Review: Starling by Virginia Taylor

2 stars

This is a case where my reading experience and thoughts about the book differ greatly. I read Starling obsessively over the course of a single night, caught up in the crazy-sauce plot and the plucky heroine fighting for a better future. However, even as I did so, I was aware that the whole thing was steeped in toxic masculinity and the Madonna/whore complex. If Starling had been the old-school romance it so much resembles, I probably could have given it a bit of leeway, but it's not and my rating had to reflect the fact that this is a book - published in the Year of Our Lord 2015 - with some serious unchallenged on-page misogyny. 

So, the crazysauce plot is this: Starling Smith is fired from her new job at Seymour's Emporium because her male supervisor - who doesn't believe he needs female employees - tells the owner, Alisdair Seymour, that she is "annoying the customers". However Alisdair offers her another position: posing as his wife. He's had word from his sister that she will be visiting, with a mystery woman in tow. Desperate to avoid her matchmaking, he offers Starling 40 pounds for two weeks of pretending to be his newly-wedded wife, only to have his plan misfire when it turns out that the mystery woman is Lavender, the childhood love who left him to marry another man. As Alisdair's new plan - to use Starling to make Lavender, his real wife-of-choice jealous - also unravels, he realises that neither woman is what he thought, and that he feels much more for Starling than he anticipated. 

The whole thing was set up so that the women were continually played off against one another: Lavender against Starling, but also Lavender against one of Alasdair's maids, because Lavender is your classic immoral, manipulative slut who has to steal everyone's man, even if that man is a gardener. In contrast, Starling is such a shining beacon of pure and good white womanhood she could have stepped right out of a Victorian morality tale. She's orphaned, inexplicably graceful and ladylike despite her rough upbringing, and martyrs herself in silence, declining to defend herself when Alasdair repeatedly lays false accusations at her feet. 

Taylor makes it explicitly clear that Alasdair means to let Starling "set the limits" of  their physical relationship and would never "take her" without her consent, and yet there were several scenes that bordered on rape-y. Since he believes Starling to be an ex-prostitute, there's a lot of "I could have her, she's a whore, she wouldn't stop me"-type thoughts, and times where Starling says 'no', but Alasdair takes a while to respond, or reflects afterwards that she didn't really mean it:

Her fist thumped his shoulder and she tightened her face. He leaned forward and trued to take her mouth, but she turned her head away. "Stop. Let me go."The uncaring beast angled his hips and teased partway into the woman he didn't give a shake of his head for, while outside in the hall, separated from him only by a door, his family and his beloved Lavender made their way to their respective bedrooms.  Starling gasped. Using a whisper of repressed rage, she said, "Any further and I'll charge you five sh...pounds." His eyes flitted over her face. She could see him consider. Efficiently, as though he'd judged the price too high, he buttoned his trousers. (loc. 2490)

Throughout the book, there are practically big, flashing neon signs that point out Alasdair is actually Mr. Rapey McRapeculture. He spends a ridiculous amount of time slut-shaming Starling - either mentally or to her face - and, sometime after the above excerpt, Starling even says to him resignedly "You don't understand the word 'No'. You never have. To you the word means later." (loc. 2831). He is such a catch, even excluding the way he intends to marry Lavender and make Starling his mistress. 

At this point, my rating might seem a bit incongruous, but I gave Starling 2 stars for two reasons. The first was that is was so well-written and engaging, I shamefully almost didn't care about any of this stuff until I thought it over after finishing the book. Secondly, I really enjoyed the historical Australian setting, and historical romances set in Australia are unfortunately few and far between. Despite my overwhelming hatred for him, Alasdair's connection to the Ballarat goldfields has stuck with me, and sparked a desire to read a romance set against the multicultural backdrop of the 1850s and 60s Victorian or New South Wales goldfields. If anyone knows of one, please let me know - I can only think of MG/YA novels: some of Kirsty Murray's Children of the Wind books and A Banner Bold in the My Australian Story series from my childhood, and the newer The Night they Stormed Eureka by Jackie French, and of Zana Bell's gold rush romance Fool's Gold, which I really enjoyed, but which is set on the South Island of New Zealand. 

Review: Ride Baby Ride by Vivian Arend

2 stars

Ride Baby Ride by Vivian Arend was a trope buffet: brother's best friend, amnesiac heroine and surprise pregnancy, to name the biggest three. But it's like when you arrive to the breakfast buffet 15 minutes before it closes, and are forced to make do with the one remaining crossiant, congealed baked beans and some tinned peaches, because that's all that's left. Not a particularly great combo, especially when you have to put them on a single plate, because they've started packing the dishes away. To unpack that terrible metaphor, I basically just felt like there were lots of different tropes and elements all smushed into one short novella, and they didn't have enough space to breathe. 

When Katy breaks up with her low-life boyfriend Simon, Gage Jennick - a close friend of Katy's family - decides to make his move. It's far from ideal timing - he's  just about to leave for a gig on a oil field - but they spend the night together, and promise to continue the relationship when he returns. Except that, in the meanwhile, Katy has a car accident and loses her short-term memory, forgetting her night with Gage and situation with her ex-boyfriend. When she finds out she's pregnant, both step foward and claim to be the baby's father. Katy has to fit the pieces together, but that's hard to do when Gage is determined to win her back and prove to her that he doesn't just want her, but the baby and a long-term future as well.

There was a marked lack of development of Gage and Katy's relationship. At first, Katy is trying to hold him at bay and figure things out and and then, WHAM, they're going to spend their lives together. This was - at least in part - due to the time jumps littered throughout. Those also fell victim to my pet hate when it comes to time jumps: instead of 'two months later' or similar at the top of the chapters, it says 'November', thus requiring you to remember the month named at the previous time jump. For someone with a goldfish brain like mine, this is pretty much impossible, and I ended up skim-reading the first few pages after each time jump, looking for clues - like how much Katy's pregnancy had progressed - which would allow me to establish how much time had passed. 

