I was looking forward to Written on Your Skin, Meredith Duran’s third novel, after having read and enjoyed her first two. This one didn’t work as well for me, unfortunately. I hasten to add that my view is an outlier: most reviews of WOYS have been very very positive. This will be a brief post.
Blurb:
Beauty, charm, wealthy admirers: Mina Masters enjoys every luxury but freedom. To save herself from an unwanted marriage, she turns her wiles on a darkly handsome stranger. But Mina’s wouldbe hero is playing his own deceptive game. A British spy, Phin Granville has no interest in emotional entanglements…until the night Mina saves his life by gambling her own.
Four years later, Phin inherits a title that frees him from the bloody game of espionage. But memories of the woman who saved him won’t let Phin go. When he learns that Mina needs his aid, honor forces him back into the world of his nightmares.
Deception has ruled Mina’s life just as it has Phin’s. But as the beauty and the spy match wits in a dangerous dance, their practiced masks begin to slip, revealing a perilous attraction. And the greatest threat they face may not be traitors or murderous conspiracies, but their own dark desires….
I found reading this book to be a very strange experience. It’s hard to explain, but it felt very “jerky” to me. I kept thinking the Kindle formatting was wrong, that paragraphs or pages were missing. It did not flow smoothly for me at all. I would read lines like “he had routed her”, and I would think, “huh, what?”, and have to go back and see how exactly this had happened.
Much of the book takes places in Phin and Mina’s heads. They both have haunting pasts — him as an unwilling spy for the British government and her as complicit in her some way in her mother’s abusive marriage. He starts off the book as a classic self-loathing tortured hero (“every inch of his skin prickled with self-contempt” etc.), with an opium habit (although this dour identity, including the opium and panic attacks, pretty much evaporates without explanation), and she … well, she was never easy for me to pin down. A brash American business woman? A scared mamma’s girl? Or, as Phin sees her for much of the book, a doll or a child? (Frequent references to Mina as a wriggling child, a doll, a brat, whose cheeks he wanted to pinch, etc. made me uncomfortable)
Phin and Mina don’t trust each other. Their relationship is gamesmanship, with sexual overtones, at first. And when they figure out they are on the same side, they have to deal with those ghosts of their pasts before they can develop a relationship. I didn’t feel I had a good handle on either of them, or when I did, the characters sort of changed in unexpected ways, preventing my investment.
Everything — I mean, the slightest movement of a head or finger — was written as deeply significant. But when you don’t feel that invested as a reader, this doesn’t have the intended effect. There’s just this constant thick cloud of figuration and emoting that I found very distancing for me as a reader.
There were two things I liked about it.
One, there’s a scene when Phin and Mina are in the country and they dance. It was a really beautifully written few pages, and the only place in the book where I felt drawn, as a reader, to this as a love story. It’s inspired me to write a post on dancing in romance novels, whenever I get around to it.
Second, when Phin is talking about someone (a bad guy) he accidentally killed, he recognizes, “but someone had wept for him, no doubt. Someone always did.” Mina has a similar recognition late in the book. I like the ambiguity of viewpoint. From some point of view, everyone is good and everyone is tainted.
I picked this one up and put it down so many times over the past months. I am sure that contributed negatively to my perception of the flow of the narrative. I’m sorry I don’t have more to offer for this review. Definitely follow the links above for more enlightened discourse about this novel.
Oh, I loved this one…actually, it’s the first of MD’s I’d read and I plan on picking up her others, too.
I don’t tend to read many historicals-a lot of them just don’t work for me very well. Sorry you didn’t like this one more. I think I stayed up until like 2 am reading it. O_O
It didn’t work for me as well as previous titles, also. I had to think about it a while to figure out why, and came up with two things:
- the tension seemed to stay at the same place throughout, which felt exhausting, rather than having some ebb and flow to provide relief
SPOILER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- what actually took place with herself, her mother, and her stepfather after she helps the hero escape, an episode which gets alluded to often before being ‘explained’ near the end, was completely unclear. It felt like it had been mentioned in a way to keep ratcheting anticipation higher, yet it was still a big mystery to me after the reveal, which left me irritated.
Not going to stop me at all in snapping up the next title when it appears, though.
I loved this one the best of all 3 novels she’s written so far. I connected to Phin & Mina much more than I did with Lydia and Sanburne. And I thought this one was more consistently delicious than Duke of Shadows (where I adored the first half but thought the second half was not as satisfying).
It took me quite a bit of time to work out why the title but it suddenly came to me about 2/3 through the book and a lightbulb went off over my head – these two people were scarred, physically and mentally and it is by the scars “written on [their] skin” that they recognise in each other a kindred soul. I thought that they could trust each other (in the deeper sense) because both knew the pain of scars and would be careful of them in the other. IMO.
I understand what you mean by not connecting though. I’ve just started Nalini Singh’s Blaze of Memory and I’m thinking that I shouldn’t have. I think it’s me. I’m not getting into it and I think I’m just not in a “paranormal” mood or something. But, now I’m about 1/3 in and I’m wondering if I should persist.
Meredith Duran has a beautiful and lyrical writing style but if you don’t connect with the characters, no matter how gorgeous the writing, the book will be a bit of a “meh”. I felt that way about Black Silk, except I’m not sure I thought the writing style was that gorgeous now that I think about it…
Anyway, horses for courses as they say. WOYS was an A read for me.
I’m really looking forward to the dancing in romance novels post. People talked about it a little bit on the Smart Bitches board (http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/friday-videos-love-the-tango/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+smartbitchestrashybooks%2FwRgd+Smart+Bitches%2C+Trashy+Books) but there’s so much that’s just weird and wrong about how dancing in romance is written.
