motivations of his own beyond being the world's most passive Gary Stu.

Good thing there's the horrifically contrived Manic Pixie Dream Girl Ginger to steer Jeremy down a different path! Ginger's unstable, selfish, and offensive behaviour is probably meant to seem Wild, Untamed, and Adventurous - but really, she's a bullying user with no real character development who asks for favours with one hand while delivering insults with the other.

I might have tolerated her if she'd been a developed character in her own right, but, like most Manic Pixie Dream Girls, she exists solely to serve the hero's story as well as his budding sexual desires with her Wild Untamedness. What's her homelife like? What are her own personal motivations? Not important! She's just there to seem Magically Unattainable so that it's all the sweeter when the hero "wins" her.

Even Jacob Grimm the Haunted House Reject hates Ginger but his attempts to lure Jeremy back to studying come to naught, and we get 150 pages of Jeremy placidly accompanying Ginger on her random escapades while Jacob wrings his ghostly hands and curses the advent of puberty. The novel then takes a sharp left turn down WTF Alley and suddenly we're dealing with serial killers, torture dungeons, child abuse, and pedophiles.

I'm not even kidding. The biggest flaw in Far Far Away is its' wildly uneven tone. For a long time, I couldn't figure out whether this novel was YA or Middle Grade. The simplistic characters with twee names (like Conk, Dauntless, and Burpo), the exaggeratedly odd set pieces, and the immature behaviour of the protagonists suggest Middle Grade. But then we discover the sinister Deputy McRaven who's been following Ginger and making comments about how she "gets around" (she's fifteen!) is in love with her - which suggests YA. Or an episode of To Catch a Predator.

But then there's the fact that McRaven's obsession is never brought up or addressed again beyond a throw away mention that he's now a "laughingstock." Um, I don't know about you, but most people don't laugh at adult male authority figures who harbour obsessive romantic fantasies about fifteen-year-old girls.

And yet, the novel still seems too immature to really be a YA novel. While the story hints at several serious themes (mental illness, parental abandonment, prejudice, homophobia - and did I mention the serial childkiller with a torture dungeon?), it either brushes them under the rug or solves them in insultingly simplified ways. Like how Jeremy's severely depressed father, who was unable to leave his house to pick up his own son from the police station, is magically able to spruce himself up to go on a date with a virtual stranger after knowing her for a day. Or the character who was thought to be the first victim of the serial killer who turns up alive twenty years later for no apparent reason.

I realize that these miraculous events work in fairy tales, but this novel explicitly tells us through Jacob Grimm that the real world isn't as simple as the stories he collected when he was alive.

At the end of the day, the only thing I would categorize Far Far Away as is one hot mess.
D

"You Can't Hurry Love," by Christie Ridgway

The Chick: Giuliana "Jules" Baci. As head of the family winery business, it's up to her to make the tough decisions for the good of the family, all the while avoiding the former love of her life, Liam Bennett.
The Rub: This last resolution becomes impossible when Liam reveals the details of their secret teenage wedding - which they never broke off.
Dream Casting: Lauren Graham.

The Dude: Liam Bennett. The calm, collected, and responsible Bennett brother,  he discovers Jules' presence in his town after ten years away is driving him crazy. Clearly, he and Jules need to face this tension head on if they want to have any sort of future for themselves.
The Rub: In everything he does, he can't help but compare himself to his selfish, womanizing dad, and wonder if he's turning out just like his old man.
Dream Casting: Ryan Phillipe.

The Plot:

Jules: Oh no! My apartment burned down!

Liam: GREAT! Now you can live with me!

Jules: WTF, no.

Liam: Really? Even though you never bothered to annul our secret marriage after ten years?

Jules: Fine, I will!

Allie and Stevie: NO!  YOU CAN'T! YOU'LL RUIN OUR PR STUNT ABOUT OUR MAGIC DIVORCE-REPELLANT WINE AND BANKRUPT OUR FAMILY WINERY!

Jules: Whose idea was it to base our winery's entire future on a ridiculous piece of advertising?

Allie: The same people whose idea it was to force Stevie to arrange the wedding of her ex-boyfriend and the woman he cheated on her with!

Jules: Wow, if I stopped to consider these plotlines like a regular person, I'd realize we are pretty terrible, cruel, and selfish sisters. Good thing this UNSTOPPABLE SEXUAL TENSION with Liam takes up all my free time!

Liam: Let me take you down Memory Lane - with my Memory Penis!

Jules: Wow, I missed being bossed around by a man who acts like he always knows better than me, especially in regards to my own sex drive and my platonic dealings with men who are not him! I'm sorry I didn't trust you!

Liam: And I'm sorry I abandoned you after you miscarried our baby because of Daddy Issues I refuse to explain in detail!

Jules: Good enough for me! Let's get back together!

Random Villain: But I haven't threatened your lives yet!

Liam: We good?

Random Villain: *arrested* Yup. Have a good day, y'all!

Liam and Jules: HOORAY!

Romance Convention Checklist:

• 1 Secret Wedding
• 0 Secret Divorces
• 1 Case of Daddy Issues
• 1 Cutesy Magical Wedding Wine
• 1 Cutesy Magical Wedding Cottage
• 2 Cutesy Magical Wedding Ghosts
• 2 Redundant Prequel Couples Who Won't Go Away
• 1 Attempt to Screw The Problem Away
• 1 Completely Unnecessary Last-Minute Stalker Villain
• 1 Random Psychic Power
• 1 Secondary Romance
• 2 Bad Karaoke Songs
• 1 Very Bad Dad (Deceased)

This Novel was LiveTweeted HERE. 

The Word: You know, I think one of the most frustrating things is picking up a book by a favourite author and having it be terrible. Not "m'eh," not "below their usual standard," I mean so unbelievably stupid and awful you temporarily forget why you liked their other books in the first place. And while chewing through this book, you feel a little guilty because both you and the author (who gave you ARCs of the entire trilogy) expected you to like it.

And I hated it. Christie Ridgway, you are fabulous and you've written some of my favourite contemporary romances but please don't read this review. This book was not your best.

Or anywhere near. To be honest, the two previous novels in this series (Crush On You and Then He Kissed Me) weren't quite as good as I'd hoped, but they came nowhere near the rushed contrivance of the final novel.

The basis of the trilogy is that three sisters - Jules, Stevie and Allie - have given themselves a year to save their family Napa Valley winery after discovering on their father's deathbed that he ran it into the ground with mismanagement. In the first novel, the youngest sister Allie suggested turning the winery into a wedding destination in order to boost profits, and so far it's going relatively well. While their finances are still terribly shaky, they have more of a leg to stand on than they did a year ago.

You Can't Hurry Love deals with the final, oldest Baci sister, Jules (short for Giuliana), right after her apartment goes up in flames, along with most of her possessions. She and her assistant/temporary roommate Grace (who just got out of an abusive marriage) now have nowhere to live and Jules realizes that shacking up in the family farmhouse with her happily-married Prequel Bait sisters is not an option. Things get even worse when Liam Bennett shows up and offers assistance.

