Reviews for Amelia

The average rating for Amelia based on 2 reviews is 1.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-07-06 00:00:00 John Higley Count on Diana Palmer to come up with ever creative ways to torture and abuse her poor heroines, always by a complete psychopath hero. She pretty much writes the same story, just changing settings and names. This one takes us to Texas in 1900. Amelia's hero spends 90% of the book bullying, degrading, humiliating, and terrorizing the meek, mousey heroine for absolutely no reason other than because he can. At least, your typical Harlequin or Bodice-Ripper gives you some reason to justify their hero's often sadistic cruelty, usually a half-baked revenge plot or a Great, Big, Terrible Misunderstanding. But here, the only seeming reason for H's obsessive hatred of h is simply that she breathes. And wow, this guy is a piece of work. Slow clap for Diana. When I think she can't write a more horrendous "hero", she tops herself yet again. This zero hero rapes heroine and then goes blabbing around town that she is a loose woman, causing her psycho dad to whip her almost to death! Yet our wonderful hero STILL doesn't let up: Apparently, everything he did is her fault. She drove him to it, you guys!!! And all the Other Women he is involved with... Poor heroine doesn't even figure as second best. He is pining for his dead fiancee, a woman who left him twenty years ago at the first sign that he may not be as rich as she had hoped. And when he is not pining for OW number 1, he is constantly dangling OW number 2, a very much alive, extremely venomous, almost fiancee. He straight up tells h she is no wife material, that he wants to marry the OW, but that he is forced to marry h only because she might be pregnant after his rape, and his whole family threatened to shun him for life if he didn't marry his rape victim. Absolute horror show. Don't even get me started on the doormat/martyr h with obvious masochistic desires. After everything he has done, all she can muster is a few witty comebacks and one instance where she throws a pitcher at him. I would have thrown the entire contents of a glass factory at him and then stabbed him with the broken shards. There is some extremely boring subplot involving heroine's brother, a Texas ranger, and how he falls in love with the daughter of the Mexican Bandido he is pursuing. Yeah, hot mess.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-05-26 00:00:00 Krzysztof Jackowicz DP can be like crack. It's bad for you, you swear never again, and then you always relapse and repeat the cycle. This one, unfortunately, was not as much of a guilty pleasure. For one thing there was very much a this happened, then that happened, then... quality to the storytelling. No depth and it just didn't flow. I didn't feel immersed in the least. Plus, all the jumping back an forth between Amelia and her brother's story was jarring. In many ways this was the typical DP hero, reluctantly attracted to the heroine yet inexplicably hating her for one irrational reason or the other. He was also one of the biggest, cruelest asses and that's saying a lot considering DP's track record. Even so, this lacked that certain DP crackiness that only she can get away with writing over and over and over again. Perhaps historical romance is simply not her forte. I think the reason I grudgingly enjoy her contemporaries is the campy OTT mess that her stories often are. The outrageously put upon virginal heroine who is a secret member of Mensa and champion biscuit maker combined with the cranky hero with a massive amount of chest hair and graduate degree in jumping to conclusions. All set against the background of a town of 2000 which has it's own movie theater, mall, fine art gallery, and community college which can offer any degree from Ancient Greek to Forensics. Oh, and we mustn't forget the 500 secret federal agents working anything from serial killing to international drug trafficking cases in that busy little town. It's too funny. This had some elements of her contemporary novels, but they just didn't translate. I believe she tried to be serious and the trials of the heroine provided some serious angst potential, but there was too much showing and not telling.