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The Secret History of the Marketing of Lauren Willig’s Debut Novel

Mar 18

Posted by Jessica in Reviews | 16 Comments

A discussion and review of Lauren Willig’s The Secret History of the Pink Carnation.

I listened to SH, narrated by Kate Reading, who did a wonderful job. I downloaded this last year, and it has languished in my audio TBR pile ever since. I was motivated to finally listen to it by Keishon’s TBR Challenge, one day late. Click on the cover below for excerpts, outtakes, and purchase information.

First a brief description and review (and, having only listened to the audio, I apologize in advance if I get any details wrong. I considered purchasing the ebook for my Kindle but at $9.99 — the paperback is $5.60 — I couldn’t justify the cost):

SH is a regency romance with a contemporary framing device. The contemporary story is a first person narration by Eloise, Harvard history dissertator in London researching the identity of the heroic Napoleon-foiler the Purple Gentian, and being prevented from getting the access she would like to the Selwick family papers by Colin, the distrusting, arrogant, but young and handsome, family descendant. When Eloise gets her hands on the diaries of Amy Balcourt, the narrative switches to third person omniscient, which was quite jarring for me, personally, as no diaries or letters would be written that way. The bulk of the novel follows the story of Amy, whose French father was killed by Napoleon’s men, and whose English mother died shortly thereafter of grief, as she travels from Shropshire England to France to join the league of the Purple Gentian and fight Napoleon herself. She meets and falls in love with the Purple Gentian, as well as meeting and being attracted Lord Richard Selwick, an Englishman abroad who appears to be happy working as a historian and collector of artifacts for Napeolon.

Here’s the thing about this book: you can’t take it even slightly seriously if you want to enjoy it. It is a comedy. You have a young English miss who decides to go to France and bring down Napoleon, who meets up with men in gardens at night, and who almost loses her virginity to a masked stranger in a rowboat on the Seine. You have a master spy whose major skill seems to be detecting the heroine’s identity by the sway of her hips, and you have a French inspector who says things like “so we meet again” and has a “super secret dungeon”, and a Napoleon whose office is left open for the seemingly constantly unchaperoned heroine to search in broad daylight.

The chick-lit framing story (complete with several references to shoe brands. I don’t have to name them for you, do I?) is minimal to the point of being nearly nonexistent, as is the plot of the historical bulk of the novel. Both Amy, the plucky, unexpectedly highly educated, impetuous, foot stamping, curl bouncing, tiny, beautiful heroine, and Richard, the sardonic, cool, handsome, intelligent super spy (we’ll have to take the author’s word on this, as our intrepid Amy scoops him nearly every turn, and her presence has the unfortunate effect of turning him into a giant raging hormone) who knows better than to deflower Amy, but can hardly help it.

I enjoyed this book for what it was: a historical romance with all of the usual tropes, played for comedy, and written in a style that mimics “better” fiction. You might be wondering, actually, what the author did with 464 pages and almost no plot? Well, she wrote. There are loads of comic asides and detailed descriptions, and careful scenes of dialogue, like this:

“I thought I’d find you here.”

“What?” Amy was jolted out of her blissful contemplation of Edouard’s letter, as a blue flounce brushed against her arm.

A basket of wildflowers on Jane’s arm testified to a walk along the grounds, but she bore no sign of outdoors exertion. No creases dared to settle in the folds of her muslin dress; her pale brown hair remained obediently coiled at the base of her neck; and even the loops of the bow holding her bonnet were remarkably even. Aside from a bit of windburn on her pale cheeks, she might have been sitting in the parlor all afternoon.

“Mama has been looking all over for you. She wants to know what you did with her skein of rose-pink embroidery silk.”

“What makes her think I have it? Besides,” Amy cut off what looked to be a highly logical response from Jane with a wave of Edouard’s letter, “who can think of embroidery silks when this just arrived?”

“A letter? Not another love poem from Derek?”

“Ugh!” Amy shuddered dramatically. “Really, Jane! What a vile thought! No,” she leaned forward, lowering her voice dramatically, “it’s a letter from Edouard.”

“Edward?” Jane, being Jane, automatically gave the name its English pronunciation. “So he has finally deigned to remember your existence after all these years?”

“Oh, Jane, don’t be harsh! He wants me to go live with him!”

Jane dropped her basket of flowers.

“You can’t be serious, Amy!”

“But I am! Isn’t it glorious!” Amy joined her cousin in gathering up scattered blooms, piling them willy-nilly back in the basket with more enthusiasm than grace.

I think you have to be in the mood for this kind of writing, because as a reader you are constantly being asked to pause in the action and smile or nod or appreciate the wittiness or nice turn of phrase, rather than just being invited to pass through them to get into the story. I did enjoy it overall — it was very very funny at points — especially on audio. But I have to confess that the style is not my thing, and so it’s a matter of subjective preference, and no reflection on the book, that I likely won’t continue with this series.

In preparation for writing this review, I looked at the Amazon reviews, and was shocked to see the vitriol with which the many people who gave SH a one or two star rating expressed their views of this book. How could so many of them be shocked to discover SH is a romance novel?

It turns out that the fact that this was a romance was not at the forefront of the marketing of the book, or it was, but there were other cues from other genres mixed in. First, the title and cover are not typical (no naming of a title, such as duke, no clinch, no bare skin). And it was released in hard back and trade paperback, not mass market.

How about the blurbs? Not that much to signal a romance. Eloisa James calls it a “delicious caper… a fascinating story”.

“This genre-bending read a dash of chick-lit with a historical twist has it all: romance, mystery, and adventure.” Meg Cabot, author of The Princess Diaries

“A historical novel with a modern twist” — Mina Ford

“A merry romp with never a dull moment” — Mary Balogh

The blurb doesn’t have the usual cues either (a focus on the hero and heroine and their conflict), although it is clear there is a “passionate romance” somewhere within the pages:

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, a wildly imaginative and highly adventurous debut, opens with the story of a modern-day heroine but soon becomes a book within a book. Eloise Kelly settles in to read the secret history hoping to unmask the Pink Carnation’s identity, but before she can make this discovery, she uncovers a passionate romance within the pages of the secret history that almost threw off the course of world events. How did the Pink Carnation save England? What became of the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian? And will Eloise Kelly find a hero of her own?

Willig herself said in an article at MSNBC.com which pictures her at Harvard, where she was in law school when she wrote the book, “[SH] is sort of on that uneasy cusp between what you call a traditional romance novel and more mainstream historical fiction.”

And in the same article: “Laurie Chittenden, Willig’s editor at Dutton, said the novel is a unique marriage of ‘chick lit’ and serious fiction.”

In that article, and in many others at the time of the debut, and in the marketing of this book, Willig’s own educational background (graduate work in history at Harvard as well as a law degree) was a part of the package in selling the book as historical fiction.

I may be totally off base in this, but in my opinion, while the writing style was not typical of historical romance, the character, plot, situations, setting, sensuality level, and focus on romance situate this book 100% smack dab in the middle of the genre. To me, the difference was in the writing style.

