Fiction: “Madame’s Deception” by Renee Bernard

Okay. So look, I’ve been busy. Between one thing and another (and also, sleeping), I haven’t been able to find the time to write the review for this book. I find that to be ridiculous, because I finished this on the same day that I finished Murder Superior. Why has it taken me a whole two weeks to write the review for this dinky little romance novel?

Maybe it’s time for me to acknowledge that I’m attempting to do too much. Between Oscar!Watch!2012, movies Alaina’s never seen, arranging travel for myself for new job training (!!!!) and my friend who’s flying out to Portland at the same time I’m going to be in Annapolis (yeah, that didn’t work), and saying goodbye to good friends I’ve seen almost every day for nine years, and trying to maintain my reputation as a stellar baker … I mean, I have two and a half weeks’ worth of Conan episodes to catch up on.

So now I find myself multitasking. Because right now, if you were to look into my apartment (perv), you’d find me sitting on my bed, writing this review and watching my #9 movie of all time: Anchorman. And if references to this wonderful, super-duper film happen to show up randomly through this review? Well, you’re just gonna have to deal with it.

So what, exactly, is Madame’s Deception about? Well, it’s about a madame … who … deceives? No, not really. Madame’s Deception was the missing second book in the trilogy I mentioned back when I read A Rogue’s Game back in 2010, and again, you don’t have to read them in order to understand the plot. It’s not like needing to watch the Star Wars trilogies in their proper order, I can tell you that much.

The madame in question is Madame DeBourcier, who runs the Crimson Belle House of Ill Repute in London. But you know what? Madame DeBourcier is actually grade-A baloney. Baloney! Because it’s actually just a fake identity for Jocelyn Tolliver, who inherited the Crimson Belle from her mother, who was also called Madame DeBourcier. It’s like … oh god forgive me. *sigh* You know A Princess Bride? And how Wesley became the Dread Pirate Roberts, and how it’s a title that’s inherited and given from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts? Well, Madame DeBourcier is the Dread Pirate Roberts of London whorehouses.

So this duke or whatever, Alex Randall/Lord Colwick (I swear, that’s how those lords and shit should just write their names, because they go by both throughout these novels. Sometimes it’s Alex, sometimes it’s Lord Colwick, and what happens is that I get confused and wish that his name was just Alex Randall Colwick, and that would be a severely awesome name) falls in love with Madame DeBourcier from afar. No, seriously — he saw her from across the room and decided he had to have her, as men do. So he barges into the Crimson Belle and gives the Madame an ultimatum, which boils down to this: “Sleep with me whenever I want, and I’ll pay you tons of money.” And she shrugs and goes, “Okay.”

Meanwhile, other whores ladies of the evening have been murdered, and Jocelyn is worried. Alex Colwick wants to protect her, but Jocelyn doesn’t want to get attached to a lord because he could never friggin’ love her the way she friggin’ loves him.

And look, there’s not a lot of plot in this. Even less than in some of the other historical romances I’ve picked up. (Oh, sidenote: At some point this year [in addition to rereads of Lamb, Gilligan's Wake, and The Great Gatsby], after I’ve read all those books I just got from the library, I will be reading a romance I picked up from Walmart the other night because apparently, the heroine was a spy. There has to be plot in that!) It pretty much goes like this:

“I’ll pay you money to have sex with you.”
“Okay. Please ignore all the murders that are going on, because I can take care of myself. Unbeknownst to you, I am an educated lady saddled with running a whorehouse. Oh, PS, I’m a virgin.”
“Wow. I had no idea you were a virgin. How are you so skilled in the ways of love?”
“Books! I read books! Look at my library conveniently hidden behind this curtain where my gentleman lover can’t see it! After all, this is nineteenth-century London; we don’t have the internet now.”
“Fascinating. Can we do that one on page 47 again?”
“Not right now. Another girl was murdered. And also, I heard that you are betrothed to some crazy widow’s dumpy daughter.”
“What? Baby, don’t be crazy. Hey look, a beautiful rainbow — do me on it!”
“I can’t, because now one of my girls was murdered, and I suspect it may be the shady pimp down the street.”
“No, it can’t be him, because he’s actually your father.”
“You’re kidding! Oh my god, I’m in a glass case of emotion, and I won’t let you in, because I am a disgrace to society, and you need to marry some dumpy geek who can’t string two words together.”
“No! I need you! I’m a mess without you! I miss you so damn much! I miss being with you. I miss being near you. I miss your laugh! I miss your scent. I miss your musk. When this all gets sorted out, I think you and I should get an apartment together!”
“Goodness! Well, as it turns out the murderer was some cousin of some girl we mentioned a hundred pages ago and not my father, and that I am a cultured lady with an education in things other than sexual ways and means, then okay, let’s get an apartment together!”
“Huzzah!”

