THOUGHTS on Amanda Quick's "Rendezvous" and "Mistress"

Rendezvous by Amanda Quick
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This review is structured as a comparison/contrast between "Rendezvous" and another Quick novel, "Mistress."

Amanda Quick's "Mistress" is one of the first romance novels I've ever read, and it spurred me on to read Amanda Quick's entire backlist. "Rendezvous" has a somewhat similar dynamic between the hero and heroine, in that the hero prides himself on using reason and logic to guide his choices, while the heroine is an "original" more driven by emotions and intuition. However, while "Mistress" is an enjoyable comfort reread for me, my reread of "Rendezvous" left me unconvinced of the love story, and hence unsatisfied.

I liked the heroines of both books: the heroine of "Rendezvous," Augusta Ballinger, however, was slightly more difficult for me to relate to. Iphiginia Bright, the heroine of "Mistress," makes her decisions after a careful consideration of both her emotions and a logical, objective assessment of her circumstances (insofar as objectivity is possible). Augusta, on the other hand, prides herself on being a reckless Northumberland Ballinger, and often expresses her disdain for the the logical/objective approach. This made it harder for me to relate to her, since I personally value the ability to use logic as a tool for making decisions, and think that disdaining logic would be just as blind an approach as disdaining emotion. I still liked Augusta, however, particularly for how she emphasizes the importance of imagination and fun in life, and for how she fights for the inclusion of activities that encourage such values in her stepdaughter's curriculum.

It is often the case that Quick has "logical/scientific/academic" heroes who consider logic/reason/science and imagination/hypotheticals to be mutually exclusive. For instance, the hero of "Mistress," Marcus Cloud, the Earl of Masters, is a science/logic-driven hero who at one point in the book refuses to consider might-have-beens, and is only willing to consider "cold hard facts" in his arguments with Iphiginia. This annoyed me at first, since hypothetical reasoning is an important part of the scientific method, and Marcus, as a scientist and inventor, should know that! On further consideration, because Marcus does not seem to be a poor scientist, I ended up interpreting his refusal to consider the might-have-beens as poor argumentation skills driven by (i) his initial emotion immaturity and (ii) new emotions he didn't understand or acknowledge. This brings me to the most important point: Despite his arrogance in how he believes his reasoning always leads to the right conclusions, I still fell in love with Marcus because he seemed vulnerable to me in his loneliness, and in his fear for his brother's livelihood. I also loved how he was mature enough to understand that he would have to sacrifice his pride and change his long-established "rules" if he wanted to be with Iphiginia, and even better, that he was mature enough to admit this to Iphiginia. I feel like I would have fallen in love with Marcus if I was Iphiginia, and so I totally bought the love story. I also liked Marcus' dry humour, and even found his amusement at Iphiginia's innocence to be cute, as opposed to condescending, probably because he never took her ignorance as a reason to lessen his respect for her intellect.

In contrast, "Rendezvous" didn't work for me, primarily because I found the hero, Harry, the Earl of Graystone, to be unjustifiably overbearing and condescending to the point of being cruel to the heroine. For instance, at one point, when the heroine brings up her worries regarding their upcoming marriage, the following exchange ensues:

"I'm glad you find it so amusing," she whispered.

"Not amusing so much as a waste of time. I have seen you attempting to grapple with this sort of thing before, if you will recall. Your reasoning gets muddled quickly, my dear."

The way I read this, the hero manages to both

(i) imply that Augusta is incapable of logical reasoning, and

(ii) say that her concerns about her future are a waste of his time.

I would be furious at anyone that said I was incapable of logical reasoning and I would seriously re-consider marrying anyone who felt that my concerns were a waste of his time. And although there was a point where Harry supposedly realized he loved Augusta (i.e., that their relationship involved emotion, and not logic), I didn't really see any change in the way he treated Augusta afterwards. So I really couldn't understand how Augusta could fall in love with Harry, and thus didn't really believe in the love story.