If you took a passage like this:

A basket of wildflowers on Jane’s arm testified to a walk along the grounds, but she bore no sign of outdoors exertion. No creases dared to settle in the folds of her muslin dress; her pale brown hair remained obediently coiled at the base of her neck; and even the loops of the bow holding her bonnet were remarkably even. Aside from a bit of windburn on her pale cheeks, she might have been sitting in the parlor all afternoon.

And de-Williged it, it would read more like this:

Jane approached carrying a basket of wildflowers, looking her usual utterly composed self.

Because I happen to really like historical romance, I liked SH, but I think marketing this book as historical fiction backfired for at least some readers who have very negative opinions of romance and felt tricked into reading one.

Here’s a typical Amazon 1 or 2 star review:

I went in to reading the book expecting a tongue-in-cheek take on espionage during the French Revolution. Instead, I got a bodice-ripper.

And another:

The author sounds smart and interesting, to bad she’s using her skills to produce formulaic drivel. The historical background of this book is geared for the type of reader who only reads the first paragraph of any story in the newspaper.

A Goodreads review from 2006 is typical:

Perhaps my disappointment is my own fault. The jacket blurb is fabulous, the cover captivating, the premise intriguing. I waited weeks to have enough to time to curl up on the sofa and read this book. I made it to page 55 (at page 22 I decided to force myself to get to page 100-not going to happen though, I just can’t do it.).

I thought I was getting a fabulous historical novel, but it reads like every other Regency era romance out there

And people are still getting mad about it 5 years later. Here’s a GoodReads review from last month:

This book was crap. It was just complete and total crap. The thing that made me the most angry is that at the back of the book the author has a “historical note” where she talks about this garbage in light of its place in the “historical fiction” genre. Oh. My. Gosh. THERE WAS NOTHING HISTORICAL ABOUT IT! The Scarlet Letter is historical fiction. Cold Mountain is historical fiction. This, as I have already said, is crap. Mentioning Napoleon and the year 1803 does not make a book historical fiction. It makes it a crappy romance novel that mentions Napoleon and the year 1803.

If you look at blog reviews, many of them came from non-romance blogs, and many were quite critical on the same grounds. For example, seeFyrefly’s Book Blog for her (not vitriolic at all, but decidedly mixed) review and a list of other reviews.

I’m not shocked at how derogatory the reviewers were about the romance genre — that is old news. But it surprised me to take this little trip into the history of the series and see how SH was marketed.

I guess the publisher (Dutton, a division of Penguin, I think) knew what it was doing, because the sixth book in the series was just published this year and made the NYT extended bestseller list, and while there are far fewer reviews for later installments on Amazon.com, the average rating is higher (4 stars). I would be interested to know who the series’ core readers are, and whether it has attracted a lot of readers of historical fiction.

(PS. The title of this blog post is a joke, a play on the title of the book. I am under no illusion that I have “discovered” any kind of “secret” whatsoever!)

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Review: Mind Games, by Carolyn Crane

Mar 17

Posted by Jessica in Reviews | 11 Comments

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Mind Games is the debut urban fantasy novel — the first of a trilogy — by Carolyn Crane, someone well known to the online romance community for her irreverent blog, The Thrillionth Page.  I received an advance copy from Carolyn (Mind Games will be released this Tuesday, March 23). Click on the image of the cover for excerpts, other reviews, and purchase info.

Mind Games is not romance, but it has strong romantic elements. I found it fresh, exciting, thought-provoking, mordantly funny, scary, and sexy. I absolutely loved this book.

There are so many genuine surprises in this book, from very early on, that it is hard to even know what counts as a spoiler. I have done my very best not to give anything away that in my opinion could diminish readers’ enjoyment of it.

Mind Games is set in Midcity, a congested, decaying city terrorized by a crime wave that began eight years prior to the action of the novel. Midcity at first seems very much like any contemporary US city, but Crane disperses cues throughout the book that add up to a complete and believable alternate urban fantasy world. The most significant difference is the presence of “highcaps”, humans with unusual cognitive powers, including standard fare fantasy abilities like telepathy, telekinesis, and memory erasing (“revisioning”), but also unusual choices like  “medical intuitionists”. As the book opens, our heroine, Justine Jones, is talking over lunch at the Mongolian Delites restaurant, with her boyfriend Cubby, who doesn’t believe highcaps exist, which is the official position of the authorities as well. But Midcity has been terrorized lately by an individual known as “the Brickslinger”, whom Justine believes is a telekinetic.

“Brickslinger” sounds goofy, doesn’t it?  And it is — one example of the quirky dark humor that permeates the book. But as we  see adults rushing in to their apartments to avoid getting hit, deserted ball fields and playgrounds, and children wearing helmets to school, it’s clear that “Brickslinger” is a perfect symbol for the social instability, urban decay, and random horror that grips Midcity.

Justine suffers from an extreme form of hypochondria. And since Mind Games is not only written in the first person, but in the first person present, you as the reader are sucked right in to her mental illness. Midcity has its own set of dread diseases, such as Vein Star Syndrome, the one that killed Justine’ mother, and which she fears most. I totally enjoyed Justine, but she is not a heroine for everyone. She is morbidly funny, smart, courageous, and resourceful, but she is breathtakingly narcissistic and selfish. Justine’s hypochondria negatively affects her life in every conceivable way, including interfering with her relationship with Cubby, an average Joe whom she refers to as her “aspirational boyfriend”.  Justine’s hypochondria was narrated in an entirely believable and gripping way. It makes her subject to constant self-doubt and second guessing (is this just a headache? Or something worse?). Especially chilling was Justine’s concomitant awareness that she is a hypochondriac, an awareness that could not prevent her from engaging in self-destructive behaviors like marathon web searches for symptoms or quick trips to the ER.

It’s Justine’s mental illness that attracts Sterling Packard, ruggedly handsome proprietor of Mongolian Delites (there’s a fascinating story there), who recruits her for his team of “disillusionists”. Packard has the ability to see psychic structures and detect psychological weaknesses. He can also absorb others’ weaknesses, leaving them temporarily free from them. He teaches Justine how to “push her awareness out through her energy dimension”, otherwise known as “zinging”, to rid herself of her hypochondria by giving it to someone else. All of the disillusionists’ power comes from their own illnesses in this way, whether it is anger issues, gambling addiction, or intense pessimism. We get a phenomenology of this stuff, not a detailed, exact science, and there’s a lumping together of mental illnesses and personality quirks, which worked for me.

The disillusionists (a small collection of well drawn, unique secondary characters) are hired by victims of crimes, who want a kind of revenge which the police cannot offer. Packard uses his skills to determine a target’s weaknesses. He then sends in those disillusionists who can best work together to break him down and “reboot” him. Packard convinces Justine that she can live a life free of fear, as well as help change people for the better. Since all Justine longs for is a “normal life”, the offer is irresistible. There’s an interesting kind of Platonism at work here: the underlying assumption is that evil doers are suffering under an illusion, mistaking the bad for the good. Packard contends that disillusioning, while a vigilante effort, is much more effective at rehabilitation than prison.