Jules and Liam Bennett - the eldest brother of a rival winery family - Have a Super-Passionate Past That Evidently Didn't End Well. Jules has been avoiding him with Theatrical Obviousness for the previous two novels. Liam sees Jules' situation as the perfect time to deal with the Unbelievably Horny Elephant in the Room between them - because he's one of those brilliant guys who believes having sex with a problem enough times will make the problem go away.

And, because Liam turns out to be a Manipulative Asshole, he forces Jules' hand by revealing their Dark Secret - they secretly married ten years ago and never bothered to get a divorce. Worse - when they married, they toasted each other with the Tanti Baci Winery's blanc de blancs. What's that? Oh, it's a Cutesy Magical Wedding Wine (for reals) and Jules' sisters have discovered that no couple in the last fifty years who toasted their marriage with that wine has gotten a divorce.

Against Jules' wishes, they've pimped that romantic legend all over town as PR for their winery so of course Jules and Liam cannot get a divorce now, or at least not until after Tanti Baci's Poorly-Explained Mass Wedding Stunt at the end of June. And - obviously - they also need to pretend to be happily married until then. Think of the winery!

Of course. That all makes sense! Just like how two people who hate each other and want nothing more to do with each other somehow never bothered to divorce in TEN YEARS.

The sheer contrivance of everything in this novel is my biggest beef - nothing happens organically in this story. Everything occurs randomly! Or by surprise! Or because the hero or heroine weren't paying attention despite how completely out of character that would be! Or just because! Every plot development smacks of authorial intent to create a specific situation or reaction, instead of letting it emerge from the characters' motivations and decisions.

Liam's getting too close to Jules too quickly? Let's bring in two Random Characters who we haven't met before and won't see again who Oh-So-Conveniently happen to know Liam's Dad's Dark Secret and choose that exact moment to drop that bombshell in Liam's lap.

Jules is afraid of emotional connection after enduring a broken marriage and miscarriage? Drop in a Random  Character with no previous presence in the trilogy who just gives Jules her Random Baby to look after so that the infant's "strangely wise" face can reawaken Jules' maternal instincts.

You've created this running mystery of a hidden Tanti Baci treasure and you need it found by the third book? Just give the secondary romance heroine an out-of-the-blue psychic power and have her find this rare, sought-after plot device in under a minute.

Need a bit of action and suspense to force Jules and Liam back together all the more? Let's bring in Grace's Abusive Husband and have him openly approach and introduce himself to the protagonists, and let's have the protagonists not freak out or call the police or tell Grace despite the fact that Grace has been Jules' roommate for months. That way we have a nice Quickie Villain on hand.

On top of the utter falseness of the plotting, we have two Prequel-Baiting Couples who bloat the storyline with their utterly unnecessary and obnoxiously saccharine Wedded Bliss whenever they're not acting like Meddling Matchmakers, two tropes I absolutely despise.

Plot contrivance and annoying tropes aside, I just plain didn't like the hero and heroine or their romantic dynamic. Liam is controlling and patronizing and spends the majority of the novel bossing Jules around because Daddy Knows Best. He's also extremely jealous and possessive, to the point where he punches another man in the face (secondary romance hero Kohl Friday) just for having his hand platonically on Jules' arm. I found this particularly unsettling since the secondary romance heroine is a victim of domestic violence. So when her husband gets uncontrollably angry at her and resorts to force, it's horrible and a crime. But if the hero gets uncontrollably angry at Jules and resorts to force - it's heroic and primal. Excuse me?

The relationship doesn't look any more appealing from Jules' POV. Despite Liam only being two years older than her, she describes their initial teenage courtship with a creepy teacher-student vibe. Disturbingly, she recounts how often she "threw herself" at Liam with the full force of teenage passion, only for "patient, tender" Liam to "tame" her wild ardour. In fact, she reveals the reason they finally eloped to Tuscany at eighteen was so that they could finally have sex! Because Patient, Tender, Daddy Knows Best Liam knows that sex should be reserved until after marriage!

Yes, how dare a female character have a high sex drive. Thank goodness she had this abnormally patient twenty-year-old boy to keep her slutty, whorish urges at bay until they could be joined in holy matrimony - right before he abandoned her to deal with his Daddy Issues. What a dick.

Spare yourself the brainache and avoid this stinker.
D

"Sanctum," by Sarah Fine

The Protagonist: Lela Santos. Despite a horrifically abusive upbringing, she found a friend in Nadia, a popular but troubled girl at her school. Their friendship finally convinced her that life is worth living.
Her Angst: But then Nadia kills herself, and Lela's convinced her spirit was sent to a horrible place known as the Shadowlands where suicides are punished - a place Lela's dreamed out since she attempted suicide years before. Can Lela possibly get Nadia out, or will she fail her best friend a second time?

Secondary Cast:

Malachi: The Captain of the Guard of the Shadowlands. Dedicated to ridding the dark city of the Mazikin - demons who possess the bodies of suicides. He's been at this for more than seventy years, waiting for the time when his service will earn him the place in the Countryside he was denied when he committed suicide back in the 1940s.

Ana: Another suicide who serves on the guard with Malachi. A kick-ass warrior, she helps Malachi and Lela track down Nadia while fighting off the Mazikin.

Nadia: Lela's friend - overcome with depression, she became convinced she was an unloveable fraud and killed herself to escape. Instead, she wound up in a grimy underworld to endure punishment for her act.

Raphael: A mysterious, powerful personage who helps the Guard as their healer and doctor.

Juri: An evil Mazikin who has it in for Malachi - every time Malachi kills his host body, he possesses another one to continue their battle until the bitter end.

Angst Checklist:

• Surviving Sexual Abuse
• Exploring love and sexual desire after surviving sexual abuse
• Depression and mental illness
• How people apparently deserve to be punished for depression and mental illness
• I escaped the Holocaust and all I got for it was Indentured Servitude

The Word: First of all, I owe an apology to the author, Sarah Fine. She was kind enough to send me an ARC of this back in the summer, but when I was moving my bookshelves around, the book got lost in the shuffle. I found it this month and was mortified at how late it was. I am so sorry for the delay.

As part of my apology, I might suggest to Ms. Fine that she not read this review, because not only was I more or less unimpressed with the storytelling, the worldbuilding sent me spiralling into a pretty heavy rant that I'm pretty sure she would not want to read.

The Review

The novel starts strongly - with the fantastic heroine of Lela Santos. A tough, jaded teenager with a thoroughly calloused soul after years of abusive foster care, she manages to befriend Nadia, the Queen Bee of her latest high school. To Lela's surprise, Nadia is kind and welcoming, and the two develop a wonderful bond of friendship that finally convinces Lela that she has a future, that she's worth something, that she's worthy of love.

