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 This made it seem like Theodora didn't grow from being a warm funny girl to being an emotionally withdrawn obsessive-compulsive - rather it seemed like we were presented with two completely different characters, and asked, as readers, to either (i) fill in the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 "The Seduction of Phaeton Black" by Jillian Stone

The Seduction of Phaeton Black by Jillian Stone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have mixed feelings about this one; there were a lot of points at the beginning of the book where I was tempted to stop reading. For example, I didn't realize that this was an erotic paranormal romance novel (as opposed to just being a paranormal romance novel). Thus a lot of the (what seemed to me like extraneous) sexual references bothered me - until I realized that it was just a different genre. I also found the heroine's behaviour in the beginning of the book to be extremely questionable - a lot of the decisions America makes, while not ending badly for her, would be considered by most people to be extremely poor judgement calls. Third, I found the hero, Phaeton Black, to be pushing the boundaries of what I would accept in a hero - he seemed vaguely disrespectful to women to me at first.

Despite this, I gave this book a high rating because once I got past (or ignored) those things, I found myself being drawn in by the plot, and I really enjoyed the second half of the book! While at first I found the heroine to be ridiculously naive, I found that once I was halfway through, having been pulled along by the plot, I actually liked her. And while at first I found the hero to be crude and disrespectful to women, the author did a good job of justifying his behaviour by showing the reader why he is the way he is, and not in a heavy-handed way. Phaeton also, I think, grows/changes throughout the course of the book, because of his relationship with the heroine. So by the end, I really liked him! And I thought the ending was ridiculously cute. I also liked the writing style and the balance between humour and drama. I still do think that the heroine's poor judgement calls (while maybe necessary for developing their romantic relationship), given the fact that her poor judgement was never seriously addressed, are problematic. But the fact that the author managed to "come from behind" despite this, and deliver an otherwise satisfying and entertaining book impressed me, and is likely what underlies my high rating.

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THOUGHTS on "A Hidden Fire" by Elizabeth Hunter

A Hidden Fire by Elizabeth Hunter
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed the first half of this book (it pulled me out of a reading slump), but the second half didn't live up to my expectations. I kept expecting the stakes to rise, or for the plot to kick it into high gear, but the climax of the book seemed rather simple and low-key to me. It mostly went off without a hitch. The post-climax (in Chile) was also a bit disappointing in that it didn't seem well-integrated into the overall structure of the book. I think it was supposed to (it also succeeded in) developing the relationship between the two main characters, but I felt like it was contrived solely for that purpose. I would have enjoyed it more if their developing relationship was more interwoven with the circumstances of the plot.

I also had a few issues with the characterization. In particular, other characters kept informing me that the heroine, B, was clever/smart, but I had trouble believing it since the evidence for their assertions seemed, to me, rather slim. There were instances where she was very composed under circumstance where we might expect a freak-out, but I don't equate composure with cleverness. We know she works in a library and are told she loves books, but again, being rather bookish myself, I'm fairly sure bookishness doesn't entail being smart. We are also shown circumstances where she shows a high degree of skill, but this wasn't presented in a way that made me think "oh wow, she IS smart." Bea seemed to present a normal degree of intelligence to me, which normally wouldn't bother me...except for the fact that other characters in the book kept telling me she was smart!

Another little thing that bothered me in the characterization is that Bea and Giovanni were very often smirking in circumstances where I didn't think smirks were warranted - smiles yes, but smirks no. Although maybe this is just a lexical quirk of mine, where 'smirk' indicates a derisive smile, and pretty much acts as an indication of someone finding humour in someone's (usually someone else's) unenviable circumstances. Since this is what 'smirk' evokes for me, it made the characters seem oddly derisive of each other, until started pretending that 'smirk' just meant 'smile.'

Overall, a good book, but I don't know if I'll read the next one. I actually had a hard time forcing myself through the "teaser" for the next book, I cared so little what was happening.



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