In Soviet Russia, bad books read YOU!
When a book keeps me up at night, making mental lists of its deficiencies, you know it's a bad book.
The last book that did that was The Ice Queen, and I believe we all know how I feel about that book. (No, ftr, magical sexxoring will NOT fix your mental health issues. Also, ice in the hoohah= not sexay, and if his penis literally burns you, than it is the worst case of gonorrhea in history, NOT love.)
The other day I was at the bookstore with a friend, and I saw Jane Feather's books. "Hmm", I said, "I haven't read anything by her in a while." And so, shored up by memories of enjoyable Jane Feather romps, I picked up To Wed A Wicked Prince. (Should have been my first clue. An embarrassing title is not a good start.)
My problems with this story are legion, and begin with the characters. The heroine (hah!) is Lady Livia Lacey. (That right there is a problem. A name like that is enormously distracting. Every time I read it I wanted to try saying it three times fast.) In the first scene in the book, she seems promising. Smart, unconventional, strong minded. Don't get drawn in. It's a lie.
The "hero" is one of the biggest jackasses in my history of romance reading history, and I read Whitney, My Love. (In short, Man is asshole, man rapes, abuses and humiliates woman, Everyone says "I love you" and all the sudden it's HEA. *eyeroll*) Now, I have nothing against my Hero being alpha. I love it, in fact. There is a difference between being a strong, take charge kind of guy and being a bully. Alex is a bully, and LLL seems to lllove it.
The premise is this: LLL is an old maid (27, omg someone get her liver medication) and Alex is a Russian Prince. Alex's mother was Sophia Lacey, who was some distant cousin of Livia's, and who left Livia her house and everything in it when she died. HOWEVER. Turns out that the house was not actually hers, it belonged in fact to Alex's father, and now to Alex.
Alex is also a spy in a double agent kind of way. He grew up with the Czar and is very close to him. He is supposed to be spying on the English for the Czar but is actually part of a rebel group that is planning to assassinate him. I think. This was kind of fuzzy. To make sure no one suspects him of being a spy, he needs to marry someone that has good social connections. Well, if he marries LIvia then he can get his house back and she never needs to know, right?
So, he begins to pursue her. And by pursue, I mean "Isolate her and pressure her into doing things she doesn't really want to do." Example:
She has plans to have tea with a friend. He wants her to stand up said friend and go horseback riding in an isolated location with only him, which would destroy her reputation if anyone found out. She tells him she won't. He says she will. She says ok. This, of course, is after he buys her a horse pressures her into accepting it.
This pattern repeates until the wedding (and includes the proposal. Romantic.) When her friends express concern, she tells them that she LIKES the way he treats her. And indeed, she seems to, until they're actually married and he moves into "her" house, which she doesn't know is actually his. Then, he immediately fires her staff, takes over her parlor and kicks her dogs out into the mews. She throws a fit. He tells her that it's just how Russians are. (That is an excuse he uses repeatedly for being a jerk, sometimes just making stuff up, and her response is, "ok. I didn't understand.)
It just gets worse. Unfortunately, the heroine isn't the only character in this book that is tstl. Repeatedly, people will have conversations with Alex that go along the lines of, "Aren't we at war with your country?" "Yes, and I grew up as the Czar's right hand man." "Oh. Here's some state secrets. Good thing you aren't obviously a spy."
What bothered me the most, though, was that the characters didn't grow. They didn't change. Their actions didn't make any damn sense at all, either. Alex never stops being a total dickweed control freak, and LIvia just bows down and take it, apparently because the sexxoring was so. . . mundane. Seriously. I read a lot of sex, I know what I am talking about. (Stephanie Lauren's "On A Wild Night" and "On A Wicked Dawn" have awesomely hot sex, though. Although don't get me started on Stephanie Laurens. She's the one who wrote the "mom's underwear" sex scene.) By the time the inevitable "omg they're in danger how witll they ever get out of it" scene took place, I was seriously hoping someone would just shoot LLL.