The two flies in her ointment: one, Lela still has recurring nightmares of the horrifying hell dimension she witnessed when she tried to kill herself as a child; and two, she can't seem to stop Nadia's inexorable slide into depression - which eventually culminates in her suicide.

Lela is devastated. Worse, now her nightmares include Nadia, lost and alone, wandering through that dark city rife with misery and riddled with mysterious predators. Somehow, Lela realizes these visions are real and that her friend didn't obtain the escape she longed for. While trying to figure out how these visions work, Lela falls off a cliff (for reals) and winds up in a heavenly Countryside where she feels warm and loved and at peace - but bordering this land is the same dark city she witnessed in her dreams. Despite the Countryside's loving embrace, she can't rest while she knows her friend is suffering in that horrible afterlife, so she sneaks past the Suicide Gates to try and rescue her friend.

Past the Suicide Gates, Lela emerges in a horrible place called the Shadowlands, where suicides live in helpless torment. The place is also patrolled by guards who keep the suicides from escaping - and also combat the strange demons known as Mazikin who have started infesting the city in ever-greater numbers. It's here that Lela runs into Malachi, a former suicide and captain of the guard. Malachi is first shocked, then fascinated that anyone would willingly give up the Countryside for someone else - after all, he has been working to earn his way out since the 1940s (as indicated by the tell-tale string of numbers tattooed on his arm). As they work together to find Nadia, they develop a passionate bond that, unfortunately, ends up slowing the pace and cluttering the storyline with purple prose as each protagonist tries to out-martyr the other to prove their love.

On top of the story losing steam and devolving into a gooey, angsty teen romance version of the "oh no, after you" "no, no, I insist, after you" joke, I had serious problems with the worldbuilding.

Now we have The Rant (and spoilers)

Now, I knew the setting would be a dark underworld reserved for suicides going in, so I swallowed my repugnance at the idea because I wanted to see what the author would do with it. After all, there is a huge mythological and religious basis for the idea that suicidal people go to a different afterlife. Who knows? Maybe the worldbuilding will be clever enough to explain it in an interesting way.

Except not. We get some basic world building, but the ultimate purpose of the Shadowlands is left in the, well, dark. It's a hellish dimension where everyone walks around in endless cycles of misery. No one helps these people. No one reaches out to them. In fact, some of them even commit suicide again, several times, only to reappear outside the Suicide Gates to start over.

The only bright spot in the entire city is the Sanctum, where the Judge resides - the omniscient being who can free people from the Dark City and send them to the Countryside. But she only does it for people who are "ready" - or **spoiler** to support her own personal agenda when she frees Nadia to gain Lela's service. So really, the whole "they need to be ready before they leave" is bull crap because she can free people whenever she wants. She just doesn't, because she's horrible and this book is horrible. *spoiler* 

The only message that sends to me is that people who commit suicide - and this includes the mentally ill (depression is brought up) - deserve to be punished. People who die "regular" deaths (like Lela, initially) go immediately to the lovely Countryside. None of them are delayed or asked to "work out their issues" before they reach their heavenly destination. Despite the fact that people who die of natural causes or accidents can have just as many issues as people who wind up taking their own lives.

Meanwhile, the world in this book deems suicides unworthy of a happy afterlife and sends them to a hellish underworld where they are expected to fix themselves (which worked SO well when they were alive) before they can be free to join their families and loved ones in the Countryside. **spoiler** Despite the fact that the Judge can send ANYONE SHE WANTS TO THE COUNTRYSIDE whether they meet her bizarre requirements or not. **spoiler**

No. Just - NO. I can't think of an uglier or less compassionate idea.

I tried to get over this revolting worldbuilding to focus on the story, but the further I got, the worse it got - especially with Malachi's backstory, in which he was told by the Judge that his horrible suffering (in Auschwitz) didn't "earn" him a "free ticket" out of the hellish dimension he apparently deserved because he was "weak" enough to consider death-by-electric-fence preferable to being shot by the Nazis.

Part of the reason for this rant is because the novel is so vague about what the purpose of the Shadowlands is. Why are suicides sent here? How is this supposed to help them? Or if this is punishment - why do they deserve to be punished? For all I know, the Judge and the City could turn out to be villains in the next book - but part of that should at least be reflected in this novel by the characters' attitudes. Lela, initially, does think the city is horrible, but she is slowly convinced by Malachi and the others that this is just the natural order of things, the way things are meant to be, and that the suicides somehow need this for some unexplained metaphysical reason.

Which, I'm sorry to say, is not enough to convince me that the world of this book is anything less than disgusting.

Sanctum has an awesomely strong, developed heroine who is more than capable of taking care of herself - but not much else. Even without the heinous "suicides need to suffer before they can get to heaven" plotline, the story is bogged down by tedious training sequences, overblown InstaLove, underdeveloped villains, and an inconsistently portrayed setting.
D

If you still want to read this, Sanctum is available for Kindle.

"A Matter of Class," by Mary Balogh

The Chick: Lady Annabelle Ashton. When her parents tried to wed her to a wealthy, but ugly marquis, she ran off with a coachman.
The Rub: Unfortunately, she didn't get far, and now she's ruined and her family is bankrupt. The only one willing to marry her now is her lower-class neighbour Reginald Mason.
Dream Casting: Romola Garai.

The Dude: Reginald Mason. When his extravagant ways play on his father's last nerve, he's ordered to marry an Earl's ruined daughter or be cut off from his inheritance.
The Rub: His family's merchant class - and his fiancee's family's as blue blooded as they come. Getting his future father-in-law's approval seems just about impossible.
Dream Casting: Charlie Cox.

The Plot:

Annabelle: Oh crap, my elopement plot failed.

Reginald: Darn, I spent too much money so now I have to get married.

Their Parents: WE ARE INCREDIBLY DISAPPOINTED WITH BOTH OF YOU ... we just don't feel like expressing that in an interesting way. Let's just all be nice to each other for the next hundred or so pages.

Annabelle and Reginald: Cool. Let's have an adorably bland flashback.

Adorably Bland Flashback:

Baby Annabelle and Reginald: Hey. We have opposite genitalia and our parents hate each other. Let's have sex in a field!

Just as Bland Present:

Annabelle and Reginald: *married*

Annabelle and Reginald: Cool, we totally lied to everyone and faked having personalities so that we could trick people into letting us get married! Surprise! WE HAVE NO PERSONALITIES! HOORAY!

Romance Convention Checklist:

• 1 Interclass Romance
• 2 Unhappy Pairs of Parents
• 1 Inordinately Handsome Coachman

The Word: **spoiler warning - there is a "twist" at the end of the novel, and I plan to spoil the hell out of it because it is stupid. You have been warned.**
I knew it had to come eventually. Every author is going to have at least one dud book. Heck, even Laura Kinsale had Seize the Fire.

And while Mary Balogh has had more "Good" than "Great" books with me, her books have always been so consistently Good With a Capital G that I've always loved reading her. I knew I could trust her to bring an excellent story and some nice drama to the table with whichever book she presented me.

