Janet Evanovich, Stephanie Plum series

I've stopped my mad speed through the books -- I'm stuck at the beginning of the eighth book, and sadly, I don't think I really am going to keep going for now. Maybe read too many at once or something.

And while I would like it more if the characters went through some growth and didn't remain static, in general I'm ok with that. I think what annoys me the most right now is the love triangle. For those of you luckily not subject to my Sydney/Vaughn rants, I really dislike love triangles. This is why I never liked Guinevere (prior to GGK). I'm ok if it's a couple in love and then an unrequited love or something, although for those, I tend to feel extremely sorry for the unrequited love person. What annoys me the most are those stupid love triangles in which one party cannot make up his or her mind and ends up waffling for all time. It makes me feel very nidgy and uncomfortable.

So unsurprisingly, I started liking the series less around book five or six, which is when Ranger steps in as a romantic interest as well. Right now I cannot stand Stephanie's indecision between Morelli and Ranger. Luckily, I am not seething at Stephanie (unlike Vaughn), but it still causes that nidgy feeling. Plus, I like Morelli better, and I absolutely hate taking sides in a love triangle as well because of the sheer level of nervousness involved. Either that, or I am way too involved in my books. But we all knew that.

Megan Chance, more

Now I've read all the Megan Chance romances, with the exception of The Portrait, which I just got from Half.com. Too impatient to wait for it to come in at the bookstore or something. I'm still debating picking up Susannah Morrow, since melymbrosia says it's the weakest of her books.

So, these few days I have been reading:

After the Frost -- her second romance. I didn't like it as much as most of them, and the story takes a little time to get started. Subverted trope in this case would be the custody battle, except this time, it was the mother who came back for her daughter and the father trying to protect his happy household. I wonder what it says about me when I say I didn't like the heroine as much as the other ones because she wasn't as cold? Anyhow, again, I enjoyed small things like having there be no Big Misunderstanding and having Belle give up her idea of taking her daughter away instead of hanging on to it with her last breath, and a daughter who was luckily not too twee. And while Megan Chance's books generally don't focus so much on the physical side of the romance, this one does much more. I did feel a bit squicky about the fact that Rand and Belle conceived the girl when Belle was fifteen and he was twenty-two. Not so sure of the historical accuracy, and I'm guessing that enough girls at fifteen were married even, but it was still a bit squicky. Also, the traumatic past event, while not a Big Secret, also did not put the hero in the best of lights. I was a little hazy about his reasoning there (or lack thereof). Not Megan Chance's best, but better than a good many romances out there.

A Season in Eden -- I literally cried while I was reading this. Not sniffled, not teared up, but had to go blow my nose and wipe the tears off my face at least three times, and I in general do not cry while partaking in fiction. It quite likely could be hormones or something. And while it's being marketed as a romance novel, it really doesn't fit in the genre. More women's fiction marketed as romance (as opposed to Jennifer Crusie). The story is Lora's, who has had the hope torn out of her about a year ago. Her husband Eli decides to go off to a logging camp for money to pay off their debts, and has Will, a hired man, come in to help Lora out. I particularly loved the slowness of the book and its emphasis on the details of life in that area. Much like Fall from Grace, the life is very hard, and Chance makes it very clear just how desperate their situation can be and how precarious their hold on the land really is. I think that's what I love the most about the Western setting -- it reminds me of the Little House books.

I also very much liked how the reason behind Lora's loss of hopes was revealed slowly and almost naturally, given that it was told in first person, so when we finally find out what happens and why Lora does some of the things she does, it makes sense and it hurts. It didn't feel like the author was arbitrarily giving her signs of grief/trauma (as opposed to the fear of dead babies in SEP's First Lady). And I adored the letters. I never quite realized before, but I really love letters in books. I loved them because they weren't romantic, and yet, they were, and because I remember writing emails to the boy over summers when we were an ocean apart and how different it made communicating. And most importantly, I understood Lora's pain and why she reacted the way she did, which made her sympathetic instead of potentially whiny or annoying. Not that I think she was even close...