And they all lived happily ever after. Thanks for stopping by, and hey — you stay classy, San Diego.

Oh shit.  And I just remembered that, as part of saying goodbye to those good friends, I just gave this website out to a lot of people as a way to keep up with me.  And a lot of those friends are men who have no idea I read this trash … shit.

QUICK ALAINA READ SOMETHING ELSE SOMETHING WITH VIOLENCE

Grade for Madame’s Deception: 2 stars

Fiction: “Seduced by His Touch” by Tracy Anne Warren

I actually started reading this before both starting and completing Sorcerer’s Stone — I love being on vacation, I get so much reading done! After reading my super-depressing and/or super-heavy books from the library (The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, The Late Hector Kipling, and the awful Solar), my brain needed a break. Actually, I think I started reading this one before I finished Solar. It sounds like something I’d do.

Anyway. Here’s why I picked the book up from Border’s in the first place: the quote on the back. “Marry a young woman because he lost a bet?”

Arranged marraige by gambling? Okay, sure. I had to see how this one ended.

Jack Byron (no relation to the poet) is gambling, and he loses a ton of money to one Ezra Danvers. Knowing that Byron can’t pay back the debt, Danvers agrees to not only forgive the debt, but bestow Byron with 120,000 pounds should he agree to marry Danvers’s daughter. But only if Grace believes the marraige to be a love match. Byron, seeing no way out, agrees.

Expecting a horrible, ugly spinster, he is pleasantly surprised when Grace Danvers turns out to be a beautiful, tall redhead. He doesn’t realize it at the time, but as he courts her, he actually begins to fall in love with her.

Of course, just before they are about to be married, Grace finds the copies of the settlement between Byron and her father. She realizes she was just a pawn to wealth for Byron, and she creates a settlement of her own: she will marry him, and they will go through the Season in London, but afterwards, they will separate. He will buy her a house, and he will also give her half of the money. Ashamed, Jack agrees to the settlement.

But when they move to London, they begin to bridge the gap they’ve created. And just when it looks like they’re truly falling in love in spite of everything, Jack’s former mistress kisses him in front of Grace, leading Grace to believe that he’d been cheating on her all this time. She demands the house and the settlement, and they separate.

They come back together when Grace a) realizes that she’s pregnant, and b) realizes that the house he bought for her, he planned the garden for her all on his own (oh right, the garden thing. See, he first begins to court her in a garden in Bath. She’s an artist, creating a folio of flowers and plantlife to be published. So one of the things she shouted at him when she first found out about the settlement was that he was a poser in the realm of botany). The book doesn’t actually end with the birth of the baby, which was one of the only things that surprised me about the book — usually, tawdry historical romances end with either a reconciliation or a birth.

Now that I’m finished with the novel, I’m actually contemplating whether to sell it back or not. I mean, there are some that, as soon as I hit “post,” I send back to Annie’s Book Stop because the thought of having them in the apartment any longer drives me batty. But … I may actually read this again, a few years down the road? I thought it was kind of sweet? I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting sappy in my old age.

Shut up, all of you.

Grade for Seduced by His Touch: 2.5 stars.

Fiction: “Devil’s Bride” by Stephanie Laurens

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to finish another book. And this book, of all books! What was supposed to be a quick, easy read turned into an interminable month of reading ten pages and then falling asleep. Even last night, when I had twenty pages to go before the end of the month, but no, I had to be tired.

[In all fairness to myself, I did work more than twelve hours yesterday, and on top of that, came home only to get stuck in my driveway because while Crazy Plow Guy may have plowed the school's parking lot a gazillion times yesterday, my Plow Guy was home watching the finale of The Bachelor. I'm guessing. Because I had about four tons of slush to shovel before it froze into stalagmites and made my driveway as impassable as the Gates of Mordor. Yeah, I used Lord of the Rings within spitting distance of The Bachelor. Look at me, being all Joel McHale-ish.]