Except for this one.

A Matter of Class angered me for several reasons - 1) while I appreciate the narrative risk Balogh took, the twist at the end is ridiculous as hell and ultimately compromises the entire book, 2) I bought this book in hardcover. HARDCOVER. FOR A NOVELLA. I expect quality when I buy hardcovers!

Of course, at the beginning, everything looks interesting. Our hero, Reginald, is a Feckless Spendthrift who fills his closet with expensive boots at the same time he empties his father's metaphorical closet of Paternal Patience.

Meanwhile, our heroine, Annabelle, is an Impulsive Eloper who dashed off with her handsome coachman to escape an arranged marriage to an Ugly Bald Marquis, but was caught at an inn when her servant-class beau jumped out a window. She has since destroyed all chances of marrying any marquises, bald or not, and her Earl father's estate is swimming in debt.

On top of all that, Annabelle's and Reginald's fathers are neighbours who have shared a massive, bubbling cauldron of Hate-orade for each other for years due to Annabelle's father being a Haughty Aristo and Reginald's father being an Upstart Coal Merchant.

However, when Reginald's father hears about Annabelle's plight, a lightbulb goes off in his head - or else the coal-powered Regency equivalent of a lightbulb. With Annabelle ruined and the estate bankrupted, the Earl can't exactly be choosy with regards to her suitors, so Reginald finds himself ordered by his father to propose to and marry Annabelle - or else be cut off without a penny.

Annabelle's father, the Earl, is appalled at the notion of giving his daughter to a commoner to pay for his mistakes, but he doesn't exactly have many options besides putting a bell around Annabelle's neck to keep her from traipsing off with the first handsome wage slave she encounters.

So, despite nearly everyone Secretly Hating the Idea, Reginald and Annabelle find themselves engaged to be married.

Now, all of this sounds interesting doesn't it? It certainly seems as if there are endless opportunities for drama, misery, misunderstandings, acrimony, prejudice, and humour, doesn't it?

Oh, but how Mary Balogh loves fooling with people's expectations!

This novella was as dull as ditchwater, except for when it was Stupidly Ridiculous Beyond All Reason.

First of all, there's no real conflict. Reginald's father is so happy at the prospect of gaining a family connection to the aristocracy that he promptly turns in his Antagonist Card, while Annabelle's father spends his time whining and sitting alone in a corner. Meanwhile, the novel wastes unnecessarily large amounts of words insisting that the protagonists' parents Are Really Good People At Heart despite that one time they tried forcing their kids into marriage to serve their own ambitions. Oh, yeah, and the twenty years they spent actively hating each other.

Second of all, our protagonists, despite their gaudy Eloper and Spendthrift costumes, are bland and colourless underneath. They spend most of their time together exchanging a few weak barbs with the predictability and false liveliness of two cuckoo clocks fighting to announce the hour first. The novel tells us at the start just how Feckless and Impulsive they are - but none of this is shown in their actions or behaviour. Nothing is explored about their impulses, passions, and motivations - you know, who they are as actual people.

Thirdly, instead of actually developing the protagonists, we get treacly, intrusive and utterly useless flashbacks to the extremely infrequent times they met as children and teenagers. You know, to show us how empty and predictable and cliched they were then, too.

By the eighty-percent mark of this novella, nothing was making sense. The protagonists' families 20-year feud ended five minutes after tea. Our Spendthrift wasn't thinking about spending and our Eloper wasn't thinking about Eloping. Our flashbacks showed that, despite their extremely infrequent meetings, our protagonists fell in Sweet Savage Love with each other at the age of twelve and fifteen. So what happened?

And that's when we get "The Twist" that turns this story from boring to flat-out nonsensical.

After a hundred supremely boring pages, our hero and heroine get married - and then reveal (tee-hee!) that they miraculously engineered this whole situation in order to overcome their class differences and their parents' disapproval to get married.

Yes, our hero pretended to be a Feckless Spendthrift to intentionally provoke his father and our heroine pretended to Impulsively Elope with her coachman (who was really an actor accomplice) to intentionally ruin herself.

Because just running off to Gretna Green is apparently TOO DIFFICULT FOR THESE PEOPLE.

I don't even know where to start with how monumentally dumb this "twist" was. First of all - it's a complete character cop-out. Neither of our protagonists are developed at all beyond their initial markers of That Chick who Eloped and That Dude Who Really Likes Designer Boots. Take away those basic characteristics, and who the hell are these people? I have no idea. There is nothing definite or memorable about either of them.

Well, no, that's not true - we do learn something about their characters. We learn they're the kind of people who are willing to defraud, publicly humiliate, emotionally manipulate, and exploit the financial hardships of their own parents for personal gain. Annabelle permanently ruins herself in the eyes of society and makes her father a public laughingstock to be with Reggie.

Because, somehow, carefully choreographing a fake elopement with an actor is easier than performing a real elopement with the person you actually want to marry. 

Yeah, didn't make sense to me, either.
D


You can purchase A Matter of Class here, but don't say I didn't warn you.

"Wickedly Charming," by Kristine Grayson

The Chick: Melvina, a.k.a. "Mellie." Unfairly lambasted by the Grimm brothers and popular fiction in general as the Evil Stepmother to Snow White, she's made it her life's work to reveal the truth about how horrible fairy tales really are
The Rub: Trouble is, nobody listens to her because she's loud and annoying and ignorant.

Dream Casting: Lindsay Price.

The Dude: Prince Charming. Cinderella dumped him, his father walks all over him, he gave up custody of his daughters, and he's balding and paunchy. Happily ever after hasn't really happened to him yet.
The Rub: He really, really likes this beautiful stepmother, but can he learn to love again with a glass slipper lodged in his scrotum?
Dream Casting: Adrian Pasdar.

The Plot:

Mellie: LIES! LIES! LIES ABOUT ME EVERYWHERE! LIES ARE WHEN WORDS ARE SAID THAT AREN'T TRUE. BOOKS ARE FULL OF WORDS - THEREFORE IT STANDS TO REASON THAT SOME OF THEM MUST BE UNTRUE - THEREFORE BOOKS ARE FULL OF LIES ABOUT ME AND I NEED TO BAN THEM. LOGIC!

Prince Charming: I find your complete lack of restraint, logic and intelligence so gosh darn pretty!

Mellie: OMG YOU'RE SO HOT, I IMMEDIATELY HATE YOU BECAUSE YOUR LIFE IS BETTER THAN MINE, ARGH ARGH LIFE IS UNFAIR, CRUEL FATE!

Prince Charming: Your constant use of capslock is so gosh darn pretty! You should write a book about your problems!

Mellie: WELL, OKAY, THAT'S A GREAT IDEA. EXCEPT - DO PEOPLE READ ACTUAL READ BOOKS? FOR FUN? EVEN IF THEIR STUPID TEACHERS AREN'T MAKING THEM DO IT FOR SCHOOL?