Writing this up now, I realize that Augusta might not consider Harry's words above to be as much of an insult as I would consider them to be, since she is more disdainful of logic and reason than I am, and hence might not care if someone thought she was incapable of reason. But the disrespect he shows her in the above passage is still too blatant for me to swallow. So despite my view that people should at least try to consider facts objectively when assessing the merit of a thing (or future action), the Anaïs Nin quote "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are" plays a big role in why "Rendezvous" didn't work for me, while "Mistress" remains one of my favourite romance re-reads.

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THOUGHTS on "The Masque of the Black Tulip" by Lauren Willig

The Masque of the Black Tulip by Lauren Willig
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I don't mind historical wallpapers, where the historical circumstances don't have much impact on the character's choices and actions. But if the social circumstances of the historical period are just wallpaper for a romance novel, then I expect either the plot, or complex aspects of the hero/heroine's character (or some combination of those) to drive/constrain the hero and heroine in a similar way. I didn't feel like "The Masque of the Black Tulip" succeeded at this.

Plot-wise, I felt like it takes too long for the stakes to raise. For the majority of the book, the external "conflict" is a vague threat of the french spy, the Black Tulip, being in London. It isn't until the last ten percent of the book that the threat becomes better-defined. There is also a lack of internal conflict driving their choices/actions. Henrietta's background is pretty nondramatic. Miles' background is slightly more interesting in that he was for the most part, abandoned by his family. But even given this, there aren't situations where it seems like Miles' background is clearly driving his decisions.

So, because the external conflict is so vaguely-defined for so long, and there isn't really any motivating internal conflict, I often had trouble understanding why Miles and Henrietta behave in the ways that they do. Consequently, many of Miles and Henrietta's interactions seemed contrived and random to me, and I didn't really feel compelled to keep reading (until I hit that last 10%). I do always like the "friends-fall-in-love" trope, though, and I do think that Willig does do a good job showing how close Miles and Henrietta are. I just would have liked the book better if there was something compelling the progression of the book's build-up to its climax.

If you liked this book, I'd read: I prefer Joanna Bourne's "Spymaster" Series - more complexity, more gravity, and more heartstring-tugging. Or, if you liked how light this was, and you liked Miles and Henrietta's random conversations, I'd try Julia Quinn's "Just Like Heaven." (...although there are no spies)


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THOUGHTS on "The Ugly Duchess" by Eloisa James

The Ugly Duchess by Eloisa James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is divided into two portions, the "before" and the "after." I really enjoyed the "before", and I also enjoyed the "after", and was along for the emotional ride for both parts, but I had a lot of trouble connecting the two halves of the book into a coherent emotional arc.

It almost felt like two half-novels, with completely different concepts and characters, hastily glued together to form a full-sized novel. While there were sections between the "before" and "after" that were meant to show Theo and James' changing personalities, I found myself skimming over these parts in disbelief because the actions that precipitated these changes seemed random and unmotivated to me.

For instance, James deciding to become a pirate seemed completely out of the blue. Prior to this decision, I didn't see any indication of criminal tendencies from him. In fact, his outrage at his father's immoral (and illegal) behaviour, and guilt over how he had allowed himself to be bullied into taking advantage of Theodora led me to believe that he wanted to hold himself to some moral code of decency. I would have expected someone like that to only be pushed into piracy by circumstances he could not control, or something like a complete loss of faith in human decency. But I didn't see anything like that. The closest thing I could come to for motivation would be his desire to make his fortune, since his father's loss of their fortune is what forced him into betraying Theodora. But if this was his motivation, it didn't seem to drive him in a logical way. He didn't make any mention of intending to use whatever fortune he gained to make up for Theodora's embezzled fortune, or to manage his family's entailed land.

