Brockway, Connie - My Pleasure

[oyceter]

Helena Nash wanders about at night dressed as a guy (very unconvincingly, of course, because we simply can't have homoeroticism in a romance) to help out star-crossed (aka, really dumb) lovers out of the goodness of her heart. She runs into Ramsey Munro, one of the men pledged to protect her and her sisters to repay her father. Sparks ensue, along with mistaken identities, fencing, and... actually, not that much else.

I'm trying not to be too snarky, because I should have gotten most of the rantiness out of the way now.

To be honest, I wasn't that mad at the book, per se. It was just the unfortunate conjunction of events. Connie Brockway is usually better than most romance authors at avoiding my hot button issues, but she doesn't manage to do it with the same grace in this book, or, for that matter, in the earlier book in the series, My Seduction (is it entirely pretentious of me to link to my own book posts? Or is it helpful? I can't tell, so I've felt very weird about doing it). My Pleasure isn't an awful romance by any means, but it falls short of Brockway's best, so I still feel disappointed. Plus, it has one of my nearly bullet-proof kinks (icy and controlled heroine) and still manages to not appeal.

Part of it was the gender disparity. I could see Brockway trying very hard to make her book not sexist -- every time the book started approaching a throw-against-the-wall moment, Helena or Ramsey would luckily say something and just slightly diffuse the situation so it was not quite as throw-against-the-wall worthy (I need to start with spork ratings ala yhlee!). But even though it was somewhat tempered, I still got annoyed because obviously Brockway could see the same gender issues that I was seeing and was trying to not fall prey to them and not succeeding. I wanted to sort of shake the author or the industry or the publisher or someone to say that there is market for feminist romances! Maybe a market of just me, but still! I suppose I should have seen it coming, given that the premise of the trilogy is that there are three burly Scotsmen sworn to protect three sisters. And Shadowheart may have forever spoiled me for the whole "forced seduction is a way for women to have control over sex" -- now I expect women who want control to show it not by being "forced" by the hero into having sex, but by actually, you know, being in control. Though I am being mean now, because Helena does eventually take charge. I was, however, snorting at Ramsey's chivalry in not ravishing the heroine on the streets. Either go with the hot, out-of-control sex or go with the tender, nice sex, but don't start with hot and then move to tender! You've already taken off her top, for god's sake, too late for chivalry!

You also can tell an author is really stretching the match when the heroine's change of heart comes not from talking to the hero or seeing him do something, but from an outsider literally sitting her down and telling her, here, this is why Ramsey is a nice guy and really, he loves you very much.

I would also like to note that I totally called the villain back in book one. Not that it was very hard, but still.

Comments

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

I actually find it v helpful when people link back to their previous book posts (I think coffee_and_ink, surely the eidos of the form, does it all the time) -- it's both helpful and interesting to see what people had to say earlier re series or related books.

[oyceter]

Oh thanks, I'm glad it's useful.

[riemannia.livejournal.com]

I think link backs make sense.

Helena Nash wanders about at night dressed as a guy (very unconvincingly, of course, because we simply can't have homoeroticism in a romance)

lol! Pam Rosenthal's Regency, Almost a Gentleman, has the guy wondering about his attraction to a guy. It still doesn't go far enough because imo some of the interesting tension dissipated once the hero realized who he as attracted to, but it sounds like it went a whole lot farther than this book.

[oyceter]

I really liked Almost a Gentleman, especially when Phoebe yelled at him for his double standard regarding her sleeping with that other guy.

Though I was a little disappointed in the end by her eventually abandoning the Phizz persona. Oh well.