Tag Archives: romance novel reviews

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

Posted by in Laura London

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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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