There was also some toxic masculinity that interfered with my enjoyment of the story, as did the gigantic suspension of disbelief required to buy the way the external conflict comes to a climax. I'm not gonna spoil that, mainly because it's just so crazysauce I wouldn't even know where to begin, but there are some Goodreads reviews that talk about it if you are interested. 

Review: Against the Tide by Elizabeth Camden

2 stars

*SPOILER ALERT*

Against the Tide is an inspirational romance with a wonderful sense of place and a good premise, but I was disappointed by the male characters and the presentation of faith.

It takes place in 1890s Boston, where Lydia Pallas works as a translator for the Navy. Desperate to make enough money to buy her apartment outright before she is evicted, she takes on extra work translating Turkish and Albanian for Alexander Banebridge, a friend of her boss', in his attempt to crack the North American opium trade. Bane has dedicated himself to his crusade, and he won't be swayed by his attraction to Lydia, even as he puts her and her job in danger.

If my blurb doesn't sound entirely neutral, that's because it isn't. I really did try to write an blurb that uninfluenced by my opinion of Bane and the other male characters, but it was impossible, so in the end, I just went 'stuff it, I'm going to be talking about it in the next paragraph anyway' and cast some subtle shade. 

The two main male characters - Bane and his friend, Admiral Eric Fontaine, who is also Lydia's boss - both treat Lydia abominably. Bane sweet-talks and manipulates her into undertaking actions of questionable legality for his crusade against opium, trading on her desperate need for money, and when Eric discovers this, he promptly fires her, without any thought about what it will mean for her ability to provide for herself. Having got what he wants from her - translations about shipments of opium - Bane drops her like a hot rock, not even paying her the rest of the money he owes her until many months later. So Lydia is forced out of her home, and into a hand-to-mouth existence working in a bakery. Bane's actions are made worse by the fact that Lydia's upbringing in an orphanage has left her with a need for security and ordered surroundings, and she repeatedly makes him aware of how much she fears sliding back into poverty. It read like a penny dreadful, with Lydia as the poor, waifish heroine, whose fall from grace has a moral about consorting with men and being a heathen. Other elements of the plot also reinforce this Gothic vibe, such as - SPOILER ALERT - Lydia's addiction to opium, and her imprisonment in a isolated estate. 

Throughout most of the book, Bane is the one of the two who is supposedly a committed Christian, while Lydia isn't very religiously inclined (of course, the nature of inspirational romance means that Lydia does become Christian). However, in my opinion, neither Bane nor Eric comes off well as an example of Christian charity, or any positive Christian trait. Yes, Bane's desire to end the opium trade is driven by his faith, but it's mostly to absolve himself of his prior involvement in it, rather than any genuine desire to help others. I'm not very religious, but my grandmother is from the 'whatever you did for the least of my followers, you did for me' school of thought, not the 'cause an innocent woman's downfall and a lot of grief for a lot of people, but don't worry about the ramifications of your actions, because you're a self-righteous Christian man' one. But, you know, po-tay-tos, po-tah-tos . 

As though the whole ghosting-the-heroine-for-several-months wasn't enough, Bane also feels the need to constantly lecture the female characters about how they can save their souls. Other male characters also mansplain Christianity, and I came to resent the way that this was presented as a revelation from moral, Christian men (who weren't really that moral), to women, as though women are inherently immoral or need to have men interpret religion and proselytise it to them. However, while both are inherently gendered and adhere to the virgin-whore dichotomy, I did find it interesting to note the difference between the dynamic in Against the Tide and many other inspirational romances I have read, where the heroine is a pure and good Christian, and must teach the hero the error of his ways. 

But, back to my problems with Bane, he was also a bit holier-than-thou about the whole fight against the opium trade, and did this horrible 'I-told-you-so' throughout Lydia's recovery from opium addiction (when he wasn't evangelising).

At this point, you may well be wondering why I've given Against the Tide two stars, since I've just written a huge laundry list of all the things I *didn't* like (here's looking at you, Bane). But there were elements that I liked, or that worked for me. The naval and opium trade and usage aspects were interesting, well-researched and well-integrated into the story. It's always nice to see a historical romance heroine with an occupation, and I appreciated that Lydia was learned, employed and independent, although much of this is, of course, undercut in the course of the story. Similarly, she is an immigrant, she and her family having arrived from Greece when she was a child. I also admired what Camden tried to do here with having an opium-addicted heroine, even if the religious, paternalistic and moralising undertones meant that it didn't always work for me. Despite my problems with it, the story was also compelling, in that way that Gothic and old-school romances often are.

I have a strange relationship with inspirational romance, as I think many romance readers do. For me, this definitely fell into the 'too much inspie' category, and I wouldn't advise reading it unless you are a hardcore inspie-lover and are totally feeling the gender dynamic (although I'm not sure that inspie-loving gender-traditionalists frequent this small-time, rant-y, feminist blog). If you are interested in giving something of Camden's a go, I have previously read and enjoyed Toward the Sunrise and Until the Dawn, which feature all of the strong points of Against the Tide - strong, working heroine, good sense of place and interesting historical tidbits - without nearly as many pitfalls. 

Review: Spirtbound by Dani Kristoff

2 stars

Originally, I was intrigued by Spiritbound's premise of a Sydney coven of "folk" where young witches greatly outnumber warlocks. The basic plot had promise, but the writing and characterisation wasn't what I was hoping for.