So: Unsympathatic , TSTL characters, weak plot, poor pacing. Don't read this drek.
The last book that did that was The Ice Queen, and I believe we all know how I feel about that book. (No, ftr, magical sexxoring will NOT fix your mental health issues. Also, ice in the hoohah= not sexay, and if his penis literally burns you, than it is the worst case of gonorrhea in history, NOT love.)
The other day I was at the bookstore with a friend, and I saw Jane Feather's books. "Hmm", I said, "I haven't read anything by her in a while." And so, shored up by memories of enjoyable Jane Feather romps, I picked up To Wed A Wicked Prince. (Should have been my first clue. An embarrassing title is not a good start.)
My problems with this story are legion, and begin with the characters. The heroine (hah!) is Lady Livia Lacey. (That right there is a problem. A name like that is enormously distracting. Every time I read it I wanted to try saying it three times fast.) In the first scene in the book, she seems promising. Smart, unconventional, strong minded. Don't get drawn in. It's a lie.
The "hero" is one of the biggest jackasses in my history of romance reading history, and I read Whitney, My Love. (In short, Man is asshole, man rapes, abuses and humiliates woman, Everyone says "I love you" and all the sudden it's HEA. *eyeroll*) Now, I have nothing against my Hero being alpha. I love it, in fact. There is a difference between being a strong, take charge kind of guy and being a bully. Alex is a bully, and LLL seems to lllove it.
The premise is this: LLL is an old maid (27, omg someone get her liver medication) and Alex is a Russian Prince. Alex's mother was Sophia Lacey, who was some distant cousin of Livia's, and who left Livia her house and everything in it when she died. HOWEVER. Turns out that the house was not actually hers, it belonged in fact to Alex's father, and now to Alex.
Alex is also a spy in a double agent kind of way. He grew up with the Czar and is very close to him. He is supposed to be spying on the English for the Czar but is actually part of a rebel group that is planning to assassinate him. I think. This was kind of fuzzy. To make sure no one suspects him of being a spy, he needs to marry someone that has good social connections. Well, if he marries LIvia then he can get his house back and she never needs to know, right?
So, he begins to pursue her. And by pursue, I mean "Isolate her and pressure her into doing things she doesn't really want to do." Example:
She has plans to have tea with a friend. He wants her to stand up said friend and go horseback riding in an isolated location with only him, which would destroy her reputation if anyone found out. She tells him she won't. He says she will. She says ok. This, of course, is after he buys her a horse pressures her into accepting it.
This pattern repeates until the wedding (and includes the proposal. Romantic.) When her friends express concern, she tells them that she LIKES the way he treats her. And indeed, she seems to, until they're actually married and he moves into "her" house, which she doesn't know is actually his. Then, he immediately fires her staff, takes over her parlor and kicks her dogs out into the mews. She throws a fit. He tells her that it's just how Russians are. (That is an excuse he uses repeatedly for being a jerk, sometimes just making stuff up, and her response is, "ok. I didn't understand.)
It just gets worse. Unfortunately, the heroine isn't the only character in this book that is tstl. Repeatedly, people will have conversations with Alex that go along the lines of, "Aren't we at war with your country?" "Yes, and I grew up as the Czar's right hand man." "Oh. Here's some state secrets. Good thing you aren't obviously a spy."
What bothered me the most, though, was that the characters didn't grow. They didn't change. Their actions didn't make any damn sense at all, either. Alex never stops being a total dickweed control freak, and LIvia just bows down and take it, apparently because the sexxoring was so. . . mundane. Seriously. I read a lot of sex, I know what I am talking about. (Stephanie Lauren's "On A Wild Night" and "On A Wicked Dawn" have awesomely hot sex, though. Although don't get me started on Stephanie Laurens. She's the one who wrote the "mom's underwear" sex scene.) By the time the inevitable "omg they're in danger how witll they ever get out of it" scene took place, I was seriously hoping someone would just shoot LLL.
So: Unsympathatic , TSTL characters, weak plot, poor pacing. Don't read this drek.