Here’s an excerpt from when Justine first meets Packard:

Some men are handsome in a sculptural, symmetrical way, but the restaurateur’s good looks come from imperfection: bumpy, maybe  once-broken nose, crudely shaped lips, a sort of  rough-and-tumble allure you can feel sure as gravity.

“Forget him.” He draws closer, and I become acutely aware of my pulse pounding. “I want to talk about what I can do for you, and what you can do for me.”

“I’m fine, thanks,” I say. “My boyfriend and I are just finishing up.”

“You’re fine?” He looks at me hard— looks into me, it seems. “What about the vein star problem?”

How does he know? “What about it?” I ask.

He smiles, all radiant  self- possession. “I’m the one who can cure you.”

“Cure me of what? Anxiety or vein star syndrome?”

“Both. I can give you your life back.”

I regard him carefully. He has to be a highcap. My guess is he read my thoughts back there and wants to con me. Still, I have to ask. “What’s the something I do for you?”

“You’d work for me.”

“Doing what?”

“Does it matter? Is there anything you wouldn’t do to be free?”

I know a Faustian proposition when I hear one. “A lot of things. I’m not that desperate.”

“You were desperate ten minutes ago. You’ll be desperate again.” He fixes on my eyes. Slow smile. He’s like this handsome maniac.

“I’m used to desperate, buddy. Desperate’s my factory default. But thanks anyway.”

I felt that the high level of psychological insight and inventiveness and terror in this book was its greatest strength, and that extends to its moral psychology. Justine often wonders what the right thing is to do, what qualities a “good guy” has, and what mix of motivations is morally ok. When a disillusionist “zings” a target, she experiences a period of not just freedom from her own mental illness, but intense joy, known as ‘”the glory hour”. How strongly can a disillusionist look forward to the glory hour before what she is doing is less about making the world a better place and more about experiencing personal nirvana? This is a book that makes good on the urban fantasy promise of postmodern moral ambiguity. It presents very clearly the ongoing, neverending struggle of figuring out what to do and motivating yourself to do it, and seriously questions whether the struggle is winnable at all.

This would be enough for a whole book in some less skilled writer’s hands. But Mind Games not only brings us along on Justine’s first few hair raising disillusioning efforts, but offers a very compelling overarching story arc having to do with Packard’s history, his ulterior motives, and his mysterious powerful nemesis. Justine and Packard are drawn to each other, and their relationship generates all the sexual tension and excitement a romance reader would want, but he betrays her again and again … or are they really betrayals? Crane’s use of first person narration keeps us in suspense as to who is good and who isn’t for much of the book. Things get especially complicated, and a triangle ensues, when Justine goes after her final target, The Engineer, a man to whom both she and Packard have some kind of personal interest, an interest which may be tainting their view of him … or not. There are a few sexual scenes in the book which I would say are  of “medium level explicitness” from a romance reader’s point of view.

I think this is an amazingly polished debut, but it is not a perfect book. At a few points in the middle, there was some repetitiveness. Also, there are a couple of things that I would love to see more fully developed in the next book. For example, the moral status of high caps. Are we to assume they are dangerous merely because they have greater powers than normal humans?  Is theirs, then, a kind of evil that is not about illusion? Finally, and this is something that may be less of a complaint than an observation: there is no mention in the book, IIRC, of the mental health profession. Aren’t there therapies or drugs for people with anger issues, hypochondria, or depression in Midcity, and if not, why not? The absence was slightly jarring since the world in which we live today is so thoroughly saturated with mental health discourse.

But those are minor niggles. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I can’t wait for the next one.

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Review: Something About You, by Julie James

Mar 11

Posted by Jessica in Reviews | 4 Comments

With her first two novels, Julie James gave us contemporary romance for adults: witty dialogue, intelligent humor, incredible sexual tension, and flawed but lovable characters to care about and root for. I’m happy to report that Something About You makes it a hat trick for Ms. James.

This is one of those reviews I have a hard time writing because there are so many other great reviews out there. James has a comprehensive list — all glowing — here. So this will be short.

As the book opens, Assistant US Attorney Cameron Lynde is being kept awake by loud sex in the next door hotel room. Eventually she falls asleep, and when she wakes up, the place is swarming with cops and the FBI: the woman next door has been murdered. When FBI Special Agent Jack Pallas walks in, Cameron’s heart sinks: this is the guy who went undercover to nab a Chicago crime boss, at great personal cost (he was tortured for two days when his cover was blown) only to have Cameron’s office decide not to try the case. When Jack unleashed his rage at Cameron on national TV, he was punished by being transferred to Nebraska, a second insult for which he blames her. In fact, Cameron’s involvement in both the dismissal of the case and Jack’s career trajectory was much more benign that Jack knows, but she is sworn to secrecy about the details.

This review might make it seem as if a Big Misunderstanding provides most of the conflict in this book, but that would be too simple. For one thing, Cameron and Jack each did something to the other that, no matter how you slice it, was hurtful. For another, as they rewrite the narrative of their shared past, another external conflict looms large to take its place: Cameron, having looked out her hotel room’s peephole to spy the killer leaving the room, is the only witness. This puts her in mortal danger, and Jack and his team are assigned to guard her.

I normally don’t really enjoy romantic suspense, but I did really like this one, because the focus stayed on Jack and Cameron, because there were no “let’s take a moment to grope each other before the gun toting killer rounds the corner” scenes, and because the suspense plot didn’t make me feel like the author thought I was dumb as a bag of rocks. I would describe the suspense plot as simple but effective, much the way I would describe the In Death suspense plots. I especially liked the passages from the killer’s point of view: the scene when he remembers the woman (who happened to be the paid lover of a US Senator) as “the mess he’d left behind” was chilling, since he wasn’t a depraved maniac, but someone who had, over time, gotten his hands dirtier and dirtier to the point where he didn’t know where they ended and the evil messes he made began. (and that’s as much bad poetical writing as you’ll get today, folks. I swear.).

James’ first two books felt lighter and snappier, more like the screenplays the author used to write (although James still works in a cute movie reference to It Happened One Night, when Cameron and Jack have to share a hotel room, but agree to stay on opposite sides of a “Wall of Jericho”). This book was heavier due to the seriousness of Cameron’s situation, the long shadow of the past, and Jack’s personality, which is much more typical alpha than James’s first two heroes. James has a little bit of meta fun with this, having Cameron use the romance buzz word “glowering” to describe the dark looks Jack throws around. While Jack’s protectiveness made sense given the situation and his job description, sometimes he got a bit too macho, as when he chided Cameron about a revealing dress, and about her close relationship with her gay male best friend.