Theodora's change from a warm, funny (if a little cuttingly acerbic) girl, to a work-obsessed woman afraid of sexual intimacy was even more baffling to me. I didn't fully understand how her feelings of betrayal and unworthiness from the first half of the novel could trigger changes to this degree, and unlike with James, we see no scenes of Theodora's transition. This made it seem like Theodora didn't grow from being a warm funny girl to being an emotionally withdrawn obsessive-compulsive - rather it seemed like we were presented with two completely different characters, and asked, as readers, to either (i) fill in the blanks or (ii) just take it on faith that there was motivation underlying these changes. While I sympathized with both Theo-before and Theo-after, Theo-before and Theo-after seemed too disjointed for me to even see them as the same person, with a single emotional arc. I think that Theo overhearing James' father comparing her sexual behaviour to what he expected of a "proper" lady was supposed to motivate her distate for sexual intimacy, but I feel like we didn't get enough glimpses into Theo's thoughts or emotions about this to confirm this hypothesis. (For some writing styles where we don'tsee into the character's thoughts, and only see character's actions, this wouldn't be an issue, because but this book is one where we DO often hear what the characters are thinking, the lack was conspicuous and made Theo's character seem disjointed to me.)

Even with these issues, though, I really enjoyed the book. I always enjoy Eloisa James' writing style, and although I personally prefer historical romance novels where the social structures of the day put more restrictions on the characters (eg., I might have liked James' piracy and tattoo to have had graver consequences than it did, given that we were told that no tattooed man was supposed to be able to return to English society), I was distracted enough by how the novel tugged on my emotional heartstrings not to care.


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THOUGHTS on "A Night Like This" by Julia Quinn (or why her newer books don't seem to work for me(\)

A Night Like This by Julia Quinn
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

One thing I enjoyed about Quinn's previous books are that they are highly character-driven; there is often little plot, and little world-building (these being wallpaper historicals), but the books are still engaging purely because of the character development, and the development of the relationship between hero and heroine. My reading preferences are such that I take this development of the characters and their relationship to be THE key element in a romance.

The reason why I think Quinn's newer work, like "A Night Like This" (and "Just Like Heaven" to an even higher degree) doesn't work as well for me as her earlier work (eg, "The Viscount who Loved Me" and "The Duke and I"), is that the obstacles that the characters face in these books are external, as opposed to internal. So, whereas Anthony and Kate's obstacles in "The Viscount who Loved Me" were personal demons (fear of storms, of dying young), the obstacles facing Anne and Daniel in "A Night Like This" are external (the possibility of Sir George Chervil's threat to Anne, Lord Ramsgate's fury at Daniel, society frowning upon a match between an Earl and a governess). While there is nothing inherently wrong with having external obstacles as opposed to internal ones, they are problematic in a wallpaper historical, where the circumstances of external world are not as mitigating as they would be in a more traditional historical. More specifically, I feel like the external obstacles in "A Night like This" were too easily resolved, and led to little or no growth on the part of the characters. For books that are mostly character-driven, this is a huge loss.

Take the frowned-upon match between an Earl and a governess as an example. Many of Anne's decisions were affected by the reasonable assumption that Daniel could never marry her, due to the strictures of the society they live in. This view of the world was reiterated by side-characters (eg. Lady Pleinsworth), and seemed to pose a serious problem. But the resolution of this problem was hardly a resolution at all - the hero just ignores the strictures of society, decides to marry her, and the consequences of this decision are not addressed at all. This obstacle fails to develop Daniel and Anne's characters in any interesting way, and also makes the world they live in feel inconsistent. It's as if Anne is living in a traditional historical, but Daniel is living in a wallpaper historical (sometimes).

Another thing that I often enjoyed about Quinn's previous novels is the quirkiness of the side characters, which often shows up in the cute dialogue sequences. At some points in this book (and the previous in the Smythe-Smith quartet), however, some of the dialogue seemed too random and irrelevant, to the point where it was slightly irritating.

Having said that, however, I did enjoy reading the book, even though it didn't engage me as much as I would have preferred. Daniel and Anne are likeable characters, and the side-characters are too.

If you liked this book, I'd read: Her earlier work! I particularly enjoyed "The Viscount who Loved Me" and "The Duke and I."

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