Tag Archives: best romance novels

Review – To Tame a Vixen – Anne Hampson (1978)

14 Saturday Feb 2015

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In honor of the launch of Hollywood’s iteration of Fifty Shades of Grey, and my aching, silent love affair with Mr-Grey-will-see-you-now Jamie Dornan, I’ve found a vintage Harlequin romance that spanks.

They’re in Africa growing citrus. Three orphaned cousins at the finegaling of their aging uncle abandon their fiancées for a year to the old man’s farm. Because he doesn’t trust the boys they’ve chosen, he will withhold their inheritance if they don’t farm for a year.

Oddly enough, if, after the year, they return to their original boy-choices, he will still withhold their inheritance. But ah, well. Harlequin plots have seen less tenable bargains.

And this one promises spanking. On the back cover.

To Tame a Vixen

Beth couldn’t forget or forgive the humiliation.

An illustrious beginning.

Ten years before, Chad Barret had put Beth across his knee and spanked her with her own leather sandal.

Hmm. 1978. What might it have been? A huarache? A Bass Sunjun?

In any case, the heroine was twelve, and it happened off-screen. Bugger.

Worse, when it happens on-screen, it’s absent of everything we want in a hard, perverted slap on the ass.

When at last he held her from him she was ready; her hand came up and fetched him a slap across his smiling, triumphant face. He caught her hand, twisted her arm and her body at the same time. She gasped disbelievingly at the swiftness of the manoevre that brought her across his uplifted knee. He actually moved her dress before the beating began.

Well, actually, that was kind of hot.

But I had to delete the several sentences that follow. They’re outside a social club, and really. There’s been very little threatening build-up. No lip-biting or drafts of contracts promising titillating pain. It’s only page thirty. No more spanking follows. Only bruising kisses and upper arm bruises.

Chad is a brute, and Beth is a shrew. He calls her a bitch several times throughout the book. We know nothing about why he’s always threatening to bruise her, why he can’t just let his lips graze every so softly over her mouth.

Only that he’s dominant, domineering, manly. And doesn’t look good in black or beige.

It’s not a very good book. About it would seem on par with Fifty Shades, which after only a few hours in the theaters, has garnered little support from the masses, with 1 1/2 stars on Rotten Tomatoes.

So, can I go see him now?

REVIEW – Kiss of a Tyrant – Margaret Pargeter (1980)

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Harlequin Romance, Hero Archetypes, Romance Cover Art

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Kiss of a Tyrant PargeterKiss of a Tyrant by Margaret Pargeter
Harlequin Romance #2375

The virgin’s vindication. One of my favorite tropes. If you don’t know of it yet, it’s a good one. It culminates with the hero – an angry man of the highest order – as his head snaps up to look in mute horror to study the face of the maiden beneath him after he’s inadvertently stolen her virginity. The inadvertent part is important.

But not as important as the hero’s grim belief that the heroine is not a virgin. And dammit, she should be.

What if I asked you to prove you’d never belonged to another man?

Such is the way with Kiss of a Tyrant.

Sloan Maddison is an Australian alpha male who finds himself in the English countryside where his widowed mother contemplates returning to live. In a country inn, he meets interior decorator Stacy Weldon. Stacy is “on leave” from her career, helping her mother and sister at the inn after being nearly raped by her boss. She is wounded and angry and not optimistic about her future.

Sloan is attracted to her. Pretty sure he wants to marry her. So uses his mother’s illness as an excuse to carry her off to Australia. But on the way out the door, he gets wind of that “affair” with her boss. And he’s hopping mad about it. She must have asked for it, and along the way, collected other affairs that now debases their own kindling desire.

The hero’s she-must-have-asked-for-it motivation is a hole in the plot that has widened over time. But it’s easy to jump across. Because Sloan is sexy in the way only an angry pants hero can be. Mean, misguided, and hard to get. Oh, but in love nonetheless.

The wrap-up is a bit holey, too, and would have been for readers even in 1980. Sloan is mean to Stacy up until the final moment, but claims he had known of her innocence for the preceding two whole days before the final page. He wanted to see if she could really adapt to his remote Australian way of life. Huh.