ANYWAY. The plot of this? … Do you really care? A woman named Honoria is a governess for some hoity clan in Derbyshire or whatever (I’m not looking ANYTHING up, by the way) and on the way back home, takes a shortcut through the woods, where she happens upon a murder. No, really, she sees the dude shot. As she goes to help him, this tall, dark ruffian type dude shows up on a big horse and recognizes the shot dude as his cousin, so he takes his cousin and her back to the woodcutter’s cottage, but the shot dude dies in the night. Meanwhile, heaven forbid that an unmarried lady stays in a one-room cottage with a tall, dark ruffian type dude, so Dude tells her she’ll marry him. Honoria says no, that won’t be necessary, I’m going to Africa to be a missionary or some nonsense, but he doesn’t care and …

Look, long story short (TOO LATE!), they end up getting married anyway because she not only falls in love with him, but wants to experience “the pleasure he promised” or, again, some such nonsense, the prose is all purple and flowery and shit and here’s what really bothered me (besides the rampant misogyny, when was this written? Wow, 1998? I expected an original date of, like, 1979 based on the fact that the dude wants to turn his wife into a sexual slave [but in a good way, I'm sure]): the fact that Honoria and Devil (because his real name is Sylvester, but everyone calls him Devil, and don’t get me started on his other cousins’s nicknames) agree to work towards catching the murderer of the dead cousin, but there’s like, a hundred pages in the middle where all they do is have sex. And I’m sorry, I was promised a murderer, not incredibly long and flowery love-making scenes, let’s get to the violence already!

So that’s where I’m at. The next few books I’ll read will, hopefully, be chock-full of violent goodness. Y’know, if I can get enough time to actually read again.

Grade for Devil’s Bride: Twilight Stars

Fiction: “Barely a Lady” by Eileen Dreyer

When I was a kid er, teenager, one of my favorite shows was, I kid you not, All My Children. Part of that was heritage: my mother has been a watcher of AMC since it started. I can vaguely recall episodes from the late ’80s, before I went to school full-time or when I was home sick. I know I remember the highly-touted special when Erica had some sort of weird coma-dream-scape where she searched for her father on a fake Hollywood movie set while she recovered from breaking her back after falling off a stage (and then she later gets addicted to painkillers, leaving her a recovering addict for all time – except when it’s convenient). Flash forward to the mid-90′s and I absolutely refused to watch this new show on the WB called Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because evil Kendall was starring as the slayer. Kendall was evil! She tried to kill Dimitri with a letter opener when he wouldn’t sleep with her – his wife’s rape baby!

The point is, I grew up on a very ridiculous soap opera. One of the other storylines I remember was when Tad Martin lost his memory and became Ted Orsini, wine specialist. In other words, one of the classic amnesia plots.

And this finally brings me to Barely a Lady. I admit: in the past year, I have spent entirely too much money buying tawdry romance paperbacks, especially of the historical, Regency variety. The ones I’ve gotten around to reading have never ranked higher than a 2.5, and that one was full of Sleeping Beauty references. When I go to buy one of these trashy books, there are three things I look for: 1) The amount of bare male chest shown on the cover; 2) The title [extra points if it references a member of the not-so-ruling class, i.e., a duke, or an earl. And they must always be tempted or seduced]; and 3) the outlandishness of the characters’ names. Barely a Lady barely placed in all three categories. If you look at the cover (shown above), the most skin shown is on the woman, and look, whatever, but I prefer to gawk at male chest. If you want to call the “Lady” a reference to the female title, you can (and I think the author does), and I guess there’s a slight double entendre, but only if you squint. And the names are pretty commonplace, actually: Olivia Grace and Jack Wyndham (but remember what I said back when I read To Ruin the Duke: never use an ‘I’ when a ‘Y’ will work even better).

What got me to buy this book were two things: the subtitle, proclaiming this to be the first book in the “Drake’s Rakes” series — I mean, come on: I know that ‘rakes’ are popular characters in Regency fiction, but to have a pack of them belonging to a man named Drake? Seriously? — and the fact that Jack has lost his memory.