Prince Charming: .... maybe I'll write the book.

Mellie: OMG WHY HAVE YOU BEEN AVOIDING ME FOR MONTHS? IT MUST BE BECAUSE I'M A BITTER OLD HAG AND YOU'RE ALREADY TIRED OF ME!

Prince Charming: ... I was writing your book! And everyone loves it!

Mellie: OH.

Prince Charming: Except for my ex-wife Cinderella, who tried to use a spell to annul the existence of my children.

Mellie: OH NO.

Prince Charming: Oh don't worry - that problem was quickly solved a chapter later and off-screen by a just-introduced secondary character!

Mellie: OH. HOORAY!

Romance Convention Checklist:

Evil Bitch Ex

1 Ghostwritten Book

1 Schlubby, Sexist Romantic Rival

2 Poorly-Developed Stepchildren

1 Bestseller than Rips Off Wicked

The Word: I love fairy tales. This is no secret. I watch Disney. I read the Grimm tales. I like the colour and the magic and the trickery. And I love how the basic enjoyability of these stories can translate so easily into different kinds of retellings and interpretations. So you'd think something like Wickedly Charming would be right up my alley, right? Wrong.

I mean, it has a good concept. At first. Our heroine, Mellie, is a perpetually-outraged woman who's the leader of PETA - the People for the Ethical Treatment of Archetypes (ha ha - it's a tired old joke that only gets older). She's tired of the way those awful brothers Grimm told all these lies that have now become the basis for much of modern literature. And she should know - since she's doomed to go down in history as Snow White's Evil Stepmother.

Now, how did the Grimm brothers find out about the magical world of the Kingdoms all fairy tale characters live in? Why did they tell such obvious lies? Why did they add parts like the magic mirror or the huntsman? These things aren't even discussed.

And Mellie's solution to the centuries of untruths? Holding protests at bookfairs, screaming at bookbuyers, and calling for the banning of books. Because they are full of lies, you see.

The heroine wants to ban books. Yeah. Let that sink in.

Mellie's counterpart is Prince Charming. Well, one of them - Cinderella's Prince Charming. Still smarting from his divorce from Cinderella (and more on her wretched characterization in a minute), he's now working as a bookseller in The Greater World (a.k.a. The Real World), which gives him access to the bookfair. There he meets Mellie and we get the standard unpleasant scene where the Bitter Bitch heroine unloads all of her problems on him and makes a lot of baseless assumptions about how great his life must be.

The heroine is not only a Bitter Bitch, but she's possibly dumber than a box of Rapunzel's hair, since Prince Charming literally has to explain the concept of fiction to her. She doesn't understand how people can just make stuff up on the spot and put that into writing. Isn't that lying?

NO.

Prince Charming, despite being a rabid bibliophile, is somehow not repulsed by her clear disdain and ignorance of literature as a whole. Instead, she's the prettiest girl he's ever seen. So he decides to help her. He explains to Mellie that screaming at people like a demented self-righteous howler monkey is not the best way to change hearts and minds. Taking a moment to dump on the entire subgenre of paranormal romance, he shows how ugly nasty vampires changed their PR by getting people to write books where they are the tortured heroes. So perhaps Mellie should write a book that tells the story from her point of view - and he'll be super happy to help her write it.

So, the concept itself is a strong one - the idea that fairy tales oversimplified the complex family dynamics of certain characters - but the novel itself just does not follow through, and instead does the same thing the fairy tales did. It still tells a lazy, underdeveloped, oversimplified story, just with the villain-and-hero roles reversed. Oh, all the stepmothers were just overworked women in tough situations who just made a few mistakes, and all the princesses were spoiled, evil, clawing, envious bitches. How convenient.

There's also the laughable fact that while the protagonist CONSTANTLY RAGES about how older women are made into villains for fairytales, the only recognizable villain in Wickedly Charming IS AN OLDER WOMAN: a middle-aged Cinderella, who is cruelly shoehorned into the Completely Evil Murderous Ex Role. This book, whose heroine complains that fairy tales distort ideas about women, gives us a villain who literally tries to wish her children out of existence because she loves attention, money and the spotlight too much. One small step for Cinderella, one giant leap backwards for womankind.

This story could have had a perfectly decent, nuanced, subtle plot where Prince Charming and Cinderella divorced because they didn't really know each other - they were two dazed teenagers with stars in their eyes who got married after knowing each other for less than a day thanks to some preternaturally tiny footwear. It happens. That would have been a great plot point. But instead, the novel goes the cartoon route and makes Cinderella a monstrously selfish, unambiguously evil sociopath.

How am I supposed to like Mellie, either? She's rude, she's bitter, she's envious, and she's so. Effing. IGNORANT that I just couldn't stand her. She doesn't understand one thing about how the world works and is just so blindly hateful of any woman younger and prettier than her (which, hey, SOUNDS AN AWFUL LOT LIKE HER CHARACTER WAS IN THE ORIGINAL FAIRY TALE, HMMMMM). And nothing about her character is consistent. It turns out she secretly burned out her magic keeping Snow White alive, and kept it a secret from everyone - and yet she's spent centuries stewing in impotent rage about how people misconstrue her actions. You can't tell me that she doesn't care what anyone thinks - and then make her number one motivation to change what people think about her!

And what about Prince Charming? Talk about ruining the Beta model of heroes. He's not a Beta, he's - hmmm, what's the last letter of the Greek Alphabet? There's shy, and then there's just plain spineless. This quivering, flavourless Jell-O mould of a man is frightened of everything and pushed around by everyone and is constantly nervous and insecure (despite being breathtakingly handsome). He scurries to and fro so regularly I wondered if he was one of the mice turned into a footman by mistake. And believe me, if you've read my blog before, you know I have a particular tendre for shy Beta heroes. This hero, however, takes it a step too far. Several times while reading this novel I wanted to shout at him to nut up, take it like a man, and stop (literally!) running away from the heroine.

The story is simplistic, the conflict (where there is any - the greater part of this novel is internal moping/bitching, let's be honest) is contrived, and the protagonists are just completely unlikeable. Ultimately, Wickedly Charming calls the kettle black - it lashes out at all fairy tales for being distorted and misogynist and poorly told, and yet it doesn't try to rise above any of these tropes, either.
D

"Until You," by Judith McNaught

The Chick: Sheridan Bromleigh, a.k.a. "Charise Lancaster." Formerly a lady's companion, when she receives a traumatic head injury on the same day her rebellious charge elopes, she's mistaken for the wealthy heiress.
The Rub: What will happen when her newfound friends - and romantic interest, Stephen - discover she's actually an impoverished Irish-American commoner?
Dream Casting: Felicia Day.