Sloan is mean as a billy goat. But, alas, sexier. So I can forgive the holes, even if Mr. Angrypants can’t.

REVIEW – Fool’s Paradise – Ann Cooper

25 Thursday Sep 2014

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Fool’s Paradise by Ann CooperFoolsParadise
Harlequin Romance #2383 (1980)

Recently a girlfriend told me about a neighbor’s bachelor party she surveilled while crouched in the yard beneath a window. One stripper. A dozen men. Wouldn’t you know it? Two hours later she was watching these friends fight in the street.

It’s an age-old formula: sexual tension minus sexual release equals…

For one incredible moment she thought he was going to beat her.

Girls in these romances knew how to keep it close and tight. As a result, Fool’s Paradise features another angry-pants alpha male. I love a Mr. Angrypants when he’s dropped in an HEA…So long as he doesn’t leave me with a case of blue-box, which I’m realizing this era of Harlequin breeds in spades.

Meet-up: He’s the distant family relation (and former lover) newly appointed to save from bankruptcy her historic heirloom home. (cf. The Grass is Always Greener with Debra Kerr, Cary Grant and Robert Mitchum c. 1960).

Conflict: He is angry because she ran away when he proposed marriage. She loved him, but he’s city refined and she’s country estate, so she thought he was proposing marriage to get into her panties. Which would have been my preference.

Although some highly-prized petting does occur off-scene:

He kissed her toes – no one had ever kissed her toes before – then he kissed her knees and finally, a long time afterwards, he was kissing the tips of her fingers. There wasn’t anywhere at all left undiscovered.

Nowhere? Nowhere at all?

In the end, their consummation had me chucking the book onto the nightstand:

It was a long time later when Emma finally woke up in Nicholas’ bedroom.

Am I angry? Not really. It was a good, fast read. And a house full of blue-boxed women won’t result in fighting in the streets.

The Golden Touch (Second Chance at Love, No. 58) by Laura London, Robin James

18 Thursday Sep 2014

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The Golden Touch (Second Chance at Love, No. 58)The Golden Touch by Laura London

The meetup: Superstar hero walks into local instrument shop to have his guitar peg fixed by small town heroine.

The conflict: He’s a superstar; she’s smalltown. She’s also a widow, which throws a wrench in the gears, but really it’s the bigtime vs smalltown.

80s fashion: This book was published in 1982, so really it’s still 70s fashion. He wears lots of leather pants. Doeskin for him anyone?

The Penetration Station: Get a load of this one!! I am including the text even after ellipses, as grammar manuals agree that an ellipses at the end of a sentence would include four dots, and RJ included only three….

And then the pinpointed, specific attentions of his fingertips ceased, and he placed his two broad hands on her bare hips, holding her up to him, and she waited in a rapt and aching anguish before she felt a low, warm sliding, and the waving tips of the clover and the brilliant blue sky seemed far away, and yet lent themselves to an unimaginable clarity as she dug her fingernails into the small of his back and moaned…His mouth simultaneously invaded hers, to no resistance, fierce, hungry kisses, random and love-violent, different from the gentle rhythmic movement of his hips as he lifted her, his hand under her shoulders, her blond hair spilling around them over the clover as he searched for, found, and held her most profound and silken depths, covering her face and mouth in fiercely loving kisses, murmuring love words (p. 113).

Ladies, we have a winner. The longest penetration sentence ever.

Survey Says: I read this book because of The Windflower. I’m moving through all of this couple’s books (Tom & Sharon Curtis). Where are they now? I prefer to leave it a mystery. In the mean time, I am enjoying their books. The Golden Touch was published immediately before Lightning that Lingers, which preceded in publication The Windflower.

As when reading Lisa Kleypas, the later books developed a level of expertise that only practice can make perfect. Earlier books can be lackluster, especially in comparison. This book is an example. The hero and heroine both lack a certain like-abilty, even credibility. But the story is still one I kept picking up, wanting to see how it ended. I gave it four stars because if you like Laura London, this is a why-not read. Doesn’t seem like they’ll be writing any more….