As young children, Grace and Declan were inseparable, but that all ended when Grace accidentally raised her cousin's dead cat. Declan and his horrified parents moved overseas, while Grace became a pariah. Years later, Declan's back, and the shortage of available warlocks means that every young witch in Sydney has her eye on him, except for Grace. For her, Declan's presence is associated with the worst time in her life, and she knows that her marginal position within the coven means that she should stay well away from the new Golden Boy, even if he's showing interest in getting to know her again.

Much of the plot concerns Grace's ostracism and the prejudice against her, as well as the disparate gender ratio in the coven. I thought that both of these plot points were ripe for nuanced explorations, but both are superficial (while the latter is also somewhat problematic). Partly, I think that this can be traced back to the simplistic writing style, which tends towards telling and not showing: 

Of course it hurt being snubbed, but Grace had built up a tolerance for it. Still, having Declan notice and calling attention to it filled her with shame. It was as if the whole room was pointing at her, vilifying her, instead of just tolerating her. Forcing Rose to acknowledge her presence made Grace confront the ostracism head-on, something she had not done for years. (8%)

The gender disparity in the coven - which I had hoped would be all women-power - was pretty much the opposite. Grace continually calls the women who shun her, and/or who are making a play for Declan, "bitch-witches". The one or two of these women whose characters are developed in depth are shown to be cruel, immoral and sexually promiscious (in a slut-shaming way), while Grace is a virginal turn-the-other-cheek kind of gal. 

There were also other gendered behaviours that made me feel very uneasy. Firstly, when Declan and Grace are reintroduced, she is upset by the association between him and the necromancy incident, since he was the one to report her misuse of magic as a child. She is quite clearly distressed, and tells Declan to leave her alone, but he keeps talking, criticising her reaction and demanding a second chance. "Demand" is actually the word that he uses, and later in the book, they laugh about it, but I find it hard to see the humour in the way men think that they are owed women's time and emotional labour, regardless of circumstance. A few chapters later, Declan grabs Grace and kisses her - without her consent - in the school where they both work, in front of the students. Somehow, at this point, I still was wiling to accept that maybe this was just a old-school romance-influenced novel, even though it was published in 2015, but the last straw was a horrible scene in which Grace is gaslighted by Declan and her own mother, who paint her reaction as hysterical when it is really quite reasonable and proportionate to the situation. 

I feel like maybe the reader was meant to overlook all this stuff because Grace's mother has a sex-positive attitude, which she has passed on to Grace, but the scales absolutely do not balance. This may be fiction, but fiction reflects and impacts our real world, and these are things that women - particularly women of colour and women who are marginalised along other axes - struggle with enough in everyday life, and having it legitimised and reflected it back to us in supposedly female-oriented literature only makes it worse. 

Moving back to the story at large, I also had some problems with the romantic conflict. It's not that it's lacking, precisely, but one obstacle was exchanged for another late in the piece, which meant that there wasn't much build-up. Like the first, the second conflict was also dispensed with fairly quickly, thanks to a deus-ex-machina moment, leaving me feeling slighty unfulfilled, even though I thought I'd stopped backing the romance after the workplace-sexual-assualt and gaslighting incidents.

Ultimately, my experience of Spiritbound was defined by the diactic writing style and disturbing gender dynamics. I can chalk the first one up to personal preference, but find I'm unable and unwilling to do that in the case of the second. Make of that what you will. 

Review: Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

2 stars

Vinegar Girl was a cautionary tale about straying into literary fiction. As a retelling of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, it had a high chance of an HEA and relied on the popular romance trope of a marriage of convenience, so I thought it wouldn't be too taxing. But, not only was it taxing, the similarities to romance made me hyper-aware of just how lacking it was.

As well as being a assistant in a preschool, Kate Battista keeps house for her eccentric professor father and air-headed teenaged sister. When Professor Battista's Russian research assistant, Pyotr, cannot get a visa extension, the two men hatch a plan: Pyotr will marry Kate so that he can get a green card. Kate resists initially, but ultimately agrees to the idea. Now, I should have some suspenseful "but is it really a marriage of convenience?" line, but I can't bring myself to write it, because I am just so confused and dismayed at everything that happened after that. The blurb describes Professor Battista and Pyotr's marriage of convenience plan as "touchingly ludicrous", but it's not, it's horrible and agency-robbing - despite Kate's reluctant consent - and everything keeps going downhill from there. 

Inside Romancelandia, we spend a lot of time shouting into the void about the feminism of the genre. I can - and frequently do - make this argument to non-romance people, and yet it wasn't until I read Vinegar Girl that I fully realised how much I had come to consider literature and heroines that are tacitly but undeniably feminist as the norm. 

Vinegar Girl's source material, The Taming of the Shrew, is considered by some to be a grossly misogynistic play, but has also been reinterpreted as some kind of stealthy proto-feminism. Whichever way you see it and whatever you think Shakespeare's opinions were, The Taming of the Shrew reflects its society. Again, some people say that it's social commentary on the treatment of women in Shakespeare's society; others say that the comedic aspect trivialises Kate's abuse and her presentation as the shrewish wife is a source of cheap laughs, rather than a treatise on domestic abuse (Grzadkowska 2014). 

I don't think Vinegar Girl reflects our society in the same way. Maybe it reflects the 1950s; despite her supposed social awkwardness, Kate does a lot of cooking and gardening and looking after her men. Or, maybe it does make a point about our society. It is possible I found one, but it's ambiguous and mired in things that undermine it. Perhaps that means - in literary fiction terms - it's subtle and subversive and this romance reader just isn't clever enough to work it all out. I've been thinking and writing the whole thing in circles for weeks now, and it's made me very tired. 