The Dude: Stephen Westmoreland, Earl of Langford. When heiress Charise Lancaster gets a whack on the head right before he has the chance to tell her he accidentally killed her fiance (don't ask), he feels it's his double-duty to take care of her and make sure she finds a good match.
The Rub: He quickly finds himself falling for her, but feels like a jackass for hitting on the woman of the guy he mowed down in his carriage.
Dream Casting: Ioan Gruffudd.

The Plot: (to the tune of "Bohemian Rhapsody")

Stephen: Mamaaaaa, I just killed a man!
Ran him down right in the street,
His wife-to-be he'll never meet!
My guilt trip's only just begun - and now I have to find his fiancee!

Mamaaaaa -- *~oooOOOoooooo~*
I'm so torn up inside,
I have to tell this girl the truth tomorrow,
I'm so sad, I'm so bad,
I hope she doesn't hit me.

Sherry: I'm screwed, my time has come.
The girl I'm guarding ran away, and I have to tell her fiance.
How can I face this imposing peer?
Let's dive into my backstory instead!

Daddyyyyyyy *~OOOooooOOOO~* *(What a long infooooo-dump!)
I love to horseback ride,
I'm sure this part will be relevant later on!

*guitar solo*

Stephen: I see an incoming crate about to hit you - look out!
Please look out! Don't let it give you amnesia!
Oh too late it hit her!
I have to babysit her! SHIT!

Sherry: *wakes up* I HAVE NO FACE!

Stephen: What the hell?

Sherry: I HAVE NO FACE!

Stephen: What the hell?

Sherry: I ALSO HAVE RED HAIR WHAT GIVES?!

Stephen: This girl is nuuuUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTS.

Sherry: I'm just a poor girl, with no memory.

Stephen's Doctor and All of His Relatives: She's just a poor girl - get with her romantically!

Stephen: GUYS, I have KNOWN her for less than a DAY.

Stephen's Doctor: If you don't, she might crack, will you bang her now?

Stephen: You're CRAZY. NO! I killed her fiance!

Stephen's Friends: Bang the girl!

Sherry: You're CRAZY! I have no memory!

Stephen's Sis in Law: But he's nice!

Stephen: You're CRAZY! She's too pure and sweet for me!

Stephen's Doctor: Bang the girl!

Stephen: You're weird and creep me out!

Stephen's Bro: Bang the girl!

Charise: Bitch, you stole my name! YOU'RE A HO-OOOO-OOOOO-OOOO!

Sherry: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! I'm a phony! An impostor! Steve will think that I'm a whore! I'll run away - what could possibly go wrong with that? With THAT? WITH THAAAAAAAAAAT?

*BITCHIN' GUITAR RIFF*

Stephen: So you think you can love me when your name is a lie?
You're such a cheap tramp and I hope that you die!
Oh, Sherry - you're such a skanky ho, Sherry!
I should have known! I should have known all women are whores!

*MORE EPIC RIFFS*

Sherry: I know what will help things - my virginity.

Stephen: That doesn't really matter to me.

Sherry: Let's pretend it did, theeeeeeen.

Stephen: ....

Sherry: ...

Stephen: ... Fine, dammit. Whore.

Sherry: HOORAY!

Romance Convention Checklist

1 Case of Convenient Amnesia

1 Case of Vehicular Manslaughter

1 Inadvertent Identity Theft

1 Flirty French Rival

1 Inconvenient Elopement

Several Interfering Relatives

1 Highly Invasive and Unethical Doctor

Several Slutty Womenz

The Word: So - you want to be a Judith McNaught heroine?

Do you think you have what it takes?

While the rewards are pretty stellar, getting the hand of a McNaught man is no cakewalk, ladies. No sir. Let's allow her novel Until You to illustrate the rigours you'll have to endure if you wish to win the hand of one of her Ginormously-Endowed-In-Every-Meaning-of-the-Word Heroes.

Yes, this is going to be a highly sarcastic and bitchtastic review. I thought - and hoped - that the misogynist douchebaggery of Something Wonderful might have been a fluke, but now it seems more likely that the delightful Almost Heaven was the real departure from an author's style that, erm, appears to glorify certain types of feminine and masculine behaviour that I find, how shall I say it? Crazy wrong.

But back on track, ladies, it's time to ditch your pride and break out the L'Oreal Flaming Auburn hair dye. Firstly:

1. You Must Have a Long and Detailed Backstory That Clearly Establishes You Have Unusual Talents, Hate Sex and are Not a Racist.
In Until You, before the real story even starts, we are treated to an incredibly long, elaborate and detailed description of the heroine, Sheridan Bromleigh's, backstory. Her Irish daddy took her travelling all over the country, giving her a broad, hands-on education on Horsies, Native American Relations, Why Hookers are Eeeeevil Wimin, and Tolerance of Misogyny.

Is all of this relevant to the story? Not nearly. But since this is also an Amnesia Plotline where Sherry spends most of the story in a brain-damaged haze, we need to have it spelled out to us early on that Sheridan is not a Secret Ax Murderer and Baby Eater. So we have that.

Anyway, after endless pages chronicling Sherry's Wild Hoyden Phase, we get to the actual plot. Sent over from the United States with her spoiled and wayward charge Charise Lancaster, Sherry was supposed to chaperon the girl's first meeting with her aristocratic fiance. However, as soon as the ship reaches port, Charise flees with a strapping soldier, leaving Sherry to break the embarrassing news to her intended.

Enter Stephen Westmoreland - while Stephen's out driving his fancy new team of horses, a drunk runs out into the street in front of him and is squished like a genteelly-impoverished, ne'er-do-well grape. Stephen is crushed (albeit not quite as crushed as the other guy) to discover the deceased aristocrat was engaged to be married, so he takes it upon himself to meet the girl and deliver the bad news himself.

However, he manages to fuck that up as well when the woman he meets at the docks takes a blow to the head and wakes up with no memory. Not entirely unreasonably, he assumes the woman is Charise. Entirely unreasonably (and pretty unethically), his Skeevy and Invasive Family Doctor insists Stephen pose as her actual fiance to keep the fragile egg of her woman-brain from scrambling into a crazy omelet. Of course, the Skeevy and Invasive Family Doctor is doing this because he immediately believes the barely-conscious, neurologically-damaged, identity-less woman he's known less than a day is The One For Stephen.

Dudes, I ship Kurtosfky in Glee, and even I think that's crazy.

2. You can't have ambition.Oh no, ladies - upward mobility for the delicate sex is a vulgar no-no in McNaught land. Our hero, Stephen, while not an outright assbag like Something Wonderful's "hero" Jordan, is still a cynic distrustful of women ever since that one summer when he got a truckload of property and titles all at once and suddenly all the women in England wanted to bang him. The horror!

I love (and by love I mean hate) how this novel treats the idea of marrying for wealth, land and position like a particularly filthy and notorious kink. Indeed - the Skeevy and Unethical Family Doctor even remarks that he "didn't approve one bit of these modern marriages of convenience".