I was really curious to read your review of this book, which I also thought was the weakest of Duran’s, but still read in a gulp because I love her like a crazy person.
I think this book fits in really well with one of your recent posts – I felt throughout that the author was holding back, and wasn’t being as mean to the characters as she could be, and really should be for a strong plot and character growth. Possibly because of pressure from editorial, or from her own perceptions of the romance market. I, for one, was hoping for a lot more out of Phin’s drug use (what was up with the lack of withdrawal?) and Mina’s scars.
Written on Your Skin is like a very, very rich dessert. In fact I read it twice because I knew I couldn’t absorb it all in one reading. I came away with a huge appreciation for the beautiful writing, and a grudging respect for the characters. Mina was a difficult character for me to like, but I understood her.
This book brought me to tears. Meredith’s words are so beautiful. This is the best book she has written thus far.
I had a very similar reaction to you. The points you’ve made about not feeling invested and then the huge significance written against every little thing chimes strongly with me. I was disappointed because when I read the excerpt of this at the end of her #2, I was deeply intrigued and excited and because ‘on paper’ Mina and Phin appeal to me more than her #1 #2 book H/Hs. I just felt it didn’t deliver on the promise though.
@Shiloh Walker: You know there’s a kind of intensity in this one that is more like a paranormal or rom suspense. but I think you’ll like the others too.
@Maya M.: That’s really helpful Maya. I agree about the stasis in tension.
I also plan to read book number 4. I really like this author on the whole.
@Kaetrin: Great points. I kept plugging away at this one because I DO so love a lyrical writing style, a la Ivory, and I also love a lot of inner dialogue, something Meljean Brook, for example, excels at.
@Jocelyn Z.: Oh I am sure there’s a lot of weirdness in dance scenes in novels, LOL. Actally, my dancing post is conceived as a positive one. I was thinking about some of my favorite dance scenes in romance and thought it might be fun to list them.
@Karenmc: The rich dessert metaphor works for me, and probably explains why I had to take it in small doses. I know there has been a lot of discussion about unlikable heroines lately but those discussions don’t resonate with me because I have no problem, per se, with really unlikeable characters. I actually liked both of these characters, but I didn’t feel their characters were consistent.
@katiebabs: I remembered how much you loved this one, Kate. So many people did. That’s why I was careful to link to other reviews and clarify that my view is a minority one.
@Tumperkin: I was also very excited for this one based on glimpses of Phin and Mina through the lens of the last boo. No one can say I was prejudiced going in, that’s for sure. We’ll always have BBYT!
You have me thinking now about dancing in romance. Of course, Pride and Prejudice. No brainer there. But Mary Balogh uses dancing often in her books and it’s a way to gain insight into the relationship between h/h. Who could forget Slyvester and how his heroine stormed off the dance floor (that would be Georgette Heyer). I’m sure more will come to mind … I will send you a list LoL, lucky you!
Duke of Shadows actually worked the best for me of Duran’s books, although I think all of them are good. DoS was the one where I connected most with the characters, and I need that for a darker romance to work for me.
@Janet W: P&P was tops on my list as well. You’ll need to help me write that post, Janet!
@SonomaLass: I think DOS and BBYT are on a par for me — I liked both very much. there are a couple of scenes in both that I recall very vividly, always a good sign.
I had the exact same problem with this book. It just felt disjointed to me. I also thought we were told Mina’s character was one way, but her actions didn’t back that up.
I do love Duran, though.
I am an unabashed Meredith Duran fangirl — just not of this one, alas.
I’ve said next to nothing about it online because I honestly thought it was me and my state of mind when I read it that was the problem. Now, not so much.
The problem for me was the characters. I just never connected with them — nor did many of their actions make sense for me. Mina seemed brittle and Phin callous.
Bound By Your Touch is brilliant — the best romance novel in years, I think. I admired the prose, loved the characters, and freakin’ felt their romance. You can’t ask for more than that.
@heidenkind: @Sandy AAR: It’s hard to know what to make of it when an author you admire and enjoy writes a book you … don’t. I actually thought about NOT posting this review, but that’s not a road I want to go down with this blog. Besides, it’s a little too self-important to hold back a negative review of an author you like: who really cares what I think, in the scheme of things? (and no, I am not asking for anyone to reassure me. I’m serious.)
I am with you, Jessica, Sandy, et al. I would read anything Duran wrote – immediately, avidly – and WOYS certainly didn’t do anything to change this, but it was my least favorite of her books, and the only one that I never have the urge to reread.
And this is too bad, because Phin was a fascinating character (in BBYT as in WOYS). But Mina was profoundly off-putting to me (although her mother was so appalling that I can understand how she became so prickly herself), and this really undermined my sense of it *as romance*.
It was still filled with the wonderful, defamiliarizing, lyrical sentences that I come to Duran’s work for, and that she does like no other. To be honest, the plots of her novels often seem either implausibly or pointedly melodramatic to me (take the visit to a house of very ill repute that occurs at an advanced stage of DOS – those scenes are simultaneously extremely silly and breathtakingly erotic. How does she do that?? With great skill, I think.).
It is as if they are just a conventional framework for very rich characterization and nuanced, almost difficult prose that asks you to think really hard about its possibilities. Increasingly I have been having the same experience that you describe, Jessica, where I did a readerly double-take at something I had just read, convinced that I had missed a crucial word, sentence, paragraph, or page that would make it all make sense. But in the end I always decide that I prefer Duran’s brilliant obscurity to (almost) everyone else’s straightforward clarity.
Whaty a great point about the hous eof ill repuite in DOS. I LOVED that scene, but, yeah, I am not sure how they actually ended up there.
Thanks for that insight!