Basically, my problem is that Kate does massive amounts of unrecognised emotional labour, first for her father, and then for her father and Pyotr, both of whom are emotionally stunted and completely thoughtless about the way their actions impact others. This is explored somewhat through the way that the Professor talks about his deceased wife, and Kate's mother, who clearly became depressed because of her husband's high expectations and emotional neglect. But then it seems as though a similar dynamic is created between Kate and Pyotr. In the end, Kate makes a big speech - the equivalent of Katherina's final speech in The Taming of the Shrew, where she encourages women to be submissive to their husbands - in which she says:

“It’s hard being a man. Have you ever thought about that? Anything that’s bothering them, men think they have to hide it. They think they should seem in charge, in control; they don’t dare show their true feelings. No matter if they’re hurting or desperate or stricken with grief, if they’re heartsick or they’re homesick or some huge dark guilt is hanging over them or they’re about to fail big-time at something—‘Oh, I’m okay,’ they say. ‘Everything’s just fine.’ They’re a whole lot less free than women are, when you think about it.” 

It's not that Kate - and Tyler - don't have a point. Toxic masculinity, which makes men suppress their feelings, is a problem. But this is a result of sexism: the flip-side is that women are meant to be emotionally literate and supportive. And she does nothing to challenge or dismantle that assumption. In fact, she buys into it massively. From the beginning to the end of the book, it is Kate who does all the emotional labour in her relationships. 

The speech is meant to be about Pyotr - Kate's sister has accused her of "backing down" to him - but Pyotr falls seems to deal with strong emotion more by man-babying than bottling, leaving Kate to do the damage control.

To be honest, I had problems with the way Tyler constructed Pyotr in general. His halting speech and bumbling nature strip him of his full humanity. Somehow it's even worse that Tyler is aware of what she's doing; perhaps halfway through the book, Kate has a realisation that Pyotr has thoughts and feelings just as complex as hers, even if he can't communicate them successfully in English. At first, I wrote off his inconsistent English abilities as a quirk; he works in academia, so he must have a solid grasp of English, even if he does not always employ it. However, later in the book, a secondary character called Mrs Liu is introduced, who is presented as having similar language problems as Pyotr: she has a grasp of complicated phrases and obscure words, but forgets or misuses basic, everyday language in ways that are not culturally specific (for example, I don't object to Pyotr dropping articles, as many native Russian speakers with excellent English do this). Anyway, once Mrs Liu made her appearance, it was hard to see the speech thing as anything other than racist or xenophobic. 

Quite apart from the whole ambiguous point about gender roles, Vinegar Girl was slow-moving and had pacing problems towards the end. There was no chemistry between Kate and Pyotr, and their decision to have a 'real' marriage was completely incomprehensible, particularly from Kate's perspective. I did enjoy the writing, except for the racist speech thing, and the odd turn of phrase that was overly florid. 

Really, the most I can say about this book is that it was thought-provoking. But I didn't really want my thoughts provoked into going around in circles with no clear answer, and I can get a clearer, less ambiguous point about gender roles by reading a romance, the newspaper or even just looking out the window. And I don't need to read fiction which takes the pain, suffering and forbearance of women as one of its foundations. That sucks, and maybe the next time some literary fiction snob sneers at my romance, I'll be able to tell them that.

Review: Frozen by L. A. Casey

2 stars

I don't read many seasonal romances, partly because I'm a bit of an Ebenezer Scrooge, and partly because they're almost exclusively about the Northern Hemisphere 'white' Christmas, but since I don't associate that with Christmas, they aren't familiar or comforting in the way that I gather they are meant to be. But Frozen by L. A. Casey was on sale and has a 4.01 rating on Goodreads, so I gave it a go, with mixed results. 

Neala Clarke and Darcy Hart hate each other, but they're forced into each others' company by their families, who are thick as thieves. When their eyes meet over the last doll of a popular children's franchise available anywhere before Christmas, their long-running sniping erupts into a full-out war. Neala needs the doll for her niece, to prove that she can be reliable auntie, while Darcy wants it for his nephew. After a scuffle, Neala leaves the shop with the doll, but Darcy is determined to get it back. And as things heat up, they realise that there might have been something else beneath their hatred for each other all along.

Frozen was set in Ireland, and had very Irish speech patterns; 'eejit' for 'idiot' and 'me' instead of 'my'. It takes some getting used to, but it contributed to a very strong sense of place. The characters live in a small town, and it was nice to have a romance where both the hero and heroine had modest occupations and incomes: Darcy is a building contractor and Neala works in a hotel. 

The bad blood between Neala and Darcy stems from a falling out in the playground when they were ten years old. Although the flashback scene that recounted this was clunky, the way that each reacted and was affected by it was in line with their age and gender. However, I felt that the way this had snowballed over the years was awful. 

Throughout the course of the book, the hero and heroine - and their families, which was somehow worse - exhibited juvenile, irrational, dangerous and just plain odd behaviour. Both Neala and Darcy have a tendency towards extreme immaturity, and they have been going full an-eye-for-an-eye since they were children, often dragging their family into it as well. Darcy expresses regret for some of the pranks he pulled on Neala, or was complicit to, in their youth, but they were still horrible, and in fact 'prank' is not an appropriate word for one or two of the incidents. I'm no scholar, but the incident where teenaged Neala has to walk home naked because her clothes have been stolen is surely some form of sexual harassment, or at least very serious bullying. He also spills fake blood on her pants and tells everyone that she has got her first period. I think the reader is meant to excuse these because - unbeknownst to Neala - Darcy saved her from almost getting raped one time, but these things don't cancel each other out. In fact, somehow it's worse that he was still 'pranking' when she was dealing with the aftermath of that. Overall, it's a classic rendering of 'he's mean to you because he likes you' and you know what? Stuff that, women don't have to put up with that shit, and that's why it makes no difference to me that Neala gives as good as she gets, because it doesn't rectify the seriously skewy gender dynamic at work here. And the way that their families react to the whole thing is also quite stuffed up, in my opinion. 

