Leone, Laura - Fallen from Grace
Thu, Jul. 28th, 2005 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI feel like I should have liked this book much more than I actually did. I mean, it stars a male prostitute, formerly a street kid (aka, potential for loads of angst), who is nice and not and a struggling writer. Both Sara and Ryan are nice too. I like nice. I mean, they feel like a real, honest-to-god couple, who decide that they're in love not because of the sexual tension oozing out of every pore, but because he likes her sense of humor and personality and she likes his kindness and etc. And I like that Leone doesn't romanticize what Ryan does or what happened to him when he was a teenager.
It seems like I should like this book in all ways -- I like that Ryan isn't all big and macho, I like that his status as a prostitute isn't used as some excuse to give Sara the best sex of her life, as is so often the case. And I like that Sara is nine years older than him and how that isn't a problem. And I like how there aren't words and words and words on how Sara is gorgeously beautiful.
And yet, for some reason, the book never really clicked together for me. I think part of it was because the romance didn't feel like the crux of the book; it almost felt like an aside to Ryan's journey away from prostitution and toward a better sort of life. It wasn't that it wasn't a good romance, it was that it was never in doubt for me, there was never any real conflict. And what conflict there was centered more around Ryan and his job than on Sara, so much so that it seemed to play more into the idea of this as Ryan's book. It very much is Ryan's book, and while a good deal of romances are on the hero's traumas and the like, usually the heroine is much more involved in the resolution. Hrm. I mean, I suppose Sara was quite involved in the resolution, it was just that ... I dunno. Lack of spark or something?
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pocketgarden's review
It seems like I should like this book in all ways -- I like that Ryan isn't all big and macho, I like that his status as a prostitute isn't used as some excuse to give Sara the best sex of her life, as is so often the case. And I like that Sara is nine years older than him and how that isn't a problem. And I like how there aren't words and words and words on how Sara is gorgeously beautiful.
And yet, for some reason, the book never really clicked together for me. I think part of it was because the romance didn't feel like the crux of the book; it almost felt like an aside to Ryan's journey away from prostitution and toward a better sort of life. It wasn't that it wasn't a good romance, it was that it was never in doubt for me, there was never any real conflict. And what conflict there was centered more around Ryan and his job than on Sara, so much so that it seemed to play more into the idea of this as Ryan's book. It very much is Ryan's book, and while a good deal of romances are on the hero's traumas and the like, usually the heroine is much more involved in the resolution. Hrm. I mean, I suppose Sara was quite involved in the resolution, it was just that ... I dunno. Lack of spark or something?
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pocketgarden's reviewTags: