![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
In SHOCKING and UNPRECEDENTED news, work has been super-stressful lately. As a counterbalance, I have been reading a lot of romance novels on my iTouch.
Someone (on tumblr?) recommended Courtney Milan, and I’m gone through most of her available work so far.
The Governess Affair and A Kiss For Midwinter were my favorites.I thought the hero of The Governess Affair was appealing as fuck and I absolutely adored the way he approached the heroine and consistently made and respected boundaries with her. (The pins scene, oh my word.) I thought they were very well matched with their determination to build a happy life for themselves (and in the end, together).
With A Kiss For Midwinter, I really appreciated the heroine’s determination not to let one particularly nasty experience sour life (and wish that the author had gone into more detail about the cover-up of her pregnancy and miscarriage) and the fact that after she was seduced, her family was shown as unfailingly respectful of her and her ability to make choices regarding her life. I thought the hero was interesting and bought that his overtures to the heroine where COMPLETELY misconstrued.
I was less enamored of The Duchess War. While I liked the hero (and liked the he was the one who was desperate for love and worried about pleasing his partner sexually), I did not buy the heroine. Once everything was revealed, I couldn’t believe that someone who had known the freedoms granted a boy-child could ever interact with society (especially high society) as a female without SOME measure of bitterness and a visceral understanding of the sexism and discrimination she has to deal with. The heroine was way to equiniable about it all.
And I have not even FINISHED The Lady Always Wins and may not, because I find the hero such a total douche-nozzle. The hero (this isn’t a spoiler, we find this out in the beginning) is trying to get the heroine to marry him (they were childhood friends) before his financial ruin becomes public knowledge. So not only is this a hugely jerk-ass move but because the two main characters haven’t talked in seven years, despite being childhood friends, there is NONE of the things that make a friends-to-lovers romance fun. No stoic pining, no ‘she could never love me’, no 'suddenly there is something there that wasn’t there before.'
Someone (on tumblr?) recommended Courtney Milan, and I’m gone through most of her available work so far.
The Governess Affair and A Kiss For Midwinter were my favorites.I thought the hero of The Governess Affair was appealing as fuck and I absolutely adored the way he approached the heroine and consistently made and respected boundaries with her. (The pins scene, oh my word.) I thought they were very well matched with their determination to build a happy life for themselves (and in the end, together).
With A Kiss For Midwinter, I really appreciated the heroine’s determination not to let one particularly nasty experience sour life (and wish that the author had gone into more detail about the cover-up of her pregnancy and miscarriage) and the fact that after she was seduced, her family was shown as unfailingly respectful of her and her ability to make choices regarding her life. I thought the hero was interesting and bought that his overtures to the heroine where COMPLETELY misconstrued.
I was less enamored of The Duchess War. While I liked the hero (and liked the he was the one who was desperate for love and worried about pleasing his partner sexually), I did not buy the heroine. Once everything was revealed, I couldn’t believe that someone who had known the freedoms granted a boy-child could ever interact with society (especially high society) as a female without SOME measure of bitterness and a visceral understanding of the sexism and discrimination she has to deal with. The heroine was way to equiniable about it all.
And I have not even FINISHED The Lady Always Wins and may not, because I find the hero such a total douche-nozzle. The hero (this isn’t a spoiler, we find this out in the beginning) is trying to get the heroine to marry him (they were childhood friends) before his financial ruin becomes public knowledge. So not only is this a hugely jerk-ass move but because the two main characters haven’t talked in seven years, despite being childhood friends, there is NONE of the things that make a friends-to-lovers romance fun. No stoic pining, no ‘she could never love me’, no 'suddenly there is something there that wasn’t there before.'
Tags:
no subject
no subject
no subject