First of all - modern? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Secondly, really? As if marrying up were the equivalent of getting Justin Bieber's name tramp-stamped on your lower back? These damn kids and their marriages of convenience - in my day, we married for love, and we LIKED IT!

Sherry, however - she's too busy trying to remember what her face looks like (a scene that is supposed to be dramatic but is unintentionally hilarious) and rediscovering that she has red hair (a scene that is, admittedly, very intentionally hilarious) to work any gold-digger wiles on Stephen, which convinces him of her Innate Goodness and Purity.

Thank goodness Stephen is surrounded by Good Role Models like his sister in law (previous McNaught heroine, Whitney) who totally didn't marry for wealth and prestige - she married her wealthy, prestigious Duke totally by accident.

3. Abandon all manners and social graces.Another reason the Skeevy and Unethical Family Doctor is so desperate to throw poor Sherry into Stephen's lap is to "protect" Stephen from marrying Miranda Fitzwaring - a well-bred society woman who is supposedly his opposite number in the Ton set. Quoth the Doctor:

She was lovely, gracious, and serene - as she'd been taught to be - but because of that upbringing, she had neither the desire nor the ability to evoke deep emotions in any husband

Yes, it's not enough that a polite, well-bred, responsible upbringing makes Miranda unattractive to Stephen - no, in McNaughtland, good breeding freezes your ovaries into tasteful, round ice cubes and makes you completely unable to have passion with anyone. Excuse me, but I have an entire family tree of well-bred, upper-middle-class aunties, grandmothers, great-aunts and cousins who would be perfectly willing to extend an embossed, gilt-edged invitation to that idea to Go Fuck Itself.

But of course, Sherry knows virtually nothing about the English peerage or rules of gentility and proceeds to embarrass the servants by refusing to follow the order of precedence. Which - once again - swiftly proves to cynical, hard-hearted Stephen that she is All That is Good and Womanly-Soft.

4. You are not allowed to find anything even remotely attractive or desirable about yourself - that's your man's job.One of the more hilarious traumatic aspects of Sherry's amnesia is that she forgets what she looks like and when she wakes up and has to rediscover it, she's somewhat less than pleased to discover she has red hair and grey eyes. Since only WHORISH WIMIN appreciate their own looks and maintain high self esteem, Sherry's horror at her disgustingly "brazen" hair just provides further proof to Stephen that Sherry is the Epitome of Feminine Perfection.

Beginning to notice a pattern? While the novel starts off silly but harmless, it swiftly moves into wallbanging territory as the plot stops being about An Actual Story Between Two Flawed People and more about Just How God Created the Perfectest Woman for Widdle Stephen.

A process that apparently involves taking the average woman and removing several vital parts - Ambition, Sophistication, Knowledge, Social Poise, and Self-Esteem. Sherry never comes across as a fully-formed, adult character, and that's not just because of the bump on her noggin. Stephen and all the other characters admire her more for what she isn't (a money-grubbing, superficial, overeducated, snobby whore like the rest of us ladies) then for what she is - childish, cutesy, rude, and embarrassingly ignorant. Reading Something Wonderful and Until You back-to-back, you get the message that brain injuries are the cure for all womanly faults.

Hey, but it's not all bad! If you manage to tightly suppress and destroy your Whorish urges to Enjoy Wealth, Respect Social Boundaries, Cultivate Knowledge, and Say No to Your Man, you win the ultimate prize:
1. A ruggedly chiseled man-baby whose lightning-quick mood swings and possessive, intolerant, and suspicious tempers are now yours for life!He constantly questions your actions and motivations and continually suspects you may be cheating/lying/whoring with any number of dudes - because of that one woman in his past who fucked with him. Because you are a woman, it's of course your fault he feels that way, so it's up to you to give up your virginity in order to calm his righteous manly anger the way Sherry does!
2. Piles and piles of wealth - too bad actually enjoying wealth and buying things are for whores!

3. An elevated rank in the peerage with all of its accompanying responsibilities - bet you're regretting your charming ignorance of complex social rituals now, eh?
Yeah, Stephen, Sherry's utter ignorance of social custom and the duties of being a countess is adorable now, but try to hold a dinner party. Or serve in Parliament. Or take care of your tenants. Or take her out in any public setting where she'll have to interact with servants in a professional manner.

I have two more McNaught novels on my TBR. What the hell am I going to do?
D.

"Lord of Legends," by Susan Krinard

The Chick: Mariah Ware, Countess of Donnington. When she discovers a crazed man trapped in a cage on her husband's property, she knows she has to help him escape and regain his former life.
The Rub: With rumours already swirling about her supposed infidelity, hanging around with a man who considers clothing entirely optional isn't the wisest course of action.
Dream Casting: Kelly Macdonald.

The Dude: Arion, a.k.a. "Ashton Cornell." A unicorn king banished from his homeland and turned into a human by an evil fairy prince, the only chance he has of regaining his old life is to find the Prince's intended bride, Mariah Ware, and seduce her into the fairy world.
The Rub: The only caveat? Arion must leave Mariah Ware a virgin, or else he'll remain a mortal human.
Dream Casting: Alexander Skarsgard.

The Plot:

Mariah: Wow! A sexy dude in a cage, and it's not even Ladies Night!

Arion, King of the Unicorns: Virgin. HAWT. But my horn is gone - not so hawt.

Evil Fairy King: Want your horn back? It's easy - just get this Mariah girl to walk through my gate by seducing her mind, body, and soul.

Arion: That doesn't sound so ba--

Evil Fairy King: Oh but if you have sex with her you'll never be a unicorn again.

Arion: That is so completely the opposite of hawt. And amazingly counterproductive.

Vivian, Evil Mother In Law: You're an American girl, and thus obviously a whore. Someone's sticking it to you, and I'm going to find out who. Hey, neighbour whom I find Completely Trustworthy who is Totally Not a Crazy Vicious Sex Addict - go and do random evil!

Lady Westlake: Yes ma'am!

Random Evil: *is done*

Mariah: While it's lovely that the Prince of Wales invited us to his house, we are surrounded by completely evil adulterous fornicators. Keeping my nose up in the air all the time is making my neck hurt!

Arion: Wow, your judgmental prudery is so HAWT. Too bad we can't have sex!

Mariah: WHAT?! Why not?

Arion: Because you're married.

Mariah: Oh, well - well it's different with us!

Arion: Ooooh, shrill hypocrisy. So freakin' HAWT.

Evil Fairy King: NO SEX.

Arion: DAMMIT.

Evil Fairy King: You get the unicorn, I get the girl!

Mariah's Evil Husband: Sweet.

Lady Westlake: Yay! More random evil!

A Bunch of Characters: *get shot*

Arion: Here, I will give up my horn to save you, Mariah!

Mariah: Why would you do such a thing?

Arion: Because I don't need the horn on my head. I have something more important.

Mariah: Oh that's beautiful...

Arion: The horn in my pants.

Mariah: HOORAY!

