Everything I need to know about life I learned from Harlequin...

Any of you who visit IRR know that I tend to be slightly obsessive about reading. Recently that obsessive quality made an appearance when I stumbled over a box of older Harlequin HPs. I had won this boxobooks during a weak moment scanning EBAY. You know, one of those times where you bid $9.99 for 60 books, never thinking you will actually win, then you win, and you find yourself with 60-70 romances from the 70s, 80s and early 90s. Don't try to act like you all haven't had this same thing happen. I know you people.

Anyway, in an attempt to cull the "best"from this huge group of books, I went to my favorite source on old Harlequin/M&B stuff, the incredible readers on Amazon Romance forum . If you haven't visited these forums, I highly recommend that you do. There are readers posting at the Amazon forums that have read everything in all genres of romance and they are happy to share their knowledge. So, I asked for their favorite "train wrecks." Train wrecks are also known as WTFs by some, those books that are so horribly strange that you just can't look away and as you are reading you are constantly asking yourself, WTF??? They may feature plots that are absolutely exquisite in some ridiculous, over-the-top way. They most likely feature characters that are unbelievable, probably unlikeable, but fascinating on all kinds of levels. The late 70s and early 80s, were an incredibly fertile time for Harlequin and Mills & Boon writers and many of the best train wreck titles are from this period.

One such book that tends to send people over the edge is Robyn Donald's  Smoke in the Wind. Donald started writing for M&B/Harlequin in 1977 and has written more than 70 books since. As HP writers go, Donald is one of the best. Her work, besides being well-written, has a depth and a fineness to it that is often lacking when writers are churning out titles as HP writers do. Most of her books are set in New Zealand or Australia and her descriptions of these locales rival those of the best travel writers. She obviously loves her home. Donald is generally admired and most avid HP readers agree that she is tops in the field, however, just the mention of Smoke in the Wind and many normally rational people start wailing and gnashing their teeth.

What makes Smoke in the Wind a Train Wreck title of spectacular quality? Well, let's just say that the course of true love doesn't run smoothly in this story. The book opens with our heroine, Venetia falling for gorgeous television executive, Ryan Fraine. Venetia is also a television journalist and as their work draws them together, she thinks that Ryan is looking for a modern, independent woman and she decides that she will be that woman.  He wants casual, no-strings sex, so she will provide it and then he will eventually come to value her and their incredible physical chemistry so much that he will fall in love and crave a true commitment. Um, not so fast, Venetia. Turns out that our boy has mommy issues and craves an old-fashioned paragon of purity for his marital bed. You guys may have great sex, but when it comes to commitment, that is a BIG strike against you. As our heroine plays fast and loose, Ryan meets her lookalike, goody two shoes, virginal cousin and almost immediately falls in love. He drops Venetia like the proverbial hot potato, but not without slaking his manly urges one last time after telling her that she is just too big a slut to ever be his wife. You guys see where this is going, right? Fast forward five years and we find Venetia living somewhat happily in Australia. She has picked up the pieces of her life, moved away from her man-stealing cousin and her sleazy ex and made a career writing historical fiction. Yay Venetia! But not so fast, dear readers. Virginal cousin dies tragically young and Ryan decides to track down Venetia and all kind of craziness ensues.

Now the question that drives most readers insane is whether Donald manages to craft a believable love story for Ryan and Venetia out of the above mess of WTF!  I say she absolutely does. After reading this one several times, I feel that it is a masterful example of a truly complex series romance.  Donald makes these characters come to life in a big, messy, but very real way. We've all done crazy stupid things for love, right? They are both completely screwed up because of their past and their personalities and she explores this in a level of detail that is truly unusual for a book with this page count. By the end of Smoke in the Wind, I was exhausted. So much great angst! So trainwrecky! I went on to read every Donald book in my collection and then go out and glom all that I could get my hands on. If you like messy, crazy, angsty train wrecks, I advise you to do the same!

Meanwhile, let me leave you with a few facts of life that I have gleaned from my recent Harlequin HP immersion:

Heroines have red hair. Whether strawberry blond or deep auburn dark, evidently red-headed women have a tendency to fall for dominating, asshat men.

Actress/model=WHORE. You may be rich, successful and beautiful, but forget about hard work, if you are in either of these fields, the hero will immediately assume that you are an amoral slut who is just out to snare a rich husband.

No one is named Susan or Jack. Autumns, Prues, Amerells and Natashas abound, as do Berics and Trents and Blaines. you won't meet a hero/heroine with anything close to a common name.

