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Jul. 31st, 2013 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatWed Reading Meme? Or which trashy romance novel am I reading this week?
This week's selection is Captain Jack's Woman by Stephanie Laurens. It's not nearly as good as the reader's at Good Reads appear to think it is. Actually Amazon was a tad more critical, which was sort of surprising.
The story idea is fun. Kit Cranmer, the granddaughter of Lord Spencer Cranmer, finally finagles her way back to the wild and wooly Norfolk coast, after several dull seasons in London. Her aunts wanted to marry her off and get the benefits...in exchange for her hand and a dowry, the man would further their husbands bank accounts and careers. Or something to that effect. Kit catches on and turns down all the proposals, until they eventually give up and send her back home to grandpa. At home, Kit decides to don male clothing, hide her feminine looks and run a smuggling gang by night. The smugglers are poor fishermen in desperate need of a smart leader, since they nary a brain between them. All is fun and games, until Captain Jack struts onto the scene, and he literally struts in all his handsome glory. Sweeping our poor dear innocent heroine off her feet. They cross swords briefly. He strikes a deal with her - join my gang. Jack has an alterior motive, actually more than one.
He is under-cover with the gangs, checking to see if they are smuggling French spies into the Norfolk Coast - this is apparently during the Napoleonic Wars (a popular period for historical romance novelists and actually historical novels period). Gee France and England were at War a lot. Now they have bigger worries and bigger countries to fret about.
So he convinces Kit to work for him for a month - because he can't risk Kit telling anyone what he is up to or for her men to not join up. After a month - they'll figure out a way to have her retire gracefully. Then unbeknowest to Kit, Jack plans on making her his mistress.
It's a basically a battle of wills. Add to this the fact, that there's a couple of cases of mistaken identity - he thinks she's an illegitmate daughter of a wealthy landowner, playing housekeeper by day, while she thinks he's just a rich smuggler, who came from gentry. She doesn't know he's Lord Hendon - the High Commissioner on the coast and under-cover. Not to mention the guy that the ladies of the district are attempting to set her up with. To Kit, Lord Hendon is probably a stuffy old guy in his 50s with a limp. (Okay, I'm beginning to get annoyed by the references to 40s and 50s in romance novels as being positively ancient. How would 20 somethings like to be called wet-behind the ears? Which they are actually in romance novels...but still. The only people who aren't maligned are 30 somethings...which means in a romance novel you have roughly 10 years of being cool.)
The book is a bit subversive in allowing the heroine to be a smuggler, but undercuts it by constantly pointing how much weaker she is physically to all the guys. Although, she is a bit brighter than them in some respects. Brawn but not a whole heck of a lot of brain.
Captain Jack's bright ...when he's not consumed by lust.
That's the problem with the book, the writer feels compelled to tell me every five minutes how consumed by lust the two leads are for one another, and how they can't figure out why the other guy or gal is in lust back. Kit had all the rakes at her feet in London, why isn't Jack? Jack had all the women at his feet in London, why isn't Kit? This gets old after a bit.
Sort a contrived way of building tension.
Also, to be fair, this is apparently one of the author's earlier books - and you can tell. Filled with purple prose and somewhat silly in places. But I am enjoying it, even though I do admittedly roll my eyes or find some bits unintentionally funny.
I never know what I'm going to read next. Whatever fits my mood. In short, it will be a surprise. As an aside, it's entertaining how many novelists state "her eyes cut him dead or his eyes followed her". I haven't been able to write that since I came online and a beta friend pointed out to me that eyes don't follow you.
Eh...what else? My mind is a blank. Bored of the summer tv offerings. Only one entertaining me is General Hospital, which doesn't count. There are a few new shows popping up in August.
But September can't come soon enough. The summer has been a bit of bust for everything so far. Oh and I almost left my cane on the train on the way to work. Had to bang on the conductors' window to retrieve it - because the doors had already closed by the time I got back up the steps to retrieve it. Was not a good start to my day.
This week's selection is Captain Jack's Woman by Stephanie Laurens. It's not nearly as good as the reader's at Good Reads appear to think it is. Actually Amazon was a tad more critical, which was sort of surprising.
The story idea is fun. Kit Cranmer, the granddaughter of Lord Spencer Cranmer, finally finagles her way back to the wild and wooly Norfolk coast, after several dull seasons in London. Her aunts wanted to marry her off and get the benefits...in exchange for her hand and a dowry, the man would further their husbands bank accounts and careers. Or something to that effect. Kit catches on and turns down all the proposals, until they eventually give up and send her back home to grandpa. At home, Kit decides to don male clothing, hide her feminine looks and run a smuggling gang by night. The smugglers are poor fishermen in desperate need of a smart leader, since they nary a brain between them. All is fun and games, until Captain Jack struts onto the scene, and he literally struts in all his handsome glory. Sweeping our poor dear innocent heroine off her feet. They cross swords briefly. He strikes a deal with her - join my gang. Jack has an alterior motive, actually more than one.
He is under-cover with the gangs, checking to see if they are smuggling French spies into the Norfolk Coast - this is apparently during the Napoleonic Wars (a popular period for historical romance novelists and actually historical novels period). Gee France and England were at War a lot. Now they have bigger worries and bigger countries to fret about.
So he convinces Kit to work for him for a month - because he can't risk Kit telling anyone what he is up to or for her men to not join up. After a month - they'll figure out a way to have her retire gracefully. Then unbeknowest to Kit, Jack plans on making her his mistress.
It's a basically a battle of wills. Add to this the fact, that there's a couple of cases of mistaken identity - he thinks she's an illegitmate daughter of a wealthy landowner, playing housekeeper by day, while she thinks he's just a rich smuggler, who came from gentry. She doesn't know he's Lord Hendon - the High Commissioner on the coast and under-cover. Not to mention the guy that the ladies of the district are attempting to set her up with. To Kit, Lord Hendon is probably a stuffy old guy in his 50s with a limp. (Okay, I'm beginning to get annoyed by the references to 40s and 50s in romance novels as being positively ancient. How would 20 somethings like to be called wet-behind the ears? Which they are actually in romance novels...but still. The only people who aren't maligned are 30 somethings...which means in a romance novel you have roughly 10 years of being cool.)
The book is a bit subversive in allowing the heroine to be a smuggler, but undercuts it by constantly pointing how much weaker she is physically to all the guys. Although, she is a bit brighter than them in some respects. Brawn but not a whole heck of a lot of brain.
Captain Jack's bright ...when he's not consumed by lust.
That's the problem with the book, the writer feels compelled to tell me every five minutes how consumed by lust the two leads are for one another, and how they can't figure out why the other guy or gal is in lust back. Kit had all the rakes at her feet in London, why isn't Jack? Jack had all the women at his feet in London, why isn't Kit? This gets old after a bit.
Sort a contrived way of building tension.
Also, to be fair, this is apparently one of the author's earlier books - and you can tell. Filled with purple prose and somewhat silly in places. But I am enjoying it, even though I do admittedly roll my eyes or find some bits unintentionally funny.
I never know what I'm going to read next. Whatever fits my mood. In short, it will be a surprise. As an aside, it's entertaining how many novelists state "her eyes cut him dead or his eyes followed her". I haven't been able to write that since I came online and a beta friend pointed out to me that eyes don't follow you.
Eh...what else? My mind is a blank. Bored of the summer tv offerings. Only one entertaining me is General Hospital, which doesn't count. There are a few new shows popping up in August.
But September can't come soon enough. The summer has been a bit of bust for everything so far. Oh and I almost left my cane on the train on the way to work. Had to bang on the conductors' window to retrieve it - because the doors had already closed by the time I got back up the steps to retrieve it. Was not a good start to my day.