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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REVIEW – Lightning that Lingers – Sharon and Tom Curtis (Laura London)

12 Friday Sep 2014

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Lightning That LingersLightning That Lingers #25 Sharon and Tom Curtis (Laura London)

Meetup: Shy librarian heroine visits local male strip club. He’s the star act.

Conflict: She’s a shy librarian, and he’s a male stripper.

The Penetration Station: “He blew softly along her hairline, and slowly entered her” (p. 138). No honeyed havens here ladies and gents.

Survey Says:  It’s a classic. Pure and simple. Notice no 80s standouts here. Nothing to laugh at. I read Windflower last year this time, and it’s haunted me ever since. This little book, though not at the level of Windflower, certainly blows everything else in this Loveswept category line out of the water. Sweet. Funny. A hero you can taste. A heroine not unlike Ana from 50 shades in that you wonder what he sees in her, but then the authors give her pluck and bittersweetness. So you’re happy for her. Happy for you. Happy.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Reserved: Hero Archetype No. 1

29 Friday Aug 2014

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If you were a child of the 1980s, then you remember the thrill of your introduction to Superman. I mean the real Superman: Christopher Reeves.

He played a very handsome, very nerdy Clark Kent. Do you remember how beautiful that man was? Too lovely for this world.

This year, I had the opportunity to remember what it was like to go cuckoo for cocoa puffs over Clark Kent when, much to my surprise, he walked right into a Halloween party: ruffled dark hair, broad chest, lean frame, and nerdy glasses. He sighed, let out the host’s dog, and I was hooked.

The butterflies in my stomach about lifted me right off the ground.

In my adult predilection for Mr. Darcy, I had sublimated my adolescent affinity for Clark Kent.

My very visceral response to the poor young man who won my heart and soul at the Halloween party reawakened it, and being a thoughtful woman of mature years, I explored that response a bit. I wondered, what happened?

The answer came to me rather easily — Clark Kent and Darcy both have that sublime power of reserve. They are duty bound to hold themselves back, to secret their emotions behind screens of propriety. And frankly, this is a real turn on, for many of us.

These heroes may be like Clark, hiding a secret that could place you in peril should you discover it. Or like Darcy, struggling to maintain dignity in the face of your unique charm.

Of course the list goes on as to reasons, but even just these two will do well enough.

Lisa Kleypas will illustrate my point very well. In Seduce Me At Sunrise, (4 stars) Kev withholds himself from Winifred to  save her from peril (him) with an engaging broodiness. In It Happened One Autumn (4 stars) Marcus withholds from Lillian to maintain dignity in the face of her unique charm. Oh, and my personal favorite for the incredible way Harry awakes the morning after he finally sleeps with his wife… In Tempt Me at Twilight, Harry withholds himself from Poppy, well, because he loves her just so darn much. And for that, 5 stars.

What is it about the man who doesn’t want to hold back (of course, he doesn’t want to), but will. Just for you.

And if the sheer pervasiveness of this type of romantic hero has you thinking that, well, ALL romantic heroes use this power of reserve (Rochester, Heathcliff, etc. ad infinitum), we need only go back to Kleypas for the fab heros who wield altogether different kinds of magic: Simon, Leo, Cam.

You see the difference.

Consider your favorite romantic heroes and ask yourself: how many have been drawn from this single operating principle?

And when you begin to recognize how many of your favorites share this quality, please let me know how to find them. I love this kind of hero, and am so glad to find him whenever we meet again.

Wolfe Island, illustrated

26 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Romance Cover Art

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by Tracy Hetzel of Long Blue Straw

by Tracy Hetzel of Long Blue Straw

I am taking the leap and have contracted with illustrator Tracy Hetzel of Long Blue Straw to draw for the cover of Wolfe Island. It’s a risk, what with the norm being photographs of women in ball gowns draped over bannisters, or their heroes. Will it be possible to create an original cover and still convey the genre of historical romance? We will see.