But oh, dear friends, not just lost his memory. See, Jack is British. This book takes place immediately following the battle of Waterloo. In 1815. Jack is found by his disgraced wife Olivia on the Waterloo battlefield wearing a French officer’s uniform. And he can’t remember why he was fighting for the French! Because not only did he lose his memory, he lost the past five years of memory. The last thing he remembers is going racing after a fox in the hunt, or something equally British. And while it’s a really bad thing to not remember which side you’re fighting on in a very important battle such as freakin’ Waterloo, it’s even worse to completely forget that the woman who rescued you is no longer your wife, but your ex-wife. And that you were the one who turned her out of house and home because you thought she was cheating on you with her cousin [who turns out to be gay!], and not only do you throw her out of your rich mansion, but you also throw her out penniless and pregnant.

Oh, but PS, it turns out that it was just your cousin feeding you lies about your (now) ex-wife because your cousin lusts after her and wants her for himself because he’s jealous of you.

If you can’t follow the second person: Olivia and Jack married. Jack’s an Earl, Olivia’s a commoner. But they were deeply in love. But Gervaise (Jack’s cousin) is evil and lusty and wants Olivia because he wants whatever Jack has. So Gervaise gets Jack to believe that not only is Olivia a gambler, but she’s also boinking her cousin [remember - he turns out to be gay!]. When Jack finds Olivia and the cousin in a compromising position, he throws her pregnant self out and then kills her cousin in a duel. That’s 1810. The next time they see each other, Olivia’s been pretending to be a commoner and a companion of bitter old ladies and their daughters in Belgium, but now she’s helping out with the wounded and dead of Waterloo, and oh boy, there’s her ex-husband, wearing a Frenchman’s uniform. So she rescues him, but when he wakes up, he thinks it’s still 1810 and they’re still married and in love.

Awkward.

I pretty much gave the farm away with this one, but dudes – this is a soap opera at Waterloo. If Agnes Nixon wrote this, it would be called If Memory Serves or some such nonsense.

So why, after all of that, do I feel the need to rate this 1.5 stars?

The point-five is for amnesia.

Grade for Barely a Lady: 1.5 stars

Fiction: “To Ruin the Duke” by Debra Mullins

I really don’t have much to say about this book. It was a quick read, it didn’t offer up any surprises… in fact, let’s play the game Mad Lib the Back Cover!

(Italics are the ‘headings’ on the cover. Bolded text is the actual text. Bracketed text are my thoughts.)

A Disreputable Duke
All of London is abuzz with the shocking [shocking!] exploits of Thornton Matherton [that name! Why are dukes in Regency novels always named stuff like that? "Thornton Matherton." He should be Thornton Matherton of Etherton, and his mother was a Fornton, and ... oh, I can't be botherton'd.], Duke of Wyldehaven [but not the Duke of Wildhaven, oh no; all Dukes must be Dukes of something with a 'Y' replacing an 'I.' It's requyred.], a man as sinful and wild as his name. [Thornton Matherton, Duke of Wyldehaven is sinful? Wild I get, and maybe even thorny -- oh wait, I get it.] He plays fast and loose with money, drink, and women. Or does he? [I SWEAR THAT IS TRULY IN ITALICS. I did not add extra emphasis there.] An imposter has tarnished Thornton’s good name, and the real duke will not rest until he has proven his virtue.

A Righteous Lady
Abandoned by her aristocratic father when she was a child [but she doesn't learn her father was aristocratic until the last 40 pages], Miranda Fontaine despises the nobility [again, she despises the nobility for entire different reasons - her father has nothing to do with her hatred of rich people!]. Despite her distrust, she visits the Duke of Wyldehaven on an urgent mission. [HINT: her friend had a baby and then died, but the baby lived, and the friend thought Wyldehaven was the baby daddy.] Miranda will do whatever it takes to pin down the notorious duke [really? ANYTHING?] … even if it means seducing him herself. [Oh. You do really mean anything.] 

Passion’s Ruin [I thought we were ruining the duke?...]
Desperate to escape the web of deceit and clear his name, Thornton cannot bear the distraction of Miranda’s supple skin and alluring eyes. [Nor can he resist her fiery temper, her tenacity, her musical voice, and oh yes, her constantly-heaving bosom]. Her beauty will be his undoing … and her bed will be the site of his most wicked ruin …

Wow. Just … wow. And really, it wasn’t horrible – I’m just in a wicked sarcastic mood. I’ve read a couple of other Regencies that I’ll read again; this ain’t one of them. But I was in the mood for a cheesy romance novel, and what can I say? This wasn’t Cheez Wiz, but it came too close for comfort. This is … this is string cheese: has some substance, but you eat one and you don’t feel satisfied at all.