Every man in New Zealand/Australia owns a station (but also has a luxury flat in Auckland/Melbourne from which they run the other businesses in their empires.)

Every man in England/America is an international financier.

If you don't own a station or a multinational company, you are probably a sheik or the prince of a small country that no one has ever heard of.

If the heroine of an HP is barren or infertile, she's gonna get pregnant the minute the hero looks her way.

If you are the heroine of an HP it is super bad luck for your family, because they are most likely dead. Conveniently killed off so that you have no support when the hero pressures you into marriage. Also, you must be an orphan in order to insure that you won't be good enough for the hero's snooty family.

If you do have a family, they will be responsible for your downfall. Either your mother will be a grasping shrew out to sell you to the highest bidder or your father will have gambled your inheritance away, forcing you into marriage with a right bastard just to save the family name. If you have siblings, they will either be super bitches (sister or, more likely, step-sister) or incompetent criminals who get caught quickly (mostly brothers). 

If you have a stepbrother, you will very likely end up married to him.

OK guys, what do you all think of harlequin HPs or series romances in general?  Have a favorite train wreck book, that you love to hate?

Leave me a comment and I'll enter you in the drawing for a free Christmas romance!

***Holiday Romance giveaway update, screw picking names, it is Christmas and I love you guys, so you're all getting a book! If I don't have your address please email me, either here or FB and I'll do my best to make sure you get your book before XMAS.  Thanks for checking out my little blog and I hope you all have the best New Year ever! *****

Shine on...

Here at IRR, we are gearing up for my favorite holiday, Halloween! To start the scary book parade off, here's a review of the Master, Stephen King's latest offering, a long-anticipated sequel to his classic, The Shining!

Stepping in to guest review is my amazingly talented husband, Kevin. I always said I'd only marry someone who read more than me and I'm so happy I found that guy!

I have been reading Stephen King a long time.  After watching the “Salem’s Lot” miniseries in November 1979, I went to the local bookstore and immediately bought and read the book.  And by this time King had already published such classics as “The Shining” and “The Stand,” so I had more books to obsessively read during the remainder of 1979 when I should have been studying for finals and writing term papers like a Good English Major.  I still haven’t recovered from those initial reads: I can’t look out a darkened window without seeing the Glick boy’s floating body scraping his fingernails against the glass and asking me to let him in.  And I NEVER use a bathroom without first opening the shower curtain and making sure the bathtub is empty.  The dark is not and never will be my friend.

But I approached the sequel to “The Shining:” “Doctor Sleep” with some trepidation.  I have kept up with King in the decades since I first read him, but ran hot and cold with his novels.  Some I loved, some I liked, and some I didn’t even finish.

And a few of the early reviews made me wary.  “The Guardian,” for instance, praised the novel but also noted that unlike the first book it was just “not scary.”

And I have to agree that “Doctor Sleep” is not a particularly scary book.  Sure, it has moments that got the blood running a little cold – in particular when some of the less pleasant guests of the Overlook Hotel come south and visit Danny in his new home in Florida - but this novel is more thriller than horror story.

In the book’s Afterword, King does an excellent job of summing up his own trepidation about revisiting the character  from “The Shining” as well as the task of writing a sequel:

“I like to think I’m still pretty good at what I do, but nothing can live up to he memory of a good scare, and I meannothing, especially if administered to one who is young and impressionable.”

However, King is a better writer than he was back in the 1970’s and he knows how to tell a story and move a plot.  And this is a good one.  In the early section, as noted, he revisits the events of  “The Shining” and in doing so brings us up to date.  Danny Torrance has grown into Dan Torrance, and like his father (and King) he has grown into an alcoholic.  In an effective but mercifully short section, we see Dan hit rock bottom.  Living with his unique powers turns out to be bearable only when those powers are dulled by drugs and alcohol.

But then Dan has the opportunity to use his “Shine” to help a young girl in need, much like he was helped by an Overlook Hotel cook with a special gift named Dick Hallorann.  As it turns out, there are a group of unpleasant individuals called “The True Knot” who gain strength and a form of immortality from the suffering and death of people and in particular those with the Shine.  This young girl, Abra Stone, has an unusually strong Shine and has attracted the attention of the True Knot.

The meeting with Abra happens after Dan’s travels take him to New England to a post card pretty town where he takes up residence and works as an orderly at a local hospice.  King borrows the recent headline-grabbing story of the cat that seemed to know when patients are going to die and would crawl into bed with them.  In “Doctor Sleep” the cat is named Azzie, and works as kind of a partner to Dan.  Azzie gets in bed with those about to pass and waits for Dan to arrive.  Azzie then hops off and leaves Dan to help the dying pass peacefully into whatever it is that comes next by sending them to a peaceful and final sleep.  Sounds trite but King handles this with a deft hand that doesn’t feel sentimental or contrived.  He also handles the relationship between Dan and Abra Stone with a nice touch.  King does coming of age and the growth of the young from innocence into experience particularly well and that is evident here.