It wasn’t clear to me why they ended up having sex when they did, although for anyone wondering, after reading James’s rather chaste first and second novels, whether she can write a more explicit scene and maintain both her trademark style and the sexual tension for the rest of the book, the answer is a definite yes.

There is a great deal of very effective humor in Something About You, not only in the exchanges between Cameron and Jack, but in their interactions with friends and colleagues. For example, here’s Cameron talking with her best friend Amy about Jack:

Cameron peered back up at Amy in the mirror. “Besides, I generally have this rule about not sleeping with a guy until he’s taken me out on some kind of date.”
“When he saves your life, I think you can bypass that part.”
“He did have dinner delivered the other night, although I think the FBI picked up the tab. Do you think I can count that?

Three last comments, one negative, one positive, one a question. First, although I liked the characterization of the murderer, some language was added in the second half of the book that veered into “I hate women” territory, a catch all motive that wasn’t really needed here and comes off as cliched to me whenever I encounter it in fiction.

Second, the characters go to some lengths to not make moral judgments about the murdered prostitute. Despite having dirty hands herself in ways that are revealed in the book, she was always presented as a human being worthy of a better life and better death than she got. That was something I appreciated very much.

Third, in each James book, if I remember correctly, the heroine has an androgynous name (Taylor, Payton, and Cameron) and has a career — lawyering — she loves and is good at. By the end of each book, the heroine is not only happily in love, but she has had some major, unexpected, but richly deserved career success. Finally, in each book, the heroine and hero are related in some way by their work.

So, I think it is fair to say that deliberately intertwining a fantasy about work success with the fantasy of romantic success is a James trademark. Is she unique in this? Or have I just not read enough contemporary romance?

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Review: This Heart of Mine, by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Mar 6

Posted by Jessica in Reviews | 27 Comments

(1) A semi-short positive review of this book, followed by (2) discussion of the rape of Kevin by Molly, and (3) the character of Lilly in the context of a feminist analysis of beauty culture

Audio note: I listened to this on audio (and then I immediately read it in paper), and it’s one of the best romance audio recordings I have ever heard. Anna Fields has narrated several SEP’s and she’s always fantastic. Highly recommended.

(1) Review

THOM (2001) is one of the Chicago Stars/Bonner books. Molly Somerville was the surly teenaged half-sister of Phoebe in It Had to Be You (1994). In THOM Molly is the author of a modestly successful series of children’s books based on the adventures of a fashion conscious, and conscientious, bunny named Daphne and a rowdy and sometimes thoughtless badger named Benny. Ordinarily a straight arrow and good girl, Molly is known to go off the rails every so often, in usually innocuous ways like setting off a fire alarm in college or dying her hair. In a move which is characterized alternately as crazy, and a mature and beneficent act, she gave away the 15 million dollar fortune left to her by her SOB father, and is barely getting by. She idolizes Phoebe and Dan’s marriage and family life, and wants that kind of love for herself, but pessimistically believes it will never happen and resigns herself to the idea of being a wonderful spinster auntie.

Molly’s had a crush on Stars QB Kevin Tucker, the model for Benny, but it’s tempered by her dislike of his selfish playboy ways — he has a habit of draping international models on his arm at all times — which Molly unfavorably compares to Dan’s. Molly respects Kevin’s football skills, but she doesn’t respect him as a person, which perhaps explains why she climbs into his bed one night and has sex with him without his consent. They are both horrified, but Molly becomes pregnant and, because this is Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ world, they get married, in part due to the intense moral suasion applied by Dan and Phoebe.

This all happens by page 90, and the next 300 pages deal with the aftermath. Kevin always saw Molly as a spoiled rich girl (he didn’t know about her divestment), and her sexual assault and the forced marriage (not at gunpoint, but at “football contract” point — Phoebe owns the team Kevin plays for, after all) hardly help. For his part, Kevin has some demons, especially his relationship with his estranged birth mother (he was adopted), and his inability to form close personal relationships. Football for Kevin has filled in the gaps where his personal development should have been.

Through a bizarre but pretty believable set of circumstances (another gift of SEP’s) Molly and Kevin end up together that summer running Wind Lake, a summer camp owned by Kevin’s late parents. There they meet the usual SEP cast of well drawn and often funny secondary characters, like the randy young couple who are supposed to be caretakers, but are too busy shagging each other — much to Molly and Kevin’s frustration, on many levels — to actually get any work done.

SEP is a master of contemporary romance. I am not sure I think she has an equal. Funny dialogue and situations, sexual tension, secondary romances — often, as in this case, with older couples — that actually enhance rather than detract from the main romance. And that’s balanced by moments of true heartbreak, all the worse because you have been laughing and lusting along with these characters. There was a scene in THOM that absolutely killed me – if you’ve read it you know I am referring to one that takes place on the road — and a few others after which I needed literary CPR. When I am reading an SEP, I just think “this is the complete package”.

This is not to say that everything worked perfectly for me. In particular, Molly’s bouts of insanity didn’t ring true to me. Her assault of Kevin, in the beginning of he novel, and later, near the end, when she nearly tanks the HEA, felt out of character, and not in a good way. I can see Molly really bugging readers who have less patience than I do. Like many contemporary authors, SEP laces the characters’ self-understanding with a psychology narrative, so Molly explains to the reader that it is family of origin issues that make her do these crazy things. It felt artificial. Kevin too, psychoanalyzes himself at the end, explaining what he was running from and why in language that could come straight from Dr. Phil. The whole HEA scene was off, come to think of it, but it didn’t detract in a major way from my enjoyment of the book as a whole.

But the pleasures of this book outweighed those irritations for me. Especially the humor. For example, every random person Molly meets says, “I’ve always wanted to write a children’s book”, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, Molly’s unconsciously writes sexually suggestive lines for the Daphne books as the sexual tension with Kevin ratchets up, and the sex advice Molly gets from a newlywed teen at the camp.

SPOILERS:

(2) Molly’s rape of Kevin. I know a lot of people stopped reading at this point, feeling that no couple can overcome such a violation. I’ve blogged about rape in romance, although my focus was on women as victims. My feeling about it, regardless of who is the victim, is that if a rape is portrayed in a titillating way, a way that is meant merely to arouse the reader, and a way that doesn’t take seriously the real life consequences — whatever they would be for that character, in that setting — I put the book down. In THOM, the rape was not portrayed in a titillating way — neither was sexually pleased by the experience (a real difference from when a hero rapes a heroine, I might add) — and the repercussions reverberated, at least for Kevin’s attitude towards Molly, for at least 3/4 of the book. Kevin calls it a rape, and it’s a major obstacle in their relationship, Kevin only forgiving Molly towards the end of the book. That they never tell Phoebe and Dan about it indicates the seriousness with which they take it. Molly’s actions were reprehensible, but they were out of character. Her rape of Kevin doesn’t reflect her pervasive anti-men attitudes, or a domineering personality.

