Gifts Book

See, I'm not all about the old bodice rippers. I'll read the new crap too.
***
OK, so I read it. Boring as batshit. I've even got a shelf for it now, thanks to this book. Quite a few have qualified in the past, but this one actually motivated me to create it. So thanks, Anne Stuart, for getting me off my procrastinating butt with this tripey tidbit of tommyrot and twaddle.

You might find it hard to believe, but I've actually taken a day-long breather before writing this review to let the vitriol ebb a bit. You should have seen me yesterday.

I'm not going to go into the plot. All the rave reviews here cover it from end to end. I'm just going to say why this romance was a massive fail for me.

The Heroine.
This romance was one of the breed that IMO have types, not actual characters. We have the spinster with self-esteem issues. She constantly laments her hair, her complexion (freckles!), her lack of experience with guys, her gawkiness, her height, etc. OK, fine, I can see why it would be such a big deal for a woman of 30 in 1804, but she deliberately dowds herself down and then has a perpetual pity party for herself with "Woe is me" inner monologues. Maybe I was expected, as a reader, to want to assure Charlotte that she's gorgeous and beautiful, but she instead struck me as pathetic and a whiner. She's the beautiful swan who thinks she's an ugly duckling, with as much depth as a two page fairy tale. Seen it. Read it. Didn't like it the first time. Believe me, I could have sympathized with her "plight," but she overdid it way too much.



Also, her character was all over the place. When the book opens, she's coming back from a meeting of some lame Bluestocking Grrlpower Society where the girls had a swearing lesson from a maidservant, learning how to say bollocks and arse and bastard and fuck and all kinds of other naughty words. Nothing about if this was super secretive or not. Yet when Charlotte finds herself cornered by the hero in a pleasure garden, she doesn't want to scream because she'll be the laughingstock of London. (Ain't that always the way in these Regency-set tales? I swear, Napoleon could have buggered England six ways to Sunday if he'd distracted London with a marriage wager.) Anyway, I thought that for someone touted as smart, she seemed awfully stupid.

The Hero.
Just so Charlotte won't be lonely in her corner (because she'd never shut up about it), I didn't like the hero either. This was my biggest pet peeve. Adrian is a Tell, Don't Show Rake. I hate those. I don't want to be told just how big and bad he is, and then find out that all the unpleasant stuff is now part of his past. If he's got a rep as "The Villainous Viscount," his exploits have been fodder for the newspapers, and is this looming ogre of amoral lust and every vile proclivity known to Man, then I will be more than mildly disappointed when his character is revealed to be when we first see him a reduced opium user (to the point where he rarely does it anymore), a former indulger of orgies, he never drank from the communal vessel at the orgies, and in all other ways is nearly neutered in comparison to his famed persona.

OK, I know I'm a dinosaur when it comes to romances since I prefer ye olde bodice rippers, but I like seeing those old heroes who are said to be rakes and bounders actually being rakes and bounders. Where a chapter opened with them banging their mistress and being a callous bastard, or at least actively unpleasant. But it's much easier for readers to love an asshole when you don't see his assholery in action.

A couple times when Charlotte is staggering around like a ninny in the dark, Adrian accosts her and seems to be pawing some nameless lovely, and I thought, "OK, now he's acting like what we've been told he's like!" but...no. He always knows it's her, just from her movements or something else convenient. Can't have him acting like an asshole where we can see it.

Add to that his "My dad loved my dead brother most but he died, so I'm the heir and a disappointment" sob story, and he was a huge fail on all levels. I don't want lost-little-boy-in-a-man's-body heroes that I want to cuddle. This guy would have had his lunch eaten by some of romance's Golden Age alphas.

I want a story and people who live on the page. The kind of characters that were in this book invited the reader to self-insert in order to make them seem fuller, and that's not the type of reader I am. I want the author to write the story, the whole story.

Verdict: Adrian was as much a big bad rake as this is a Hell's Angel.


The Secondary Romance.
I started off liking the secondary romance between Lina and Simon Pagett better than Charlotte/Adrian but that quickly took a downturn when, yet again, it became a battle of caricatures rather than actual characters. Lina the bright and gay whore disguising a psychosis about sex, and the reprobate-turned-vicar who is a sexual dry drunk. Their encounters were predictable and hit all the points at the expected times. The zingers were more of the "I know you are, but what am I" kind - both in this pairing and our main couple. Nick and Nora Charles can rest easy. Their banter is safe.

So because of its utter written-in-her-sleep dullness, this predictable subplot quickly became an obnoxious distraction. And since the main storyline was no great shakes, I knew I was screwed, glued, and tattooed.

Everybody knew everything about everybody, except...
Lina really hates Pagett, which screams "Wuv!" to everybody...except Lina. Charlotte really hates Adrian, even though she's had a crush on him for two years, and yet everybody knows that she is really in love with him, except...Charlotte. Everybody. The old bed-ridden queen Lord Montague, Lina, Pagett, Meggie the Foul-Mouthed Maid, even the bloody villain comments on it. Maybe it was supposed to be poignant that poor Charlotte thinks she's guarded this secret for oh-so-long and oh-so-carefully, and yet every s.o.b. and their brother knows she's a trembling wreck over some guy she had a disastrous dance with two years ago. I hear a violin, and yet my eyes are still dry.

Oh, and while everybody seems to be getting psychic waves about everybody, we've got a Frenchie who is a beat-the-whore-til-she-bleeds libertine and who practically twiddles his fingers and chuckles evilly in the corner, and yet it's a staggering surprise when he is revealed to be...DUN DUN DUN...the bad guy. Hooda thunk??? This assclown provided the token intrigue and suspense that was given a few chapters at the end. Fell short of the mark? Oh, a tad.

Honorable mention from the Cliché Hall of Fame
When the bad guy and Adrian do confront each other, I swear to God this is a line of dialogue:

"You are too much like me, Adrian."

Well, it's not exactly the super-villain Freebird of "We are very much alike, you and I" but it's damn close and I had to chase my eyeballs across the floor.

And a final note about the dialogue: the dirty talk from Adrian didn't get me moist. As if I needed persuasion not to try another Stuart book, if that's indeed one of her trademarks, this will be the first and last AS book I read.

I've never had a book with such big print and huge margins take so long to read. When something is as boring and dull as this one was, it can slow a girl down.

I don't know about you all, but I'm feeling much much better now.