Battles between good and evil can be trite, but King deftly handles this battle by creating three-dimensional characters that have shades of gray.  Even the members of the True Knot have bits of humanity compassion – if only for each other.  One of the things I like most about King is his basic humanity and that shines through in this book.  We see the dark side but also on display is the better side of humanity.  And this book contains a spirituality that even an agnostic like myself can feel comfortable with experiencing.

There is also a good bit of humor here.  Making the True Knot into members of an RV Camping club – retirees driving around the country in their Winnebago’s and Bounders while killing children and living off the pain and suffering of the people (who they derisively refer to as “rubes”) - has a dark humorous irony to it.

Ultimately, I think readers who enjoy King the writer who gave us “Joyland” or the earlier novels and stories such as “The Dead Zone” or “The Green Mile” or “Hearts in Atlantis,” will find much to like here.

Well done, Kev!  The only way I could think of to improve The Shining would have been to add a cat and I'm thrilled that King has covered that element in the sequel.  King fans, have you read Dr. Sleep?  What did you think?  

Look for more horror book reviews in the next week as we gear up for All Hallow's Eve!  Got a spooky book suggestion? Please leave it in the comments, I'm always looking for my next good scare!

Fall into a book...

Fall is here! You guys know what that means, right? It gets dark much earlier, there is a nice cool nip in the air, and suddenly pumpkin spice is being inserted into everything from coffee to pizza. Enough with the pumpkin spice already, it doesn't even have real pumpkin in it.

Sorry. I digress.

Fall also means a brand new crop of books! September and October bring tons of new titles, including new stuff from old favorites. To kick start your autumnal reading, I'm going to give you a quick list of a few of the books that have caught my eye recently...

Once A Rake - Eileen Dreyer
The fourth book in her amazing Drake's Rakes series.Those who are frequent visitors to the blog know that I love me some Eileen Dreyer romance! If you need a reminder of why I adore her stuff, you can find one here, and here, and here.

Through The Evil Days - Julia Spencer-Fleming
Number eight in the always excellent Claire Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne mystery series, I am alternately looking forward to and/or dreading this one. If you read this series you know that the last book ended with a big, super-duper, twist. I usually fear this sort of thing, but Spencer-Fleming is a very talented writer and I'm going to trust her to get her characters, as well as her fans, through this latest crisis.

Storm Front - John Sandford
The seventh book in Sandford's Virgil Flowers series. I've read Sandford's Lucas Davenport books for years, but just read my first Virgil book this summer. As soon as I finished the first book, I immediately raced through the next five. Sandford is so good, he makes it look effortless.  Can't wait to see what "that fucking Flowers" is up to next!

The Night Guest - Fiona McFarlane
From down under comes a title from a new author and it's getting crazy good reviews.  The Night Guest tells the story of an elderly woman, on the verge of dementia, living alone in an isolated beachfront area in Australia. One day a mysterious caregiver shows up and the developing relationship between the two women becomes the focus of a story that has been called "beautiful," hypnotic," and "creepy." I'm intrigued!

Johnny Cash: The Life - Robert Hilburn
Long time LA Times music critic, Hilburn brings us what is being called the "definitive" biography of the always fascinating Man in Black. I've been a Johnny Cash fan all of my life, so of course, this one is on the list.

The Thicket - Joe Lansdale
"I didn't suspect the day grandfather came out and got me and my sister, Lula, and hauled us off toward the ferry that I'd soon end up with worse things happening than had already come upon us or that I'd take up with a gun-shooting dwarf, the son of a slave, and a big angry hog, let alone find true love and kill someone, but that's exactly how it was." C'mon people, who can resist an opening like that? If you haven't read Joe Lansdale, then you have missed out on some very fine storytelling. Can't wait for this one!

So, there you go folks, some great new books to curl up with as the autumnal winds start blowing. I'd love to hear what you guys are eagerly anticipating.  What's on your fall reading list?

Once more unto the breach, dear friends...

That's right, dear hearts, it's time to start talking books again!  Enjoyed a long break while forced to deal with real world stuff, but missed talking books too much to give it up forever.  I appreciate those of you who hung in and checked in ever so often.  Thanks and it's good to be back.

Look for a new review later this week and always remember,