You could argue that Kevin should have been more upset for longer. And you could argue in a society in which rape of men is not taken as seriously as it should be, Kevin’s quick recovery (or non-traumatic reaction) shores up pernicious rape myths about men (that men always want sex anyway so you can;t rape them.). But Kevin rejects those rape myths and Molly does eventually too. (Although many people do not think it possible to rape a man, so THOM is not as hopelessly regressive as it might have been.) all I can say is that the book overall worked for me. Narratively, one thing SEP did which was very smart was to have Molly miscarry, which makes her very sympathetic. It worked for me, but I can see why others feel differently.

(3) A major subplot is the arrival of Kevin;s birth mother, Lilly, to the summer camp. Kevin has a lot anger at Lilly, who went on to becomes a famous TV actress, for giving him up. His estrangement from her is the major developmental work his character must do, and it’s presented as the key to his ability to have loving relationships with other women, like Molly. Those psychoanalytic tones again!

Anyway, I have a very mixed reaction to SEP when it comes to my politics. She is not a feminist writer by any stretch, and is quite retrograde in many respects. I kind of go into an enjoyable fugue state when I read SEP, and later rile myself up by pointing out all the ways her books bug me politically. But the character of Lilly really crystallized the problem for me, and why I can continue to read SEP.

Lilly is an aging beauty. She was the Farah Fawcett of her day — the sexy star of an all female detective show with a famous poster which sold millions. She is a widow when we meet her, essentially retired from acting, and at loose ends over her estrangement from Kevin. She is also in a kind o recovery form her marriage, which was characterized by the dominating behavior of her late husband, who controlled her and her career, both.

At the camp, Lilly meets Liam, a reclusive ornery famous painter (naturally, you would have both a famous actress and a famous artist together at a summer camp in Illinois. (To her credit, SEP has Molly note how bizarre this situation is). Lilly feels washed up, like she’s no longer attractive because of her extra girth and wrinkles. But Liam wants to paint her naked. He finds her irresistible, and loves her all the more for her imperfections. The way Lilly is written, it’s almost entirely her own vanity — a personal character flaw — that leads her to think her value as a human being is diminished as she loses her looks. And it is a man who rescues her from this crazy idea.

In my world, it is patriarchy that leads women who are less than physically perfect to feel worthless and diminished. And they don’t just feel diminished: they are. To take just one example from my own profession, studies show that women who are thin and attractive get better student evaluations regardless of the quality of their teaching. And before you object the same is true for male profs … it isn’t. Female professors’ evaluations are much more strongly tied to how closely they hew to gender norms than are men’s. (there’s a lot more I could say here but I will stop now). From a feminist point of view, the problem isn’t that some woman are superficial and vain, although they are. It’s rather systemic, and patriarchy is a system that, on the whole, benefits men (and some women, especially the beautiful ones).

I liked Lilly and Liam’s story as I was reading it. And I really liked this book. But while the idea that a woman can just “shake off” beauty norms by “being strong” and finding a man who loves her “just as she is”, may make for fun reading, it’s bad politics.

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Beloved Children’s Books of Maine

Mar 3

Posted by Jessica in Children's Books, Reviews | 10 Comments

We moved to Maine when my oldest child was 6 months old — almost a decade ago. We discovered a thriving literary culture here of readers and writers, across the spectrum of genres, from Stephen King to Tess Gerritsen to Terry Goodkind. We discovered quickly that this literary culture extends to children’s books. There are certain children’s books that were either written by Mainers or are about Maine that are so beloved and widely read here that they constitute a kind of mini-canon.

These are the books that are handed out by pediatricians at well child checkups, that school teachers read aloud to their classes, that are adapted into plays and put on in local theaters. These are the books that many born and bred Mainers have been passing down for generations, the books that they have extra copies of at their “camps” (Maine speak for summer cottage). And they are books that have been important in the “literary culture” of a certain funny looking white house in Bangor Maine.

Here are they are:

Goodnight Moon was published in 1947. Margaret Wise Brown lived in Connecticut and New York, but she had a summer home, called “Only House” in Vinalhaven, Maine. This is a sweet, simple story of a bunny saying good night to the different things in his room. Our children’s museum here in Bangor has the “Goodnight Moon room”, a 5 and under play area which looks identical to the room in the book. Illustrated by Clement Hurd, discerning readers will notice that the position of the moon and the lighting changes as each page turns. Another favorite by Brown is Runaway Bunny, but I always felt that one was a bit ominous (the little bunny threatens to run away and the mom pledges to hunt him down if he does).

Robert McCloskey wasn’t born in Maine but was living in Deer Isle, Maine upon his death in 2003. Make Way for Ducklings (1941), was his first and most popular book. It features baby ducks in line behind their mother waddling down busy Boston streets to find a home in the Boston Garden. Our family’s favorites are Blueberries for Sal (1948), in which a little girl and a bear cub each accidentally follow the other’s mother while gathering berries on a hill, and One Morning in Maine (1952), in which Sal loses her first tooth. Our children’s museum has a life size model of Burt Dow’s boat, with rain gear, rubber boots, and plastic fish.

Published in 1982, this story follows the life of Miss Rumphius from childhood to old age. I love it because Miss Rumphius, after hearing her grandfather talk about the exotic places he’s visited, chooses a nontraditional life of study, travel, and beauty. I like it that the oddness of her choices — remaining single and childfree — is reflected in the society of the book, where local children sort of don’t know what to make of her.

I also love it that Miss Rumphius scatters lupine seeds once she settles into her seaside home. This book is frequently put on as a play in our area. Lupines are prevalent in northern Maine and the eastern provinces of Canada. Whenever children see lupines growing wild on the side of the road after reading Miss Rumphius, they just might consider what they can do to make the world a better place.

The author, Barbara Cooney, who died in 2000 at her house in Damariscotta, Maine, considers this book semi-autobiographical. I believe the original paintings for her books set in Maine (this one and Hattie and the Wild Waves) are on display at Bowdoin College.

This book, based on the lovely “Garden Song” by Maine folk treasure Dave Mallett, is a family favorite. I cannot read it without singing it.  The Garden song is one of the most popular folk songs in the US, covered by Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, John Denver, Peter Paul and Mary, you name it. You can see a video of Dave Mallett  performing it here (click the first video). My children have seen Mr. Mallett perform at their schools. He has been a wonderful contributor to the arts in Maine.

Here are a couple of newer books that our family considers classics:

Counting Our Way to Maine

This fun book, published in 1995, follows a family from its city home to a vacation in Maine. Each page counts the items they bring and see along the way. We start with “one baby” and end with  the “twenty fireflies” the family catches on its last night in Maine. The pictures are so detailed, you can linger over them for hours. The author isn’t from Maine, but she captures the feel of summertime here perfectly.

This book has special resonance for me, because our friends bought it for us when we were living, very unhappily, in Florida. I used to read it to my then newborn and dream of moving back to New England. It was a prophetic gift!