Despite all that, I thought that the book got a lot stronger towards the end and began to really enjoy it. As Darcy and Neala drilled down into the hurt each had caused the other, and their feelings, I started to connect to them a lot better, where I had previously found everything to be very overblown. The second half was so affecting that I seriously considered upping the rating, but in the end I couldn't justify it. As well as the the characters' behaviour, which I've already spoken about, there was continual sexist - and occasional homophobic - language from the hero and other male characters. Some example:

Darcy, referring to another male character: I could have hugged him for that, but since I didn't want to deal with any gay jokes from him...I refrained from showing any sign of grateful emotion. (16%)

I scowled at him and straightened myself up to my full height of six feet three inches. Stop being a bitch. I repeated the thought over and over... (16%)

Be a man. (34%)

I didn't care if it made me a coward, a bitch, or anything else. (39%)

I lied to keep from looking like a pussy-whipped bitch in front of the pair of you (92%) 

As you can see, there's no character growth to be had here; Darcy's still using 'bitch' - and thus femaleness - as a synonym for 'weak' right at the end of the book. These language choices made me hyper-aware of the gendered aspect of their so-called 'pranks' that I discussed earlier, and I not only disconnected from Darcy each time he equated weakness with being female, I actually became increasingly angry and upset. It might seem like an out-of-proportion reaction, but I read Frozen against the background of the US election results. The sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, fear and hopelessness that accompanies it, together with my everyday experiences as a woman, got mixed up with what was on the page, and each time I came across another incident, I'd shut off my Kindle feeling sicker, tireder and more fragile than when I'd started reading.  I read romance to make me happy and to leave the ugliness of the real world behind, and the covert sexism of Frozen meant that it had the complete opposite effect. I accept that there were extenuating circumstances and the language used may well be reflective of how Irish men actually speak, but neither excuses the sexist language and behaviour of the hero and other male characters. 

Review: Starstruck Shifter by Kim Fox

2 stars
*SPOILER ALERT*
I received a free copy of this book from the author. My opinion is my own. 

Starstruck Shifter by Kim Fox was a very light, quick read. Although I'm not the biggest shifter romance reader, I liked the premise. The execution of it started out okay, but then it ran into some pretty big bumps.

The hero, Mason Maloney, is an ageing movie star with a fading career. On the set of the fourth instalment in his action franchise, he meets quirky intern Joni, who's fresh out of film school. His bear shifter - the reason he doesn't live the hard-partying, urban life that Hollywood requires - bonds with her as his mate, and for him there's only a matter of convincing Joni. Joni can't believe she's working on a movie starring her childhood crush, and when Mason takes an interest in her, she's thrilled. But the movie's having teething problems, and Mason and Joni have a vested interest in ensuring it gets off the ground.

I've kept my synopsis-writing formula of writing a vague line at the end that hints at the troubles to come, but, to be honest, it was difficult to come up with something for this one. Starstruck Shifter was running a bit short on conflict. There was enough external conflict, but without much discernible romantic conflict (except for one incident very early in the piece when Joni thinks Mason is dating his co-star), it still felt lacklustre. 

I probably wouldn't have been so attuned to the lack of romantic conflict, except that I wanted romantic conflict because Joni was an idiot, one of those cases where you don't know how they've made it this far in life because they're such a hot mess. In Joni's case, she is clumsy, lacking filter and not great at rational decision-making, instead going off the cuff after giving herself some weird pep talk. 

In essence, she was immature, and she never gets past her idol-worship of Mason, which is essential when using this trope. In fact, in many ways, the breaking down about expectations surrounding this should BE the romantic conflict: heroine realises he's just a normal bloke, and lets go of her childhood crush for the love of the man beneath (I'm looking at you, Kulti). Except that Joni was still googling gossip on Mason and (metaphorically, although only just) doodling 'Joni Maloney' on her binders the whole way through the book. 

It might have been comic for the first ten pages, but after that it wasn't cute and the whole story suffered because of her ill characterisation. It also made me acutely aware of the age difference between them, which I probably wouldn't have blinked an eye at if Joni had seemed like she could actually adult. At all. In any way. In the absence of any evidence of adulting, I found it hard to believe that Joni had apparently written this amazing screenplay, especially since the book itself was so poorly edited. 

Typos and grammar errors abounded, and while I could shrug off most of them, my reading comprehension and enjoyment was impeded by the severe lack of commas throughout. 

Also, one final gripe: the only apparent point of the shifter element is to bind the two them together (which doesn't negate actually showing us why they should be together), to make it clear that Mason isn't like other Hollywood stars, and to allow him to heal when Joni accidentally shot him in the stomach with a crossbow. 

Honestly, after that scene, I knew there was no coming back for this one. It's getting 2 stars for the premise and Mason, who was underutilised in favour of Joni-the-twelve-year-old. 

Review: Girl on a Plane by Cassandra O'Leary

2 stars
*SPOILER ALERT*

For me, Cassandra O'Leary's debut novel Girl on a Plane didn't live up to the anticipation and hype that surrounded it. The hero was frustrating, which has been a bit of a theme for me lately. I know I don't deal well with misogynistic, patronising or insert-dickish-tendency-here heroes (there's enough of that in real life) but am I asking too much to be able to track a hero's journey from jerk to not-a-jerk, or from emotionally stunted to not-emotionally-stunted?

