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GIULIA TORRE

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GIULIA TORRE

Tag Archives: retro romance

Review – The Little Nobody – Violet Winspear (1972)

15 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by Giulia Torre in Giulia Torre, Harlequin Presents, Harlequin Romance, Hero Archetypes, Romance Cover Art, Uncategorized, vintage romance review, Violet Winspear

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1970s harlequin, Boon Harlequin, category romance, contemporary romance, cover art, harlequin presents, harlequin romance, Mills and Boon, retro romance, romance novel reviews, vintage romance reviews, Violet Winspear

A Romance Canon, one as staid and firm (and stout) as Harold Bloom‘s should include Violet Winspear, whose corpus includes over 90 titles written for Mills & Boon. I love her name almost as much as I love Foyle’s War’s Honeysuckle Weeks.

The Little Nobody was chosen for the alpha hero lurking beyond it’s title.

Violet Winspear The Little Nobody

With a little nobody, a Big Somebody must be in there somewhere.

Violet Winspear is known for (notorious for at one time) her alpha heroes: angry, incomprehensible heroes and our future bodice rippers. In 1970, she explained:

I get my heroes so that they’re lean and hard muscled and mocking and sardonic and tough and tigerish and single, of course. Oh and they’ve got to be rich and then I make it that they’re only cynical and smooth on the surface. But underneath they’re well, you know, sort of lost and lonely. In need of love but, when roused, capable of breathtaking passion and potency. Most of my heroes, well all of them really, are like that. They frighten but fascinate. They must be the sort of men who are capable of rape: men it’s dangerous to be alone in the room with.

The category line Winspear helped to launched has pervasive arm-gripping, angry kissing, and even spanking. Still, she got a little flack for that.

The Little Nobody is only #15 in the original Harlequin Presents line (of thousands). A more recent Harlequin line of the same name has the same mission as the original:

You want alpha males, decadent glamour and jet-set lifestyles. Step into the sensational, sophisticated world of Harlequin Presents, where sinfully tempting heroes ignite a fierce and wickedly irresistible passion!

The little nobody is Ynis Raiford. She is newly arrived on a dark and stormy night to a gothic castle on the Cornish Cliffs (Cornwall, England) called the Sea Witch.

Her name – Raiford – is not even hers. It’s borrowed from her stepfather, a con man serving time as a result of his designs on the hero’s fortune (a part of it at least). The hero – Gard St. Clair – is a former maestro whose arm was injured by a freak storefront accident, and then severed from his body at the shoulder by a surgeon, unaware he was operating on a famous conductor because Gard’s wallet had been stolen from him by a pickpocket while he was still unconscious and bloody beneath the shattered pane of glass. So, when Ynis’ petty thief stepfather was caught trying to steal from Gard a couple years later, our hero was still a little touchy and unforgiving. Ynis ventures to the Sea Witch to persuade maestro Gard to drop the charges, but finds the hero a tad embittered by pickpockets, his missing arm, and, presumably, the bad weather.

The bad weather is important, because after Gard declines Ynis’ request to free from prison the only family she’s ever known, she runs out into the dark, stormy night and is deservedly hit by a car. She awakes back at the Sea Witch with amnesia and a ring on her finger. Gard claims she’s his fiancé.

Readers of this line are given no insight into the thoughts and feelings of heroes beyond their actions and smoldering looks of incomprehensible rage, but we can assume the hero feels guilty, or something.

So there we have it. Add another woman – “his old love, the beautiful actress Stella Marrick” – and the set-up is a typical 1970s Mills & Boon pretzel-plot.

Of significance…Ynis has been living in a convent for the better part of her life. Though the Reverend Mother tried to convince Ynis to take orders, instead Ynis wants to see the world. She’s at her hills-are-alive moment when this book begins.

What the heroine’s convent background provides is a nice dose of virgin envy. Yes, it’s a real thing. And Winspear knows how to work it.

He didn’t care a rap she found him more fearful than fascinating. He seemed to her to enjoy the fear which she felt. ‘There are certain terrors known only to a girl,’ he said. ‘The fact is fascinating to a man, and that’s the bare truth.’

Virgin envy. I’m green with it.