Thanks to the Animals

Maine is the  least racially diverse state in the US, with 95.3 percent whites (although there are other kinds of diversity). Author Allen Sockabasin is a Passamaquoddy, a part of the Penobscot Tribe, of which there are 3000 members in Maine. Adjacent to UMaine, where I teach, is The Penobscot Indian Island Reservation, with about 500 residents.  It would be hard to overstate the importance of Native American culture to Maine.

In this 2005 book, set in 1900, Little Zoo Sap and his family journey from their summer home on the coast to the deep woods for the winter. They travel on a bobsled pulled by big horses through the snow. When Zoo Sap falls off of the sled, the forest animals help him until his father returns to find him. The theme of humans as a part of the natural world is very Native and readers learn a little Passamaquoddy (the names of the animals) to boot.

We found out about this Maine author by attending a signing. Atwell’s illustrations have been described “a sort of Currier & Ives meets Grandma Moses.” In addition to its lovely illustrations, this quiet but enthralling book teaches a valuable lesson about the potentially devastating — ad restorative — effects of humanity on the environment. Atwell says: “There are so many talented children’s artists and authors that it is difficult to carve a niche truly one’s own in the world. My aim is to intrigue the child’s mind with a story they can’t predict, and do my best to make pictures that hold their attention. All the intangibles, I just hope for.”

That last line is a wonderful writer’s philosophy, isn’t it?

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TBR Challenge Review: Dragon Slayer Virgin, Game Hell Whore, by Kathleen O’Reilly

Feb 17

Posted by Jessica in Reviews | 12 Comments

Ok, “Dragon Slayer Virgin, Game Hell Whore” is not the real title. It’s

Keishon’s Feburary challenge was a virgin hero, and we have one in Colin Wescott, Earl of Haverwood. The book has a great prologue: it’s Colin as a boy finding out his father was not the old Earl — who has brought him to the Old Bailey to witness a hanging — but the man about to be hanged, a rapist named Black Jack Cady. The sight of his father’s death coincides with the realization that his blood is tainted. The old Earl raises Colin to believe he has “the rutting blackness inside you”. Colin creates an alter ego, the Dragon Slayer, to fight the dragons he believes are in his heart.  As he grows, the Dragon Slayer gains a kind of reality: Colin becomes a spy for England.

The old Earl left one more nasty surprise for Colin in his will: he’s have to marry by the time he turns 28 or lose the orphanage he owns (??????). Forced to choose between ruining some innocent virgin and forcing a gaggle of orphans into the street, Colin chooses the former. His butler Giles (one of those insubodinate butlers who is more of a friend than servant) plans to round up a bevy of available women for a dinner party (????). But Colin has a chance encounter at the opera with Sarah Banks, daughter of a (dead) disgraced gaming club owner, who has always dreamed of a man with amber eyes, and decides right away Colin’s her fate.

Colin wants Sarah, but he is afraid he will hurt her. He is determined to marry another. But as luck would have it, someone keeps trying to kidnap Sarah. Colin has to be near her to protect her: he can’t stay away.

So there’s a kind of parallelism in their imaginary friends. But while Sarah abandons her amber eyed dream man when the real thing enters her life, Colin relies even more heavily on his. Colin constantly thinks of himself as his alter ego, in the third person, as in

What kind of a gentleman was he? He was supposed to be a Dragon Slayer for God’s sake!

in the middle of a diner party, which had me giggling. Or when they finally make love, he thinks

Right now she could be carrying his child. The child of a Dragon Slayer.

My husband and I had some fun with this last night. As in, Him: “Dinner’s ready.” Me: “Dinner for a Dragon Slayer????!!!”, or Me: “Can you let the dogs out?” Him: “The dogs of a Dragon Slayer!!!“.

Nothing much becomes of the kidnapping plot. And if I tell you that in the middle of the book Colin rescues, at knife point, an orphan prostitute and dumps her at Sarah’s house, and later the Earl gets punched in the stomach by the girl orphan’s boyfriend, you will see this is a bit of a crazy book.

The setting is not well realized. And the writing is pretty clunky. For example:

He forced a polite smile on his face, which he feared would appear like a pained grimace.

Or

He followed her to the foyer, watching the swing in her hips with the most dissolute lust raging in his heart.

It’s O’Reilly’s first novel, and IMHO, it shows. But this is not a horrible book, by any means. I enjoyed it, perhaps a bit less than the two contemporary trilogies I have enjoyed by this author. But the story is gripping from the first page (anyone who doesn’t like prologues should read this one to see how effective they can be), and the tortured virgin hero/no-nonsense, semi-outcast heroine, reminiscent in some ways of Kinsale’s The Shadow and the Star, is one I like in all its variations. The relationship between Sarah and Colin was very touching and believable.

Oh, and just FYI: Many of us know about AAR’s list, but in writing this review I discovered that Good Reads has a similar list. (although it may be less reliable: it includes Kelley Armstrong’s Bitten, which I just read, and Clay is no virgin).

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Review: Savage Lust, by Gabriella Bradley

Feb 12

Posted by Jessica in Reviews | 23 Comments

Warning: this post is not safe for work, for minors, or for the snark averse.

Savage Lust is one of those books that makes you think, “I could never write like that”. Never, that is, unless I had access to memory-erasing technology that could strip my brain of any knowledge I gained of the English language after age 8.

Here’s the plot: Topaz Fiero, R.N., inherits, from her mother’s lover, John, a sprawling Texas ranch occupied by John’s three sons, Chad, Sam and Johnny, who are very unhappy about the situation. “Fiero”, youngest brother Johnny informs us, “means savage. I looked it up on the internet on my mobile!” Oldest brother Chad is having none of this intercultural enlightenment, referring to Topaz as “some slut our father fucked.” Eventually they all want to have sex with each other. Topaz may or may not be their half sister, but nobody really cares about a little thing like incest in this book.

The writing made my brain hurt. Sentences like “Tires screeched as Chad pulled up before the steps and after getting out of the vehicle, he slammed the door hard.” made me wonder if the text had gone through Google translator a few dozen times before making it onto my Kindle. Then there was the repetitiveness. I swear that girl was a yeast infection waiting to happen with all the times “her panties grew damp.” Every once in a while (ok, constantly) the characters seem to think they are in a different novel. Topaz, for example, says things like “bloody well” and the brothers use expressions like “ye gads!”.

As she travels to Texas, Topaz wonders, “How will they receive me?”. Oh, no, Nurse Fiero. the question is: in how many ways will you receive them?

Topaz arrives at the ranch, and is treated coldly by all except Corky, “a robust black lady with a shining round face and a very friendly smile” who refers to our newly arrived slut as “Mizz” and the brothers as “Master”.

In short order, Chad and Topaz have a tender moment in the middle of a raging thunderstorm as she strokes “Lucifer”, his black stallion. They kiss, but he suddenly leaves, because the plot requires it. What’s a virgin nurse to do in a stable in a rainstorm but yank her pants down and masturbate on a bale of hay?  Chad returns, having spied on her, and threatens her with rape, but stops when he puts his finger inside her and feels “her most prized possession, her virginity”. Chad seeks his own release, described lyrically by the author as “grabbing his cock and pulling the skin back and forth.”

