Gaffney, Patricia - Wild at Heart
Wed, Jan. 7th, 2004 12:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterApparently Gaffney is known for writing about joy and happiness, although the first book I picked up by her (To Have and to Hold) was dark and angsty and a very atypical romance. This one is as well, but on the opposite end. Actually, I'm not sure if it's officially romance or women's fiction, although I think it's a romance.
It's a romance betwen Sydney Darrow and Michael, the Lost Man of Ontario, who spent years in the wild raised by wolves and sundry wild creatures. I thought Gaffney did a particularly good job with Michael (the Lost Man), making him naive about certain things but not exactly innocent, and it was particularly fun reading about his thoughts about the family that kind of adopted him. The whole PC-be-nice-to-animals bit wasn't overdone or hammered into my head, although I thought the zoo incident was obvious from about a mile away. I did appreciate that Michael went on trial for damages and that ultimately his impulsive act to free the animals ended up hurting as many or more than helping.
I'm also trying to stop picturing Sydney Darrow as Sydney the Spy Barbie and Michael as Vaughn. I watch too much TV.
I also liked that Sydney wasn't a TSTL (too stupid to live) heroine. She feels older, even if she might not be. I think I like romance heroines that don't flounce around and have "tempers" (aka cute bits where they flail their fists and look adorable to the hero). Sydney is a quiet person, tired from her husband's death a year or so ago, and not so much anti-social as reluctant to get too involved. I also liked Michael, making them one of the rare couples in romance novels in which one person or both are not raging lunatics/completely angsty/traumatized at birth. Or all three at once. There aren't the normal power plays between the feisty heroine and the swaggering alpha male -- instead, Sydney is old enough to know she can't have Michael because of the difference in their respective classes and old enough to try to avoid an illicit relationship. Michael's not so good about that, but it plays as being more his ignorance of societal rules than any sort of desire to push Sydney around.
I found Sam, the kid brother, could get a little too cutesy at times, although mostly he acted like a normal kid. I particularly liked Sydney's other brother Phillip, a bit debauched and bored with life. He's kind of lost his sense of innocence and his sense of self, and as he helps educate Michael in the ways of the world and prostitution, Michael helps awaken an optimism or a rose-colored view of the world that Phillip had lost.
The end of the book is almost unbelievably happy, although I wasn't suspending my disbelief so much that it was cracking. It's hard to be mad at Gaffney for doing the happy ever after because she makes them very warm and fuzzy and almost earned, or at least deserved, which is more than I can say for most romances.
It's a romance betwen Sydney Darrow and Michael, the Lost Man of Ontario, who spent years in the wild raised by wolves and sundry wild creatures. I thought Gaffney did a particularly good job with Michael (the Lost Man), making him naive about certain things but not exactly innocent, and it was particularly fun reading about his thoughts about the family that kind of adopted him. The whole PC-be-nice-to-animals bit wasn't overdone or hammered into my head, although I thought the zoo incident was obvious from about a mile away. I did appreciate that Michael went on trial for damages and that ultimately his impulsive act to free the animals ended up hurting as many or more than helping.
I'm also trying to stop picturing Sydney Darrow as Sydney the Spy Barbie and Michael as Vaughn. I watch too much TV.
I also liked that Sydney wasn't a TSTL (too stupid to live) heroine. She feels older, even if she might not be. I think I like romance heroines that don't flounce around and have "tempers" (aka cute bits where they flail their fists and look adorable to the hero). Sydney is a quiet person, tired from her husband's death a year or so ago, and not so much anti-social as reluctant to get too involved. I also liked Michael, making them one of the rare couples in romance novels in which one person or both are not raging lunatics/completely angsty/traumatized at birth. Or all three at once. There aren't the normal power plays between the feisty heroine and the swaggering alpha male -- instead, Sydney is old enough to know she can't have Michael because of the difference in their respective classes and old enough to try to avoid an illicit relationship. Michael's not so good about that, but it plays as being more his ignorance of societal rules than any sort of desire to push Sydney around.
I found Sam, the kid brother, could get a little too cutesy at times, although mostly he acted like a normal kid. I particularly liked Sydney's other brother Phillip, a bit debauched and bored with life. He's kind of lost his sense of innocence and his sense of self, and as he helps educate Michael in the ways of the world and prostitution, Michael helps awaken an optimism or a rose-colored view of the world that Phillip had lost.
The end of the book is almost unbelievably happy, although I wasn't suspending my disbelief so much that it was cracking. It's hard to be mad at Gaffney for doing the happy ever after because she makes them very warm and fuzzy and almost earned, or at least deserved, which is more than I can say for most romances.