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

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

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

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1970s harlequin, 1980s harlequin, 1980s romance, best romance novels, Boon Harlequin, category romance, contemporary romance, cover art, giulia torre, Harlequin, hero, hero archetype, retro romance, retro romance novels, romance book review, romance cover art, romance novel cover art, romance novel reviews, romance reviews, romance writing, romantic hero, vintage romance

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 – The Angry Man by Joyce Dingwell (1979)

22 Wednesday Oct 2014

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

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1970s harlequin, Boon Harlequin, category romance, contemporary romance, cover art, giulia torre, Harlequin, hero, hero archetype, retro romance, romance book review, romance cover art, romance novel cover art, romance novel reviews, romance reviews, romance writing, romantic hero, vintage romance, wolfe island

The Angry Man Joyce DingwellThe Angry Man by Joyce Dingwell (1979) Harlequin Romance #2318 The Angry Man. How could I not?

First, a detour to cover art. I am working with an artist on the cover of book two of the RiverLust series, Simon’s Story. It’s called Swan Bay. I don’t believe you can paint a handsome man on the cover of a romance novel. Beautiful heroines? Yes. But the heroes always come off wrong.

Point in fact: The Angry Man cover hero is bleak. Crocodile Dundee with a longer face and shadowed, sunken cheeks. His hair is some kind of a poofy gray 70s mullet. Go ahead. Take a look at the cover of The Angry Man. Does he look angry to you? See that slight lift of his upper lip, over there on the right? The way his brows are furrowed together as he regards the heroine? Yes. The lovely doe-eyed one.

He is not angry; he’s sardonic, bemused. The man on this cover looks more perturbed than angry. Which is the perfect summation of Joyce Dingwell’s hero in this book.

English Polly loved her neighbor, who loved her sister, so her uncle sent her away. To Australia. Where after working on a statistics team as the resident non-statisician, she is told she has to stay another six months, because her former lover’s courtship of her sister is going more slowly than anticipated. So she takes the position of paid companion to Mrs. Clemance, young and beautiful wife of Thorn Clemance. Thorn is an ag specialist for a pharmaceutical company. A medical herbalist. But the beautiful Mrs. Clemance is not his wife. It’s his cousin’s widow. The hero is, in fact, not married. We learn this as the heroine does, and it’s a breathless beat.

Look at me, MissKendall, look at me, tell me what you see.’ ‘I-I don’t understand you.’ Polly tried to retreat a step, but he advanced, and at once they stood barely an inch apart. I think you do understand. I think you see a man who is a no-half-measures man. I think you see a man who would not be put off with subtleties, evasions and half-truths from any woman he made his wife. I think you see a man who would demand an entirety, a fulfillment, a conclusion, a completion.’ A pause. ‘I think you see a man who would be demanding four, not eight walls.”

Oh, dear. Here’s looking at you.

The ultimate logic of conflict? Unknown.

There is an ancestral puzzle requiring a flow chart to comprehend. And, for some reason, Thorn couldn’t tell Polly about his cousin’s widow’s recent sanitarium visit, her convalescence in his home, or the will that required that before she inherit, she must remain unmarried for two years. Which would have explained Polly’s charge to keep the young woman away from men.

The hero is in fact exactly like his picture (and the reader). Confused and frustrated. Not an awful book. Joyce Dingwell (b. 1908) wrote 80 of them. She knew how to write.

But for this one, in the end, I am left with only a single, bright nugget: Upon first introduction, her toes were dipped in the river until he found her and hauled her out. A shark had taken the hero’s dog from that very rock, only a week earlier.

There is no cure for a shark attack…When you put your gear on we’ll get back.’ ‘Gear? I’ve only removed my shoes and my pantyhose!’ He shrugged, saying almost uninterestingly: ‘Put ‘em on.’ Incensed, feeling a fool, hoping at least he would look away as she did so, Polly complied. It was not easy to wriggle discreetly into pantyhose, and she wished he would wander off. A tactful man would have. But he didn’t, he stood there right to the final hitch.

The final hitch? This whole line of books is worth reading for the settings. These girls get to go everywhere.

REVIEW – Kaleidoscope – Joan Elliott Pickart

19 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by Giulia Torre in Uncategorized

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Bantam Loveswept, Iris Johansen, Joan Elliot Pickart, Kaleidoscope, retro romance, Return to Santa Flores

KaleidoscopeI thought I was finished with Joan Elliot Pickart. But the box of books delivered by my brother were, alas, not my beloved Loveswepts. I had high hopes for a reread of Iris Johansen’s Return to Santa Flores. But instead the box was filled with 1970s Harlequins. Stay tuned. In the mean time, we’ve got more Joan, because I won 20 on ebay.