Sam, after having an epiphany (“We don’t have to treat her so crappy”) takes Topaz to a swimmin’ hole. This allows him his turn to spy on and nearly rape Mizz Topaz followed by a quick pull o’ the taffy while submerged. Our heroine apologizes for failing to pull his taffy for him, explaining that she’s saving herself for a foursome with three rancher brothers “a man who wants to commit to me for life.”

Soon, it’s Johnny’s turn. And these brothers must have had special gynecological training, because he, too, stops himself when “I felt your hymen”.

For her part, our virgin is confused: three makeout grope sessions in three days with three different men, which one does she love?

But the action takes an unexpected turn when Chad, furious at the thought that this whore will host their annual Christmas party (he’s a bit of a traditionalist, our Chad), storms out of the house and attempts to take out all his frustration on the giant decorated tree in the mansion’s front yard. With an axe. “Without thinking, Topaz ran as fast as she could and threw herself at him just as the axe came crashing down”. And then she dies, a bloody heap at the foot of the Christmas tree.

Just kidding!

Miraculously, both Topaz and the tree are pretty much unscathed. But a shaken Chad retreats to the barn where his father appears in ghostly form, to conveniently answer all his questions about Topaz. Just as in Hamlet, he calls his son a “jackass” and “dumb as a bag of rocks”.  Giving credence to my theory that peeping-tomism is genetic in the Douglas family, he lets Chad know he saw him almost take Topaz’s virginity. Topaz is special, he warns his son, unlike his old girlfriend, who “always reminded him of a blow up doll.” Gee dad, you always had a way with words.

Convinced either by her constantly slick cunt or their dead father, Chad, Johnny and Sam have pretty much accepted Topaz by the night of the Christmas party. Unfortunately, right when the Bible reading is about to start, Topaz is attacked by Chad’s blow up doll, I mean ex girlfriend: “Topaz’s nursing experience told her right away that she’d been injected with something.” The blow up doll tries to convince the brothers Topaz abandoned them, but they begin to doubt her story when they find an empty syringe in Topaz’s bathroom trash. I guess blow up dolls aren’t that smart after all!

Topaz, meanwhile, is at the mercy of the blow up doll’s lackeys. Despite one of the men telling the other to “put that hungry cock of yours back in your pants” — because thugs always refer to each other’s cocks as “hungry” — Topaz has occasion to wonder “Is this to be my fate? To be raped by a foul, stinking, rustling cowboy turned kidnapper?” No, Topaz. don’t you know what book you’re starring in? Your fate is to be raped by three nice smelling cowboys. Breaking the pattern, the kidnapper masturbates without sticking his finger inside her and feeling her hymen.

Eventually, Topaz is rescued. She and Johnny declare their love for each other, with the following unexpected and not entirely welcome addendum from Topaz: “I love your brothers, too”. Oh, snap!

Eventually, Chad proposes, but Topaz tells him she wants to marry his brothers in a handfasting ceremony (this pagan ritual was suggested by Mammy, I mean Corky). Using her patented sexy move on his penis (“she moved the skin back and forth”) she convinces first Chad, then the others to go along with it. I mean, this woman survived an axing and a hypodermic needle. Who thought for a minute she couldn’t convince three traditional Texas cowboys to share her? She simply explains that their menage is not “out of sexual lust, orgies and all that. This would be a union of love. Completely different.”

Rather than worrying about three pairs of dirty socks to pick up every day, and three mouths full of bad breath to greet her every morning, our intrepid Topaz is excited to “bear children for all three of you! And just wait, I want lots and lots of kids!”.

As they get ready for the big night, Chad remember that his dead father can see his every move and hear his every thought. He informs Johnny, who acknowledges it gives him “the damn creeps”. Sam counsels, “We’ll just have to put it out of our mind. If he does sit and watch us, all I can say is that he’ll get his jollies out of it.” Dear dad, as well as both dead moms (!!!!), show up to add a new layer of prurient incest. Dad tells the boys, “It’s fantastic. … I’ll be here watching you.” It is at this moment that the mystery of Topaz’s conception is revealed: her mother Juanita was raped. Phew. Not all of them are related to each other, then.

Finally, the big deflowering night arrives. The author has a hard time balancing the purple with the pron, and shifts from descriptions like this: “Her virginal folds, the pink canal, slightly opened, still tight because it had never been invaded by what it needed” … to this: “he continued to finger fuck her”. The next night, having exactly 24 hours of lovemaking experience, Topaz enjoys triple penetration without batting an eye.

And they all lived happily ever after.

The author’s website has a photo of a large breasted, blond, scantily clad model, but as I read the text itself, the following authorial image kept springing to mind:

This book gave me a lot of enjoyment. It really did.

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Review: Natural Law, by Joey Hill: Is BDSM Superior to Vanilla?

Feb 7

Posted by Jessica in Reviews | 17 Comments

Note: This review contains material suitable for adults only.

I had read Joey Hill’s The Vampire Queen’s Servant, and didn’t much like it. Sometimes a paranormal romance is so heavy — everything is deep and earth shattering — I start to giggle. And while I have no problem understanding why a submissive male would seek a dominant female, I never could figure out why the hero in that book wanted to spend his life as a servant: it was a Big Black Hole where the motive should have been, IMO.

However, I know Joey Hill has a legion of fans, and not just in erotic romance. Readers who otherwise don’t really read erotic romance, never mind BDSM erotic romance, love her books. If you read this blog, you know I believe book reviews are objective in many ways. If a host of reviewers think an author is really good, and I don’t think she is (this is different from thinking she IS good, but just not my personal taste), I think I must be wrong, and I try again. The fact that I enjoyed Natural Law so much suggests that my system is a good one.

Natural Law is the second in Hill’s Nature of Desire series, but can be read as a standalone, which is what I did. All the Nature of Desire books are explicit erotic BDSM romance, most with female Doms. Most of the protagonists are at least loosely connected, many having spent time at The Zone, an “exclusive”, “high class”, “upscale” (and adjectives like that were so frequent in the text that I became really curious what a “low class” one looked like) BDSM nightclub.

In this book, BDSM isn’t a kink, but a sexual identity. As the heroine puts it:

D/s wasn’t a game to her. It wasn’t something she played at. In the last few years she’d been able to admit her sexual submissiveness was integral to who she was.

(Although, I must admit that at times the book did read a bit like a lesson on how not to be prejudiced against BDSM identified people.)

Mackenzie “Mac” Nighthorse is a big, brawny, rugged, successful homicide detective investigating a murder in Tampa’s BDSM community. Mac is BDSM-identified, and a submissive. The conflict in this book is not about how others can accept BDSM-identified individuals, but more about how Mac’s internal struggle to accept his own identification as a submissive (and there’s external conflict as the murder case heats up towards the end). So while the scene when Mac convinces his boss to let him go undercover at The Zone by revealing his sexual identity was very compelling reading, it merely paves the way for Mac’s introduction to Violet, a BDSM-identified Dom who is attracted to Mac the minute she sees him.