(that’s what she said)

Grade for To Ruin the Duke: 1 star.

Fiction: “A Rogue’s Game” by Renee Bernard

Renee Bernard is relatively new to the romance scene. I read her first novel, A Lady’s Pleasure a couple of years ago, and this title had been sitting on my shelf for a couple of months. I clearly still needed some easy brain food. However, I would have read this quicker if I hadn’t had the need for a ‘lunch break book’ — I’ve been reading two books at a time for a while now, because typically, there is one title I can’t bring to work and read in public without being teased about my reading choice. So stay tuned for the review of the ‘lunch break book,’ The Pirates! In an Adventure With Communists, coming soon!

But I digress. Apparently, Ms. Bernard turned A Lady’s Pleasure into a trilogy (as romance authors are wont to do), taking characters from her first book and spinning them off into their own stories. A Rogue’s Game is the story of Lord Julian Clay, the Earl of Westleigh (he may not be called ‘Lord’; I can’t be bothered to verify this, however, so we’re going to just go with it), who was the supposed villain in A Lady’s Pleasure. Also apparently, there was a second book between Pleasure and Rogue’s Game that I was unaware of; the good thing about this type of trilogy, however, is that you don’t need to read them in order. At all. ANYWAY. Lord Julian Clay, who is a bit of a rogue, has fallen on his luck. He’s losing at card games and depending on the kindness of rich friends to allow him to stay through the Season.

Meanwhile, the lovely Eve Reynolds (as all heroines are determined to be lovely) has arrived in London with her uncle, Warren Reynolds. Uncle Warren is passing himself off as a wealthy industrialist, but really, he’s a gambler. Or, rather, he’s a poor gambler, relying on his niece Eve to win the real money at friendly card games with sweet old ladies. Eve wants to escape her uncle’s life, so she is betting (and winning) jewelry and other baubles, hoping to cash them in eventually with enough money to escape.

And then, she meets Julian. And Julian meets her.

Their courtship is fiery. What I (kinda) like about Ms. Bernard’s stories is that the characters do not play by the same Regency rules: normally, the woman would remain chaste as long as possible. Not Eve (and not Merriam, the protagonist from Lady’s Pleasure). She’s very modern in her depiction, going after she wants and damn the consequences.

I can get behind that.

Grade for A Rogue’s Game: 2 stars

Fiction: “Beguiled” by Shannon Drake

Beguiled is, on the outside, the story of Ally Grayson (short for Alexandra), living during the tail-end of Queen Victoria’s reign during a time when anti-monarchists are prevalent and highwaymen aren’t afraid to stop the carriages of wealthy nobles. In fact, just past the prologue, a daring highwayman stops Ally’s carriage on her way to her birthday celebration. When he learns her name, he lets her go, unmolested. She reaches her destination unharmed. At her birthday celebration, she learns that she has been betrothed to Lord Mark Farrow since her birth, so Happy Birthday, here’s a husband!

Meanwhile, Ally meets the Highwayman a few more times, and eventually she falls in love with him. It helps that after her second meeting with the Highwayman – and her first official meeting with the Lord Mark Farrow – she realizes that – yes! They are the same person.

Fiction: “A Lady of Scandal” by Nicole Byrd

Oh, completion!  I’d forgotten the satisfaction I get from finishing a book.  It’s been just about a month since I’ve finished a book, and I’m still reading about six.  It’s entirely possible that a slew of entries will follow.

But let’s talk about this first.  A Lady of Scandal is just what it sounds like: a Regency Historical Romance novel that I found on a used shelf at Bookland, picked up on a whim because I needed to use up a gift card.  The line on the back of the paperback that convinced me to spend the $3.50 was “Miss Ophelia Applegate knows that ladies rarely become actresses without incurring social ruin — but surely there are exceptions?”  Ooh, theatre, scandal, ‘proper ladies’; I was intrigued, I bought it, and about ten months later, I finally got around to reading it.