Megan Chance, various

So I randomly picked up a Megan Chance at the library (A Candle in the Dark), vaguely remembering her being recced on my LJ before, and now have started obsessively glomming.

She's not a very typical romance author at all, and I mean that in a highly complimentary way. From the first four I've read, she seems to write about people who have somehow lost hope or have been hurt by life in some way and how they manage to find themselves and their dreams again. It sounds much more like women's fiction instead of romance, except it is most definitely romance, albeit slightly unconventional. I like her very much so far -- like Carla Kelly, she writes about people who seem very real and very solid to me. Too many romance authors manage to make the characters into stereotypes, and often, even the good ones make them into people you don't really think exist, who encounter problems that you wouldn't encounter. And while there's nothing wrong with that, it's nice to read a love story that feels like it could happen, that it deals with issues I am personally interested in. She also manages to hit almost every single one of my angst buttons in some.

So far, she seems to write about fairly angsty characters, some who come out nice, some mean, but all of them fairly complicated. They all seem to be American historicals, set around the Civil War period, and one of the things that I really like so far is that she doesn't sugarcoat or romanticize much of the life back then at all. It feels hard and mean and difficult, and the characters aren't somehow magically educated or genteel.

( The ones I've gotten to: )

Alias 3x17 The Frame

Yup. So. Watch me scream at the tv again.

( Spoilers )