Romance novels create worlds, and just as it’s hard for me to say whether the Regency England historical romance writers create is “accurate” (as a philosopher, I would spend all my time figuring out what is meant by “accurate” anyway), it’s hard for me to say how “realistic” Hill’s portrayal of the Tampa BDSM scene is. As a reader, the world an author creates -whether it comes out of her imagination whole cloth, or is her version of a world that exists outside the novel — has to hang together, and this one did. I was fascinated, not just by the behavior and practices, but by the psychology governing them. Little things, like Violet’s immediate realization that Mac is a sub, from not only his silver cuff with onyx inlay and scrollwork, but his bearing, made the world feel very real.

A number of books telling the love story of those with marginalized sexualities focus on the inner conflict of one partner accepting his identity, or the external conflict of the outside world accepting the lovers. What I really liked about Natural Law was that neither of those categories really captures the conflict. The major issue preventing these two people who are very attracted to, and like each other, from getting together is that while Mac appears to have accepted him sub identity on the surface, one trip to the rentable private “playrooms” below the club’s glass floor reveals that he hasn’t: on some level Mac needs to keep the control in his sexual encounters, distancing himself from his own true nature and from true intimacy with Dom women. Violet nails it instantly:

You like to test yourself. That’s what you’ve used your Mistresses for. They’re just an extension of your workout, testing your skills to resist weakness.

Yes, Violet and Mac get it on … and on … in very creative ways, sometimes with partners, but the book is really about their emotions and their psychology, and that’s what makes it much more than erotica. Just as in any other romance, one partner understands the other in a way no one else ever has.

If Violet’s big insight into Mac had been “you’re a sub”, I would have rolled my eyes. It’s like an m/m where one partner teaches the other that he’s gay. I mean, can you imagine an m/f where the big breakthrough is getting the woman to admit she is hetero?* This book is beyond that, and that’s why it was good. (*I know, I know, the issues ARE a bit different for a sexual identity society tells you over and over you are not supposed to have.)

On the other hand, I am curious about why this sort of book would appeal to a kind of genre reader (i.e. me, and anyone who reads romance) with a pretty limited set of expectations about her male hero. I think in some ways Hill does in the text what Mac tries to do in his life: present a sub who … is still an alpha — EVEN, and this is key, in those moments of hard core BDSM play when he seems at his most submissive. Consider this line:

an alpha wolf who chose the role of beta in the bedroom, but only for the right woman

You have here all the earmarks of alpha masculinity that define the genre: “alpha”, “wolf”, “chooses” (he is autonomous), “only for” (again, he has control). So while I think we have in Hill’s novel a “new version of an alpha”, we don’t have a really mold breaking hero.

As I was reading Natural Law, I was asking myself why I read erotic romance at all, when I get more of an erotic charge out of a long delayed kiss in a historical romance than the marathon sexual gymnastics I encounter in erotic romance. Then it hit me: I love reading love stories, and I especially love contemporaries. I think erotic romance is some of the best contemporary romance out there, and this book is a case in point.

That’s what a good Mistress did. Break him down to the core, so he was open to her, both finding ultimate completion in a total connection of the mind with the body.

Isn’t that union of body and soul just what an HEA is in any romance? (although see a different way to read this passage below).

The other part of the book I really appreciated was Violet and Mac’s bringing their relationship out into the world beyond the BDSM community. How do a male sub and female Dom translate a relationship forged in the crucible of a rigid, clearly defined social world to regular society, especially with its opposing gender expectations? Little bits of conversation like this are indicative of what I mean:

“I want something, Mac,” she said. “Anything, Mistress.” “No. I’m…I’m not asking it that way.”

I haven’t said much about the murder subplot. I generally don’t expect much from suspense subplots in erotic romance, but actually, I was quite drawn in to this one. I had no idea whom the culprit was and was genuinely on the edge of my seat at the climax when our hero and heroine are in real danger. The book was just entertaining all the way around.

But what about the subtitle of this review? I did notice a subtle privileging of BDSM relationships as better able to get at the essence of romantic love than “vanilla” relationships. And even the word “vanilla” has a negative connotation, of boring, unimaginative, perhaps even unsatisfying sex. At one point in the text, the phrase “mundane world” is used, making the subtext text, as they say.

Here are some quotes that get at what I mean:

Sometimes, you just were what you were. Unfortunately, this was one of those things that only those who felt it would understand.

it was, in fact, beyond most people’s comprehension, like a choice of religion or lifemate.

To be given the trust of a sub… Every Mistress, every Master longs for that. It’s a gift beyond comprehension to the vanilla world. Maybe even to subs.

If I compare this language to language I have seen in m/m or used by gay men and women, it’s different. I don’t recall hearing “beyond your comprehension” when gay people talk about their sexual identity to heterosexuals. Nonetheless, it’s probably accurate.

one of the most intense forms of sexual interaction there was.

but she knew D/s went deep into the psyche of each individual, with often unpredictable reactions.

That’s what a good Mistress did. Break him down to the core, so he was open to her, both finding ultimate completion in a total connection of the mind with the body.

She knew he sensed the rousing of the Dominant in her

I put this one in there because it reminds me of books where the heroine is a wolf or shapeshifter — and the beastly part of the “essence”, the “real” part. In that sense, maybe this language has a corollary in “mate” talk in paranormals?

This place isn’t about games. It’s about getting past the games.

What does this last line imply? To me, in the context of all the other bits of text I have quoted, it implies that “vanilla” relationships are bound by mass society’s games, but BDSM relationships penetrate to the core or essence of the partners. To me, any sexual identity is social (and political) most of the way down. Why is BDSM a “natural” law while heterosexual relationships are socially constructed? And why the implicit aligning of “nature” with “essence” and “depth” here?

This is not the first BDSM romance I have read in which language is used that suggests not only that “vanilla” folks “won’t get it” — which is fine, because they usually don’t — but that “vanilla” folks are just not having the kind of relationships, sexual or otherwise, that “penetrate” or get at the “essense” or are as “psychologically deep”, or as “extreme” in some valuable way, as BDSM ones. There’s a kind of unfavorable comparison going on that makes me uncomfortable.

My personal guess — which is more than possibly wrong, so please share alternative views — is that BDSM identified folks are so sick of others telling them they are merely playing games, that BDSM is a “kink” that is merely a break from “vanilla”, and has nothing to do with who they are, the way a heterosexual or homosexual identity does, that this language is meant in some way to emphatically combat that, and portray BDSM as essence, not experiment.

But in doing so, heterosexual identity is “othered” in a way I don’t appreciate overly much. You can’t dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools, not even if they’re whips and chains.

I’ve rambled on long enough. But this book was a lot of fun to read — a quick read actually – and also gave me a lot to think about. Can’t ask for more than that.

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