Kaleidoscope. Loveswept #179  (Feb 1987)

Meetup: Slapstick. Aging mothers share a creative project that gets them into trouble, and the H/H must bail their respective mothers out of jail in the wee hours.

Conflict: He’s a divorce lawyer who doesn’t want to get married. The heroine loves kids enough to open a childcare center, and her biological clock is ticking. (She’s 29.)

80s standouts: Lunch. Avocados stuffed with shrimp. Shrimp in an avocado. However you say it, it seems wrong. But people are making it.

His fashion: Brown suit and tie with a pale yellow shirt.

The Penetration Station: “Without hesitation she opened herself to him, and he entered her with a thrust that stole her breath away” (p. 159).

Survey Says: This book has a well-written beginning. Great banter throughout. Likeable hero. Likeable heroine. Nice tension. Cute.

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

12 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by Giulia Torre in Loveswept Reviews

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1980s romance, bantam books, Bantam Loveswept, best romance novels, category romance, contemporary romance, laura london, loveswept, retro romance, retro romance novels, robin james, romance writing, sharon and tom curtis, Windflower

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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REVIEW – Riddles and Rhymes – Joan Elliott Pickart

09 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by Giulia Torre in Loveswept Reviews

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#sexysentences, 1980s romance, bantam books, Bantam Loveswept, best historical romance, category romance, contemporary romance, joan elliott pickart, loveswept, retro romance, retro romance novels, romance book review, romance novel cover art, romance reviews, romance writing

Riddles_Rhymes_cover_artRiddles and Rhymes #317 – Joan Elliott Pickart (March 1989)

Cover Art: Ed Tadiello

Meetup: Hero walks into a used bookstore the heroine had just inherited from her eccentric aunt, and with a ray of sunshine dancing off his blond hero hair, they fall immediately in lust, followed promptly by love.

Conflict: Hero is a painter, and painting has been his mistress. Though he’s ready to commit, heroine doubts his love will withstand his next gallery show. Also, there’s a detective story running through this one, with guns, federal agents, and references to Hart to Hart.

80s standouts: She’s a high school English teacher on summer break, who, had she not inherited the used book store (if not anachronistic enough), would have spent the summer delivering telephone books.

His fashion: One yellow knit shirt tucked into faded jeans. Not too terrible.

Her fashion: Turquoise dress. Appropriate only for mother of the bride dresses, or dresses for women who were in their 20s in the 80s.

The Penetration Station:

He kissed her once more, then lifted his head to watch her face as he entered her with a smooth power, filling her, bringing to her honeyed haven all that he was as a man

Yes, that’s right. Her honeyed haven.

Survey Says: Another one of Joan’s fun romps. References to Fletch throughout warmed my heart.

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REVIEW – Secrets of Autumn – Joan Elliott Pickart

05 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by Giulia Torre in Loveswept Reviews, Romance Cover Art

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#sexysentences, 1980s romance, Bantam Loveswept, cover art, loveswept, nick caruso, retro romance, romance cover art

Secrets of Autumn by Joan Elliott Pickart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Secrets of Autumn coverThe Secrets of Autumn #162 – Joan Elliott Pickart (Oct 1986)

Meetup: Slapstick. Heroine pretends to be unfashionable and unattractive while she temps for a handsome architect to gather psychological data for her dissertation.

Conflict: Hero falls in love with plain jane heroine because he’s looking to settle down, and feels betrayed when he learns that she is actually fashion-forward.

80s standouts: Were human subjects research protocols not run through an IRB in the 80s?

His fashion: Not terrible. Very little brown, surprisingly.

Her fashion: It wouldn’t be the 80s without a teal blue shirtwaist dress.

The Penetration Station: “He came to her with strength tempered by gentleness, and she received him with love” (p. 87). Meh. Not Joan’s strong suit.

Cover Art: Nick Caruso. They’re both wet.

Survey Says: Joan Elliott Pickart does fun romps better than tragic sap. This one was a romp. Fun and funny. Actually liked secondary character (hero’s male chum) – Bish Terzoni. Bish Terzoni?

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