The hero here, Gabriel, is the Australian CEO of a travel website, and en route to London to set up the European arm of his company, he meets Sinead, an Irish flight attendant. Due to a typhoon, the two of them end up stranded in Singapore, where the hotel has accidently double-booked them in the same suite. Sinead - who is on the fence about the way Gabriel has been behaving - isn't about to give up easily, and a power struggle ensues, until they fall into bed together. When the bad weather clears, they have to decide whether they simply go their separate ways, or whether their secluded few days is the start of something more.

For the first third or so of the book, Gabriel is shown to have serious man-baby tendencies and the emotional coping skills of a baby howler monkey. I might have been more accepting of the excuses given (he was tired, he hadn't meant to do whatever) if he hadn't been so calculating in the way he treated women, and if it hadn't been the female characters, including the heroine, who bore the brunt of his bad behaviour. I mean, he randomly accosts Sinead when she's off-shift in a neutral environment (the airport lounge) to take out his anger at her employer over an unavoidable situation.

While these overt instances of white male privilege fall away somewhat, we're still left with a less than admirable hero. I particularly disliked the male banter between Gabriel and his best friend. In one instance, Gabriel admits to having met someone, and this exchange follows:

Ryan leaned forward in his seat. "Now I'm intrigued. Give me the low-down." 

"Flight attendant, Irish accent, long blonde hair, fantastic breasts. She's hot, but she's more. Funny and sweet. She's got me agreeing to all sorts of crap to keep seeing her....She's making all these rules. No touching for a month." 

"Oh man, you'll be out of your mind. You agreed? She must be special." 

"Special." Funny, Sinead had used the same word. It was growing on him. "Yeah, you could say that. Lucky we already got down and dirty in Singapore so I know it's worth waiting for. It'll be hell in the meantime though."

There's a few things going on here, and elsewhere. First and most obvious is the objectification, followed by the male entitlement to a female's body. This might be a realistic portrayal of how men talk and think amongst themselves, but it left a bad taste in my mouth, especially since Sinead has left an abusive relationship and spends the whole book dealing with the fallout of this. Gabriel doesn't know this at this point (I don't think, I can't remember with 100% accuracy), but the reader does, and it I found it hard to back a relationship where the hero seemed to have some of the same entitled behaviours as the abusive ex.

However, Gabriel's backstory about his mother's early onset Alzheimer's was going some way towards redeeming him, at least until that all fell apart as well. His concern about succumbing to the same illness and not wanting Sinead - or anyone - to have to care for him was poignant and the major barrier to them establishing a long-term relationship. And yet, we don't see it being worked through. Gabriel breaks up with Sinead over this fear, then all of a sudden, he's back on the scene, saying he's been to a doctor and he's going to be fine. Cue HEA.

On the other hand, I did genuinely enjoy Sinead's observations on life in customer service. She describes her work-mode self as a 'flight attendant zombie', and is over the fact that she is clever, fluent in 3 languages and simply worth something as a person, and yet has to put up with being patronised, objectified and generally treated badly. She also holds some ill-will towards a male colleague, who does the same job as her, yet is sullen because he thinks he's above certain parts of it, and is treated differently. I related to her sense of disenchantment, and enjoyed the snark, wit and bone-tiredness that infused her observations. It went some small way to making up for my frustration at Gabriel and the plot. In other ways, however, Sinead's observations made my annoyance worse: the author doesn't have any illusions about being a woman in the service industries, and yet her hero is still exhibits those characteristics her heroine hates.

Review: The Convict's Bounty Bride by Lena Dowling

2 stars

You could be forgiven for thinking a book entitled The Convict's Bounty Bride would be set in the colony, but you'd be wrong. If you read between the lines of the synopsis, you can see it's set in London, but somehow I still expected that it would end up back in Australia at some point. It never did, but my annoyance at that was quickly overwhelmed by my annoyance at just about everything else. 

Quick plot run-down before I get all rant-y: James Hunter has served his seven-year sentence in the colony of New South Wales, and returned to London to claim his due from the family for whom he took the fall. Lady Thea Willers' father was counting on James dying during his sentence, but now James is back and demanding Thea's hand in marriage. Except Thea doesn't want to marry, instead having entirely unrealistic expectations about what she is going to do with her life (more on that later).

The combination of the writing style and novella-length made the story feel very abrupt. There was little attempt made to orientate the reader or set up the plot and characters, and the results are jarring. The whole thing gallops along, and - to continue the terrible equine metaphor - the reader can barely keep her seat for being whacked by passing plot twists. Literally every development in this book came out of nowhere and made its appearance too soon. 

Because the characters are very one-dimensional, the reader is unable to anticipate their actions, which was probably a blessing in disguise. I probably would have given up altogether if I'd known the heroine would be so horrible. She was, by turns, immature, cruel and criminally stupid. There's a scene where, determined to ruin herself so as not to be forced into marriage, she basically assaults the stable boy in full view of the stable master. And then she's so surprised her father is going to whip the poor boy - who might also lose his position - that she faints. 

The other reason I was completely baffled by the characters' actions is that they just don't act in the way real people do. When there is a Big Tragedy, the affected characters all have very weird and unrealistic reactions. James is the only one who actually shows any sense, but even this doesn't last long, as he proceeds to take Thea's virginity at a totally inappropriate time.  

As much as I disliked the Thea, I also didn't appreciate the way James viewed her as payment for services rendered. He never really gives up seeing Thea as an object; when he realises he cares for her, the reasons that are given are basically her body and her suitability as a colonial wife. 

