Musings on Romance

Category: Random Musings (Page 5 of 7)

Housekeeping

I’ve recently transferred the blog from a Blogger platform to WordPress.  As far as my testing has shown, all the links work fine but if you have some trouble, please let me know and I will fix what needs fixing.

I’ve tested the new site on the iPad and other mobile devices.  It seems to be fine (although I had to turn my own phone to a landscape view to see the site properly) but if you have difficulty on a mobile device, I’d be happy to hear from you.  If there are problems, I will see what I can do about a more functional mobile site.  I am brand new to WordPress however, so I’d ask that you bear with me.

Any comments or feedback on the new site are welcome.  While I know that my visitors are not my beta testers for this site, if you do have some feedback, please feel free to share it.  Just like when you move into a brand new house, sometimes it is only by “living in it” for a while you can find the various bugs.

AttributionNoncommercialNo Derivative Works Some rights reserved by Photo Dean

AttributionNoncommercialNo Derivative Works Some rights reserved by Photo Dean

I hope this new site will be a robust platform for the blog.  Please feel free to look around the new place and settle in – as I don’t plan on moving platforms again!

Kaetrin

 

The Bell Curve of the HEA

The other day I was pondering why some books work better for me than others; why some books leave me dissatisfied at the end, even when they meet the genre conventions of the HEA.  Perhaps I’d had too much pizza but I came up with what I like to call “the bell curve of the HEA“.  (*I’m aware that it’s not actually a bell curve, but it is a curve and it sounds good so I’m keeping it.  Also, maths isn’t my strong suit.  Go with me here.)
It isn’t an absolute answer, but it does go toward explaining why some books don’t work for me.
In most romance novels (perhaps this is true of other genres also but I’m sticking with what I know), the “happiness graph” might look something like this:
romance novel graph 1.jpeg

 

A Tale of Two A**holes, or: What a difference female agency makes

I recently listened to a book with an asshole hero and, around the same time, read another with a similar type of male lead.  Though there were problems with both, one of the books worked much better for me than the other.     The main reason I disliked the first book was that I could not like the hero.  But in both books, the hero is  an asshole.  So: why did I like one and not other?  This post is the result of my mental ramblings on the topic.  And it all comes down to female agency.

Book 1 was Fever (Breathless #2) by Maya Banks.   This author seems like a lovely lady from what I can tell from Twitter. My opinion of this book is in no way an opinion of her.  She tends to be a hit or miss author for me.  I loved Sweet Surrender and I enjoyed Rush, the first book in the Breathless series quite a bit.  But Fever was not a success.  While lots of people loved Fever (which is fine because Vegemite), it didn’t work for me.

The second book was Tangled by Emma Chase.  Ms. Chase is a new author but I enjoyed her writing style and the humour of the book very much. (and again, just because I thought Drew was an ass, doesn’t mean I think she is. Just to be clear).
The two books are very different in tone.  But they have in common that the male protagonist is a jerk.  I discussed Drew a fair bit in my review of Tangled. As the book is told from his point of view, we are steeped in Drew from start to finish.Fever is told in third person with the POV shifting between the two main characters.  But, Fever is almost always in the male gaze so our hero, Jace Crestwell is the most prominent character in the book by a factor of about a million.

Why Can’t People Just Talk To Each Other??

Dear Everyone,I’m a results person.  I tend to look at where I want to go and plot a course to get me there.  (I am also a details person but for the purposes of this post, that’s not so important – although it can make me very annoying.)  In a potential conflict, my goal is to resolve it.  If I think maybe I have misunderstood something, I’ll ask a question to clarify.  I don’t tend to jump to conclusions without evidence.  I’ll ask until I’m clear.  So I don’t get the “Big Mis”.  It’s my least favourite trope in romance.

Very rarely, it can work for me – usually where the misunderstanding is logical (this takes some setting up so that I don’t want to kick either main character) and of short duration.  The longer it is drawn out and the less rational the conclusion jumped to, the more likely it is I’ll want to throw my reader at a wall.

Vegemite: It’s a Matter of Taste

Vegemiteontoast_large
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vegemiteontoast_large.jpg
I like Vegemite^.  A sparing amount  over freshly made and hot buttered toast, can be just the thing for breakfast if I’m in a toast kind of mood.  Other than that I grew up eating it and I like the flavour of umami reasonably well (or, possibly, just saying “umami”), I really can’t explain it though.  I don’t expect you to understand.  It is almost black and thick and kind of … greasy. It is a by-product of the beer brewing process. (And it LOOKS like a petroleum by-product.) But I like it.  It is okay for me to like it.  It is also okay for you not to like it.
If you’d like, I will try and explain why I like Vegemite but if you don’t “get it”, it doesn’t mean I have failed you. I’m  not obliged to keep trying to come up with new ways to justify to you why I like Vegemite. I am not a Vegemite-Evangelist. I’m a Vegemite-Live-and-Let-Live-r.  Vegemite, like many things, is something that ultimately, you either “get” or do not. And LOADS of people DON’T.  LOADS.

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Deconstructing my favourite sex scene

Regular readers of the blog will know that I like a good hot sex scene. I read Alisha Rai’s Play With Me recently – very hot.  KA Mitchell’s No Souvenirs and Regularly Scheduled Life (scroll down a little after you click the link for a brief review), Heidi Cullinan’s Special Delivery and Double Blind,  Cara McKenna’s Willing Victim, most everything by Charlotte Stein – all feature very hot scenes which, for the most part, advance the story and reveal the characters (and not just because they’re naked).  In fact, I wrote a post a while back saying that I don’t like fade to black (except when I do) and why.  So you might be surprised then, to know that my favourite sex scene ever, is not at all sexy. Not the least bit hot.  But I love it. When I need a comfort read and I have a spare 20 minutes, I open the book up just before the scene starts and within seconds I’m sighing in pleasure (er, not that kind of pleasure).   In fact, it has happened that those spare 20 minutes have turned into numerous complete re-reads, but I digress.

The book?  Heartless by Mary Balogh.

Sadly, it is out of print, but I hope it will be available digitally one day soon. I paid a hideous amount for it on eBay five or so years ago and have never regretted a single cent. ETA: Cue streamers and cries of Huzzah!! it is available again. You can buy it  from Amazon here.

It is a book I don’t think I can be entirely rational about.  It is my favourite Mary Balogh, a definite Desert Island Keeper and in my top 5 books of all time (don’t ask me to name the other 4 – it’s too hard).  I’m sure the book has flaws. I don’t care. I love it. And, I’d like to share with you one of the (many) reasons why.

bright pink cover with embossed silver author name and title (top and bottom) with cut out decoration in the middle, part of which reveals some of the inner cover of a man and a woman in an embrace

Here’s the blurb (from Goodreads)  Life has taught Lucas Kendrick, Duke of Harndon, that a heart is a decided liability. Betrayed by his brother, rejected by his fiancée, Luke fled to Paris, where he became the most sought-after bachelor in fashionable society.

Ten years later, fate has brought him back home, to the rescue of the very people who had once shunned him. Luke is amused by the advice that a wife will make his takeover of both the title and the family estate smoother, but amusement turns to desire once he sets eyes upon Lady Anna Marlowe.

Unbeknownst to Luke, Anna is also no stranger to pain, but her suffering can’t be so easily overcome, not when her tormentor stalks her to the very doors of Bowden Abbey. Luke and Anna, each made fragile by the past, must learn to trust both each other and their love if they are to have any chance for a future together.

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