Dls’s Comments (group member since Sep 14, 2010)

Dls’s comments from the Fans of Eloisa James & Julia Quinn group.

@ Mrs ColinBridgerton; if you haven't read Hoyt's To Seduce A Sinner, you might try that--very far from beautiful heroine that he wants to bed at first sight. (For that matter, although she's loved him forever, its not for his looks, either.)
The more formulaic books can be really annoying...I do so agree!

Every time I reread Bet me I see more Cinderella references--the shoes, the pumpkin couch, "Charm boy", the ugly mother, .... The Pygmalion plots I think are tricky. The Duran one works beautifully but many are too shallow--a nice dress and a good haircut are not all it takes. I liked the proposition though it's not my favorite Ivory.
I do love really good second chance ones: Rhys and Helena and Jemma and Elijah's stories, and not quite a husband by Thomas. Also the book of scandal by Julia London or the marriage bed by Gurhke ( not sure i have yhe right name) I also love what I think of as inner beauty stories: that's
what calls to me about Dreyers never a gentleman, or Hoyt's To Seduce A Sinner.
On the other hand the rake and innocent almost never works for me. I'm trying hard to think of male Pygmalion stories ...

No.:-( although sometimes they download late which drives me nuts.

No! That's wonderful! Where did you hear that?
I don't think of Bet Me as primarily a misunderstanding story. I think of it (besides best contemp I've ever read) as primarily a "girl starts to appreciate she really is sexy and guy starts to believe she loves him for who he really is" story. Although I also think it's the best remake is Cinderella ever...

I can't wait until it downloads on my nook!

Hm. I have so many... Mistaken impression ia one, marriage of convenience (when done well) is another, I really like virgin men stories and friends becoming lovers stories. It's easier to say what I don't like--amnesia stories and stories where the tension comes from evil incarnate bad guys and has nothing to do with character development. Or stupid miscommunication plots.
Still my favorites are probably ones that are unusual enough not to be subgenres. An affair before christmas comes to mind as does Jo goodmans book where hero and heroine are both playing roles to hide their underground railroad work....I have a hard time remembering titles.
The lost duke of wyndham falls into that category too, as does flowers from the storm, or captives of the night.

Just finished Always a Temptress. Another five star book. Although I was mildly irritated by some loose plot ends--the timing is not consistent with the previous book, we never do learn whether Diccon really wanted Kate locked up, who painted that picture anyway, that sort of thing. And how many times can one heroine be forced into what she fears most?
But the relationship between the two was wonderful.
I'm reading Lady Sophies Christmas wish now.

I forgot to say that I read the newest Susan Mallery. I liked it...but I feel like she's writing the same characters over and over right now. I ended up wishing that either of the secondary relationships were the primary one--they were in different ways more interesting, I thought.

I Just finished Unclaimed. Wow. I'm not going to say too much because she's our monthly read in November, but I will say that she made it totally believable when the hero decided to make love the the heroine after building his life around chastity--and I couldn't help thinking of Mary Balogh's last book, where, much as I love her stuff, I really wasn't persuaded that the very correct hero would have made love before marriage.
Beside that...Just wow. She's an amazing writer.
And...It looks like the last book in the series is comingout in November! yay!

Oops! Sorry I forgot to post. It's "Not quite a husband" by Sherry Thomas.

I was thinking of you when I chose it Janga!

Yes she is Monica. Maybe 4 years or so?

Got it up from my iPhone!

This is one book where I feel like the author got every word absolutely right. It may be one of my top 10 ever romances--certainly one of my top 20.  It’s deeply romantic, moving, and really insightful about how relationships can go brutally wrong when two people love each other—and then what it really takes to get it right again.
 I was torn between two scenes in this book…so  here they both are. I actually think the two together give a better sense of the emotional power of this book. 
Remember, clues are fine but don’t give the  answer  away—I’ll post it Tuesday.
 