But the biggest single thing was the lack of regard for the realities of the Regency Era in which the book was set. I mean, I'm no Georgian scholar, but I'm pretty sure random ex-convicts can't get vouchers to Almack's. And then there's Thea. The book opens with her asking her father if she can have a position on the board of their bank, because she wants to have a career. Dowling justifies this by referencing the fact that the famous Regency character Lady Jersey was the primary shareholder in her grandfather's bank, but I'd argue that it's one thing for a married Countess and social arbiter to be involved in banking, and another for the young, unmarried daughter of an Earl. 

The idea of Thea having a 'career' is odd. It is surely anachronistic for a young woman to aspire to such a thing (especially in something like banking, instead of say, writing), and I'm also pretty sure the concept of a 'career' was not commonly used in the same sense as we use it today. One had a profession, or a vocation. Where 'career' was used, it was because one had chosen a calling with steps of advancement, such as the military, rather than just some girl deciding to dabble in banking. 

Supposedly, Thea's desire to be a career girl comes from Mary Wollstonecraft, whom her father included in her education. That, in of itself, is a stretch, but I was willing to let it slide. But Thea's refusal to marry was based on a erroneous belief that Wollstonecraft never married, and I couldn't believe that she would not have known this. Even though Wollstonecraft had been dead for roughly 20 years, she still lived on in the Ton's imagination because of the exploits of her daughter Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein), whose affair with the married Percy Bysshe Shelley was grist for the gossip mill for years. Basically, everyone thought that Mary Godwin was no better than she ought to be, given her scandalous and unnatural mother.

But, if the idea of a Wollstonecraft-loving heroine appeals, I'd recommend The Likelihood of Lucy by Jenny Holiday, where the heroine won't give you homicidal impulses. 

Review: Finding Gabriel by Rachel L. Demeter

2 stars

Trigger warning for attempted suicide

Once again, the universe is sending me reminders that being a pessimist is the way to go. This book might have well been a giant neon sign reading: Don't get excited about things, you stupid bint. You'll just be disappointed. 

(Romantic) literary depictions of the Napoleonic Wars from the French perspective are rare, as Regency romances are usually too busy following English roses and the tortured aristocratic officers they cure with their love. So, I was excited to see that Finding Gabriel was set against the backdrop of Napoleon's (first) exile, and the Hundred Days, even if the romance element was still very familiar: French fleur-de-lis cures tortured aristocratic officer with her love.  

There were some twists to the premise, though. The anguished hero in question, Colonel Gabriel de Laurent, doesn't have a physical injury (to begin with), only a solid case of survivor's guilt, which causes him stick his flintlock in his mouth and pull the trigger. The heroine, Ariah Larochelle, finds him washed up on the bank of the Seine with half his face blown off. Miraculously, he survives - more on that later - and Ariah coaxes him back to health with the help of her six year-old daughter Emmaline. Playing happy families starts to heal both Gabriel and Ariah, but then - surprise! - there is très drama and everything falls apart.  

Despite my high hopes for Finding Gabriel, it shot itself in the foot early on with florid and obtuse language. Here's a particular stunner, which reminds me of the mangled sentences you get when you translate something into another language in Google Translate, and then back again to English: 

Hours later, the hearth gently crooned, casting transient shadows along the walls and floorboards. Outside the home, the wind chime jingled as it was manipulated by a harsh breeze. (loc. 1586)

But it wasn't just the terminal overwriting, unfortunately. Other writing choices were equally inexplicable, like having the bulk of the story in third person past tense, but the flashbacks in first person present tense.  The past perfect was sometimes used when the simple past was the logical choice, and I needed to read the odd sentence two or three times before I caught its meaning. I get that incomplete and truncated sentences are useful in creating suspense, but sometimes it just seemed like the author couldn't be bothered to string some words together more coherently, like when Ariah first comes across Gabriel:

The shadowy figure materialized with each of her steps until she saw the things for what she was. A man. Ariah's first thought: he's surely dead. (Loc. 266)

Well, Ariah, it's funny you should say that, because he surely should be dead. Gabriel's face is described as half-gone, and having bone shards poking through the skin. In the days when even a scratch could lead to septicaemia and subsequent death, it does seem unlikely that Gabriel survived, and even if he did, splintering his cranium outward means that there would be nothing between his skin and his brain, leaving it constantly vulnerable to accidental trauma. Demeter was vague enough about the details of Gabriel's recovery and disfigurement that I was able to suspend disbelief at first, but as miraculous occurrences, dire circumstances and unlikely coincidences piled up, I found this increasingly difficult to sustain.  

It didn't help that some of the tragedies inflicted on the characters seemed a bit arbitrary. I found great poignancy in Ariah's backstory, whereas, with Gabriel, it was almost as though he author decided that a decade of military service wouldn't make him tortured enough, and so added some familial tragedies to the mix. But, for all the talk of Gabriel being a tortured hero, he was actually pretty low-key, especially when held up to the self-flagellating hero of the same name in Judith James' Broken Wing, a comparison made in the synopsis. Gabriel's transition from tortured hero to not-so-tortured hero is largely uneventful, and yet this was the part I enjoyed best, as we got to see the characters develop away from the more manufactured drama of the beginning and denouement, when a whole lot of external conflict is introduced. 

Overall, I didn't hate Finding Gabriel. It is, however, one of those cases where I am not sure I actually read the same book everyone else is describing. From other reviews I'd read, I had expectations of a lush, history-heavy story à la Joanna Bourne, but that just set me up for disappointment. Story of my life.

