Grade: D

Jane at Dear Author did a post recently ‘coming out’ as a lover of category romance. It was one of those posts that hit a nerve, generating a lot of comments. Readers were falling over themselves (myself included) to ‘fess up and wax lyrical over their favourite authors.

I’ve got about 20 Harlequins on my Keeper Shelf. Most of these are great books but a few are the equivalent emotional porn. Cheap thrills with no troublesome character development to hold up the action. Give me immediate angst, an alpha hero acting like a cockhead and a huge grovelling apology at the end and I’m in heaven.

An author who does this well is Julia James. In the past, I’ve liked her books, but her latest offering, Bedded, or Wedded? is disappointing to say the least.

The Cover

I’m guessing that the male model that was booked for this shoot didn’t show up. I mean, was this guy hauled in off the street? He’s pale, a little flabby, and I’m guessing it’s no accident we can’t see his face. The female model looks like she’s got a death grip on the back of his neck and is muttering ‘Don’t move!’ through her clenched teeth.

The Plot

Lissa Stephens is a classic martyr heroine. She is doing two jobs, office temp by day and casino hostess by night, to support her disabled sister and save up enough money to arrange an operation for her privately in the US. The sister was injured in the same car accident that killed both their parents. Lissa was also in the car but walked away unscathed, and apparently suffers from survivor guilt.

Xavier Lauran believes that his younger brother Armand intends to marry Lissa and when he discovers she is - horror of horrors! - a casino hostess, he decides to find out if she is worthy of Armand. Needless to say, this leads to a bit of sexin’ and Xavier concluding that Lissa is the biggest slut that ever walked the earth.

My first problem with this book is that the whole story proceeds on the assumption that casino hostessing is the most degrading and despicable job short of prostitution on the face of the earth:

For so many of the former Eastern Bloc life was tough, and he couldn’t blame such women for trying to improve their economic circumstances, even if in distasteful ways such as being a casino hostess, or worse. Then his eyes hardened. That allowance could be made for immigrants, but could it extend to someone like Lissa Stephens? She’d grown up with the advantages of free education, free health care and, if necessary, free housing. So what need was there for her to work in a place like this - unless she chose to? And what did it say about a woman who wanted to work in place like this?

Oh. My. God.

For the record, all Lissa does in this job is sit next to punters, try to persuade them to buy overpriced champagne and dance with them a bit. But she too regards this cushy little job of hers with a kind of despairing revulsion. Lissa copes with the nightly ‘horror’ by hiding behind a ‘mask’ of cheap clothes, trashy hair and garish make-up. Frankly I’m surprised she managed to keep the job. She sounds a total state:

Close up, her make up was atrocious. Layered on over her skin, cracking already around her nostrils, her eyes caked in shadow and her lashes thick with mascara. And as for her mouth -

Her crimson lipstick was like jam, sticky and thick

Jam? Her lipstick was like jam?

Of course, beneath the tarty exterior lurks a woman of extraordinary beauty. The delightful Xavier can’t wait to see what she will look like when she is in the right clothes so he forces her to join him for dinner and buys her an acceptable a dress to wear. And Lo! It transpires that she is in fact worthy of his respect! This is demonstrated by the fact Lissa asks Xavier questions about Champagne is made - which he graciously answers at length - and demonstrates a basic level of schoolgirl French. Xavier is French. (Is anyone else getting that Xavier is a tad egocentric?)

Having discovered the wondrousness of Lissa’s schoolgirl French, Xavier jets her off to his private island in the Cote D’Azur. They spend two ‘blissful’ weeks there. Xavier marvels at Lissa’s ability to amuse herself clambering over rocks on the beach while he reads “market analysis by sector and geographical location” on his laptop. Well fuck me!

The idyll is broken when Xavier overhears Lissa on the phone to Armand, apparently accepting a marriage proposal. The charming Xavier then informs Lissa that he only seduced her to get her away from Armand and packs her off to London again, warning her not to even think about marrying Armand. There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for what Xavier has overheard but - of course - Lissa decides not to tender it. Instead, Xavier finds out the truth at the wedding.

The Hero

I couldn’t take to Xavier at all. He’s profoundly shallow (unless that’s an oxymoron?). Fittingly, he owns a luxury goods brand, and that’s how he seems to regard Lissa: as a (potential) luxury item who falls to be judged purely on how she looks.

His first reaction when he sees Lissa in the casino is ‘revulsion’. But when he spots her leaving the casino with her make-up off, he muses:

If she looked that good without even trying, how would she look properly dressed and presented?

It’s only when she’s finally wearing the right clothes that he really sits up and takes notice:

She looked breathtaking. Stunning. Incredible.

Every last gram of speculation he’d entertained about just what she might look like in the right clothes, the right make-up and hairstyle, was confirmed. In spades.

And he is not about to let himself be distracted from the important stuff (her looks) by, like, emotions and shit:

Why did he feel a stab of pity at her being so tired - and why did the exhaustion in her face merely emphasise the extraordinary beauty of her bone structure?

Oh no, Lissa looks tired! Still, it makes her look even hotter so who gives a fuck! Good times!

What a catch this guy is.

The Heroine

Lissa could have been an interesting character. She is supposedly driven by survivor guilt. That could have been an intriguing reason for her not allowing herself to fall in love with someone. Instead, as soon as someone else offers to pay for her sister’s operation, her guilt disappears like magic and the first thing she does is ring Xavier and asks if he’s still on for a shag.

Worse, she seriously lacks self-respect. When Xavier finally admits he’s in the wrong she lets him off the hook with alacrity:

She wanted to hate Xavier for what he’d done to her, but how could she? He hadn’t treated her badly because it hadn’t been her, the real her, he’d manipulated and accused. He’d done it to some mythical gold-digging floozy who had never existed.

No, love. He did it to you. *Sigh*.

The Writing

The shallow characters are bad enough. But this book contains sentences that are frankly bewildering. For example (and I swear this does not contain typos):

What he could tell, though - and he was still coming to terms with the knowledge - was that she had a bone structure that was still impacting on him.

Her bone structure was impacting him? What is she? Lethal fucking weapon?

Impatiently she brushed the question from her head.

I just don’t have words for that.

And then there’s the endless repetition:

The fury blitzed in him again. She’d turned him down. Said no.

No.

A single word.

Denying him what he wanted.

Her.

Because that was what he wanted - he wanted her. He wanted her now - right now - tonight.

Oh quit being so fucking ambiguous! Do you want her or not?

The Verdict

A disappointed grade D.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: D, Romance: Contempo, Tumperkin's Reviews, Romance: Category. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.