Scene 1
 
“Have you always wanted to be a Cambridge professor?” She urged a pawn forward. So many questions, she thought. So many things she did not know about him.
“Not just any professor: the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.” He placed his chin in his palm. “I thought you’d be impressed by it.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “So it was a fairly recent aspiration.”
“No, since always.”
She blinked.  “But I thought you said…”
The flame of the lantern swayed. Light and shadow chased across his chiseled cheekbones. There was a stillness to him, a resignation almost. Her heart ached.
He smiled slightly. “I’ve wanted to be the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics since I was eleven. And I thought at that time that you’d be impressed by it.”
She chortled, out of confusion. “When you were eleven, why would you care what I thought of what you were going to do when you grew up?”
“I cared. And when I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and maybe even seventeen.” He advanced his knight some more.
“What do you mean, exactly?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just that I have loved you even when I was nothing and no one to you, when you didn’t know my name and barely knew my face.”
She stared at him, not understanding his words at all. He’d loomed so large in her heart and imagination for so long that it was difficult to grasp that he could eve have been nothing and no one to her.
He’d loved her, in those years when she’d thought of him as little more than an embryo.
“You were a child,” she said slowly, still in shock. “You were an infant.”
“Old enough to despair of ever being grown-up enough for you.”
“It doesn’t make what you did with Mrs. Hedley any less reprehensible.”
“No,” he agreed quietly.  “It only makes everything more terrible.”
Silence, as the implication of everything she’d lost slowly began to sink in.
“If only you’d told me…” she murmured.
She would not have been so quick to abandon their marriage, as if it were a burning ship.
“I could say the same,” he replied. “If only you’d told me.”
She had a sudden vision of herself as a wizened old physician, her hands too arthritic to wield  a scalpel, her  eyes too rheumy to diagnose anything except measles and chicken pox. The wizened old physician would very much like to drink tea next to her wizened old professor, chuckle over the passionate follies of their distant youth, and then go for a walk along the river Cam, holding his paper-dry, liver-spotted hand.
How ironic that when they’d been married, she’d never thought of growing old with him. Yet now, years after the annulment, she should think of it with the yearning of an exile, for the homeland that had long ago evicted her.
 
Scene 2
“Now what I want to know is what happened when you found heroine, hero” said [hero’s brother 1]. “Did you just say your sister sent me, pack up everything and come with me this moment?”
“More or less.”
“And she came away with you?”
“More or less.” Hero tossed heroine a mischievous look. “Although there might have been laudanum, drugging, and a midnight abduction involved.”
“Now that’s a much better story” said [hero’s brother 2]. “I would pay to read that one.”
“And for his knavery, hero lost one of his—more important parts,” said heroine.
“No!” brother 1 and brother 2 shouted in unison.
“Heroine!” [heroine’s sister] squeaked.
“Kidney!” hero cried. “It was just a kidney. A man can live a perfectly vigorous life with one kidney.” 
“You can call it a kidney if you want,” said heroine.
Brother 1 hooted. Sister covered her eyes. Hero covered his entire face, his shoulders shaking with mirth. Heroine couldn’t help it—she laughed, laughed so much that she had to dab at her eyes with a handkerchief.
This was what she’d once imagined marriage to him would be like, this festive normalcy, this sense of warmth and ease and belonging.
“So what really happened?” asked [hero’s brother 3].
Brother 3 had seriousness and authority of one who’d been groomed since birth for responsibilities. When he asked questions, people answered.
“Ah, the dreaded what-really-happened question,” said hero, still smiling. “Tell him, heroine.”
Now she knew what it had felt like for him when she asked him to tell the Braeburns why they had to leave right away. But she had not his talent for shaping words into a separate reality. She swallowed. “It was very simple, really. When hero came, I wanted to go with him. I was—I was never so happy to see anyone in my life.”
Hero leaned back in his chair, his head tilted. For a moment she thought he would mock her. He’d told such a beautiful—and ultimately true—version of their story to the Braeburns, and all she had to say to his brothers was these two plain lines. And then she noticed the shimmer of tears in his eyes.
 

I've been rereading last weeks puzzler One Dance with a Duke. It's really wonderful.
I am having trouble accessing this website from my laptop but not my iPhone. So I may need to post the puzzler tomorrow . But it's all set to go.

I actually thought it made sense that Bram was willing to accept a desk job. He had learned he would put his men at risk; he had learned that people had worth even without a foot or leg, he had someone to love beside his father....
And my impression was they would split their time between London and spindle cove although maybe I'm wrong.

Oh this is the first in a trilogy by one of my favorite new authors.

I thought the plot was interesting; there is just something about her writing style that doesn't appeal to me. The scenes where she was in mourning and he came over, had her to dinner, etc. without any recognition that it violates the propriety of th time and would have become public knowlege annoyed me. Also when I decided to drop it I took a quick look at the end and was really annoyed by the unrealistic idea that if she remarried it became admission of guilt and the child became legally the new husbands. I tend to find it hard to get into a book when it ignores the culture and behavior of the day (I'm not bothered by the same behavior if the book shows what the consequences would have been.)

I tried Lorraine Heath'sWaking Up With the Duke but it doesn't work for me. So I'm back to rereading Heyers, and waiting for Unclaimed at the end of the month. I'm really looking forward to a whole bunch of books that come out the last week in Sept/first of October--including Black Hawk and Notorious Pleasures.

I read Romancing the Countess. I think she has a lot of potential as an author--her ability to create a sense that her characters are real is very good. But you could drive a truck through the holes in the plot (no lady back then would have been left without support as a widow--her settlementes would have prevented it--and if there was some unusual exception in her case the plot should have explained it.) More troublingly, the relationship between the hero and heroine did a 180 half way through the book-or maybe its just the heroine--but its like reading two different books about two different couples. I will definitely read her next book, though--this seems like the kind of thing she can overcome.