Review: Badlands by Seleste deLaney

2 stars

Seleste deLaney's Badlands is a Steampunk romance, set after an alternative American Civil War that saw the US divided up into the Union, the Confederates and the Badlands. The Badlands is a frontier, where the Union expel their criminals to be rounded up and imprisoned by the Amazonian women who live there. Ever is one of those women, a military commander for Queen Lavinia. When the queen is killed in a brutal attack, Ever escapes and embarks on a mission to bring home the new Queen from her university in the Union before there's a massive power vacuum and whatever mysterious enemy they're fighting manages to wipe the Badlands off the face of the earth. Spencer Pierce, captain of the airship that picks up Ever after she flees her people's settlement, reluctantly assists her in her mission, but he's got problems of his own. The attack on the Badlands has meant he was unable to complete the last cargo run of his indenture, leaving him under the thumb of a powerful Union Senator.

Badlands suffered from all-round poor characterisation. For a start, Ever was an insufferable and nonsensical heroine. There was a massive disparity between her rhetoric and her actions. She was intolerant and judgemental and stubborn beyond belief, and didn't seem to have the good sense God gave a flea. She's meant to be a warrior, but you'd never know it the way the the hero has to coddle her, even though Ever decided Spencer is weak and idiotic when they first meet. (Spoiler alert from here on in). Next time we turn around Ever's got a serious case of insta-love. Which, I'd just like to add, she tries to banish by sleeping with another crew member. Spencer's insta-lust was a bit more understandable, since Ever has some kind of aversion to clothing herself appropriately, but why he puts his crew in danger for her I'm not quite sure.

In fact, the motivations of all the characters were very patchy. The villain of the piece was inexplicably evil, and I can't help but think that there would have been much easier ways achieve his aims. The ship's doctor, Henrietta, wants to marry Spencer, although once again I'll be damned if I can work out why she's set her heart on that. I mean, the guy was the most unobjectionable bit of the whole book, but he doesn't exactly have a lot in the way of prospects and Henrietta didn't actually seem to be in love with him.

It's getting 2 stars, and that's mainly for world-building; I liked the broad strokes of the setting, even if I found some of the smaller details a little incongruous. 

Review: Fierce by Rosalind James

2 stars

I hate writing entirely negative reviews and I don't think they are very useful to the reader, so I always try to bring some relativity to it.  I whinge away and then say 'but this was a redeeming feature' or 'if you are not bothered by xyz, then you might like this book more than me', but I've tried to do this for Fierce by Rosalind James and I can't. I've sat here staring at my blank screen for twenty minutes and I can't think of a single redeeming feature, and I can't think of a single person who might enjoy it, but clearly many people did because there are a lot of positive reviews online. To each their own, but, for me, Fierce was interminable and prompted some serious WTF moments.  

The first came from the power imbalance. This happens in a lot of romance novels, of course, and there's nothing wrong with it, but it needs to done carefully so it doesn't seem coercive. Set in New York, Fierce is a romance about a Kiwi business tycoon, Hemi, and his employee, Hope. Throughout the novel, Hope is continually concerned that Hemi will fire her, and frequently laments her lack of other employment options. When she mentioned this to him, he claims he'd never fire her, but I'm not sure how Hope was meant to know that, given Hemi is manipulative, overbearing, ruthless and doesn't take well to being told 'No'. 

As an added gripe, this was often attributed to and excused by Hemi's Maori ethnicity. At one point, he fantasises about hauling Hope away, and then says: 

"I couldn't do any of it, because this wasn't the New Zealand bush, it wasn't three hundred years ago, and she wasn't mine."  

Gah with the noble savage stuff. Also - and there's a spoiler here, because I really can't be stuffed to talk in circles - this book really reinforced the fact that the American healthcare system is completely nonsensical. Hemi 'proves himself' by paying the medical expenses for Hope's sister, Karen, in a move that finally convinces Hope that she shouldn't do a runner (even though she totally should). That plot device wouldn't have worked in Australia (or New Zealand), because the conversation - in a worst case scenario - literally would have gone like this:

Hope: My sister's throwing up constantly and I think she needs to go to the GP but I can't afford the fees so do you know one who bulk-bills?
Hemi: Yeah, there's a practice of them down the road.
Hope: Cool, thanks.

*after seeing GP*
Hope: So, turns out Karen has a brain tumour *sob*
Hemi: I'm sorry to hear that, Hope.  
Hope: Yeah, it's pretty bad. The GP gave us a referral to a Neurologist, but she only works in the public system once a month and is quite popular, so we are going have to wait maybe three to six months to get in *sob*.
Hemi: If you like, I'll pay for you to go to see the Neuro in her private rooms. It's usually about $220 dollars for an initial consultation, and you'll get $75 rebate back from medicare afterwards.
Hope: I'll give you the Medicare cheque and pay you back the rest next payday. K, thanks, bye. 
Hemi: Damn you, Medicare Benefit Schedule, you just ruined by chance to coerce this woman into a relationship!

Or Hope just would have taken Karen to Emergency one time when she had a bad episode and then it wouldn't have been classed as elective surgery and they wouldn't have had to wait at all. I understand, if you are working or lower-middle class in the U.S., the healthcare system is nothing to laugh about, but it's very hard to keep patience with a book that uses this plight so mercilessly. I've come across the plot device before and it hasn't bugged me as much, but as a New Zealander who had more money than he knew what to do with, Hemi should have:

a) paid his staff a living wage.
b) made sure their health insurance was sound and kicked in ASAP (Admittedly, I'm not sure about this. Is it legislated that you have to be in a job a certain amount of time before you can access healthcare or is it just convention?).
c) helped Hope and Karen out of the goodness of his heart.

It's getting 2 stars because it got slightly less awful in the closing chapter, when Hemi magically gained some humanity. I think I'll have to go back and read her NZ-set books with Maori heroes now, to see if she pulled the same fetishising bullshit there, and it passed me by.