Romance Convention Checklist

1 Pure, Blameless Virgin(tm)

1 King of the Unicorns

1 Torn Shirt

Several Adulterous Spouses

1 Very Bad Husband

1 Prince of Wales

1 Evil Vagina

1 Super-BFF Brother-in-Law

1 Evil Mother-in-Law

1 Suspiciously Well-Informed Maid

1 Nasty Elf

The Word: When I got a copy of Lord of Legends at RWA, I have to admit I was more than a little interested in the novel idea of a hero who is a unicorn. However, even as I picked up the book, I steeled myself for silliness and easy "horn" jokes.

What I got instead, however, was a lazily-written hypocritical morality tale with some of the worst female characters I have ever read.

First, we have our heroine, Mariah - a Pure Virgin (tm) American Heiress. She married a mysterious English earl who vanished on their wedding night before he could do the deed, and two months later he hasn't returned and her Mother-In-Law's Annulment Trigger Finger is gettin' mighty itchy.

Mariah battles her depression with aimless wandering, which brings her to a folly at the edge of her husband's estate. To Mariah's shock, she discovers a cage inside the folly - a cage containing a gorgeous, mysterious naked dude who looks exactly like her husband, only with white hair and black eyes (yes, ignore the completely incongruous cover art). Since her mother spent some time in an asylum (don't ask), Mariah knows Everything About Crazy People, and decides to put her instinctive Man Whisperer skills to use and see if this strange person (whom she names Ash) can remember anything about his previous life.

Ash's bout of Convenient Amnesia swiftly evaporates and he remembers everything: he's actually Arion, the King of the Unicorns, exiled from the fairy otherworld (called Tir-na-Nog) and turned into a human by an evil fairy prince in league with Mariah's husband, the Earl of Donnington. The Evil Fairy Prince senses Mariah has some Fairy blood in her ancestry and wants to make her his bride, and in return for securing her, Donnington gets to hunt the most dangerous game - unicorn.

Yeah - this dude wants to trade his wife for a chance at big game hunting. Seriously. Dude might as well wear a name tag that says, "Hello, I'm the Earl of Donnington and I have a Ridiculously Small Penis."

However, the Evil Fairy Prince isn't taking any chances - he approaches Ash as well, promising to return him to his unicorn form if he helps seduce Mariah into crossing the Gate between worlds, stating that as a Pure Virgin (tm), Mariah won't be able to resist Ash's Mighty Unicorn Presence. However, since Ye Olde Double Standards are as real in Tir-na-Nog as they are in Victorian England, the Evil Fairy Prince tells Ash that she must remain a Pure Virgin (tm). Any poking, and Ash will remain a human forever.

Now, it's perfectly understandable that virginity and innocence play a huge part in the novel. Virgins and unicorns in mythology go together like bacon and eggs, so I can dig it. What I didn't dig, however, was Lord of Legends' misogynist and narrow-minded interpretation of virginity and innocence.

Exhibit A? The Evil Vagina - I mean, Lady Westlake, but I might as well call her the Evil Vagina because that's pretty much the entire summation of her character - she's Evil. Because she uses her Vagina. A lot. For eeeeeeeevil. Her Evil Vagina is both her motivation and her tool: desperate to bang the Earl of Donnington, she'll gladly use her body to lead good (Mariah's brother-in-law Sinjin) and less-good (Random Adulterer Dude) men astray by having awesome sex with them if it means it will achieve her goals.

And she's actually pretty good at workin' that Evil Vagina - she scores the L-Word from Sinjin within the span of a few weeks and wins Random Adulterer Dude from his mistress with a single against-the-wall encounter wearing wigs and makeup to disguise themselves as Mariah and Ash (for reals). She almost gets Ash, too, with the Whoops-I-Forgot-To-Wear-Clothes-Under-My-Trenchcoat Act.

But I digress - now we have Exhibit B: the Good Vagina, er, I mean Mariah. She starts out harmless enough - a bit drippy and naive, perhaps, but not wholly bad. All that changes once Ash and Mariah wind up at a house party hosted by Bertie, the Prince of Wales. Yeah. Unicorns. Princes. You've already been sniffing the glue for 190-something pages, you might as well throw some glitter in it and keep going.

Anyhoo, Mariah is shocked (shocked, I say!) to discover that some of the people at the house party are having affairs with people who are not their spouses. Here we learn what it means to be a Pure Virgin (tm) - it's not enough that Mariah abstains from sex because she is married. No, we learn she's also an insufferably judgmental shrew who openly condemns people for things that are none of her business. For one cannot be a Pure Virgin (tm) and simply think that adultery is bad - one must also hate adulterers and treat them worse than Regular People.

For instance, Mariah refuses to dance with any man at a ball if he's trailed by rumours of adultery. Page 251, her thoughts: "The adulterers. The ones she had determined to despise..." Never mind that they're your hosts and fellow guests. Never mind that they've been nothing but civil to you. They should all be branded with scarlet F's for Fornicators and wear sackcloth and ashes! If Mariah ever turned up in an Eloisa James novel, she'd be chased out with torches and pitchforks.

But of course she's in love with Ash - a man who isn't her husband. I thought there might be a ripe opportunity here for Mariah's own romantic conflict to allow her to discover shades of grey and perhaps judge her fellow guests less harshly, and be more willing to see the good in people... No dice. All other adulterers are whores for sleeping with other men. Mariah, on the other hand, is in love with a unicorn, and her husband is a jerk, so she doesn't count. I guess.

Amazingly, the message comes across as both ham-handed and confused. Having sex a lot makes you evil - except if you really really want to have sex and your lover is a unicorn and your husband wants to mount his head on his wall while selling you to an Evil Fairy Prince?

And in all of this long-ass review, I haven't even mentioned Arion the Magical Unicorn Dude, but yes, he's just that uninteresting. He gets a few chapters where he refuses to wear stockings and flips out over the fact that his penis is now about 9 inches shorter than it should be, and then suddenly he reads a few books and becomes eloquent enough to become the Prince of Wales' best friend. I really don't understand how his character was made more significant by being a unicorn since it didn't affect his grasp of human behaviour. Oh - it makes him more primal and dominant and predatory? Well gee - I have *never* read a romance hero described with those adjectives before!

To top it all off, the writing and worldbuilding are lazy. The descriptions of Tir-Na-Nog are twee, unoriginal and cutesy, flowers and fairies and Disney animation. Most of the descriptions of the fairies and their world is "like ours, only better." For example, the villain's hair is described as "a colour only a blind man would have called brown" and "far more resplendant than anything that could be called 'brown'". Soooo.... it's REALLY BROWN?

When all is said and done, Lord of Legends - when it's not prissily moralizing about Teh Evils of Sex (With Anyone But a Unicorn), it's boring you with uninspired worldbuilding, wildly inconsistent characters, and vague writing. Want to read a truly beautiful, witty, heart-tugging romance involving a unicorn? Pick up Peter S. Beagle instead.
D