Megan Chance, various

[oyceter]

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:

A Candle in the Dark—Ana is a whore who's killed a man, and she enlists Cain, a drunk doctor, to help. Standard pose-as-a-husband plot turned on its head. Loads of angst. Ana's past isn't glossed over in any way, and even more surprisingly, it doesn't really matter to Cain that she was a whore. Cain's got his own problems -- he's an alcoholic, and Chase doesn't gloss over the difficulties of getting over it at all. He's the angstiest Chance hero I've met so far, and he desperately wants Ana's approval. It actually reminds me a lot of Kinsale's The Lord of Midnight. Ana's a tortured heroine who has high walls around her heart and tries not to let anyone know anything about her, as a way to protect herself. And the entire courtship part takes place in Panama. There are the Big Secrets of the past, but Chance manages to not go through the entire melodrama thing.

The Gentleman Caller—This is the standard arranged marriage cum seduction plot, in which the unwilling bride must be seduced/convinced. You know what I mean. Jack's an ex-convict with a past who wants money and respectability, and Rosalie is the intended. Except Rosalie's devout and religious and wants to be a nun. Somehow, Chance manages to make this not only good, but excellent. Rosalie is kind, but she's not a saint, and she's got hurts of her own. Luckily, she's nothing like the pure and innocent virgin heroines who are cute and chipper, etc. Both she and Jack are rather quiet and dignified somehow, and I adore the way Chance has the seduction be not a seduction of the body, like so many are (which ends up in the I orgasmed, therefore I love bit of stupidity). Instead, it's a sort of non-seduction -- it's two people slowly getting to know each other and admire and like each other, and Jack in particular falls hard. He's got a place with the swoonworthy heroes because when in the end, it comes down to Rosalie's feelings or his fortune, he lets her choose. He doesn't try to persuade her or to pressure her, and that moment alone is worth it after so many books with ultimatums from the "hero" or forced seductions. Also, a surprise plot twist that I never saw coming because I assumed I was in a romance novel and therefore safe. Another book with Big Secrets, except Chance seems to realize that too often, the secrets somehow deflate when told, and thankfully avoids the entire Big Misunderstanding thing.

Fall from Grace—The I-betrayed-the-man-who-loves-me plot and what the guy does in return, except not. I particularly adore this one, mostly because Lily is maybe the most tortured heroine I've read, and I adore my tortured heroines. It seems a bit sexist, because the alpha bastard tortured hero annoys me to no extent, but the tortured, unkind heroine is completely my thing. Lily reminds me of the conversation Angel and Spike have at the end of Damage; she too was an innocent once upon a time, before the outlaws killed her parents and took her in. But Hank, the head of the outlaw gang, molded her and broke her and made a monster, and watching her struggle against the very few good parts of herself is heartbreaking. It's a fairly dark book (seem to have outraged one reviewer at least), but I liked how Chance didn't make the outlaws Robin Hoods with hearts of gold, stealing from the rich, etc. I liked how she never tried to make it romantic or glamorous, and how she carefully portrays the hardness of their lives. It's a book about dying dreams and lost hopes and innocence. And I really adore Texas, who has more than enough reason to be an alpha bastard after betrayal, but doesn't, and instead is simply, painfully in love with someone who can't love herself.
- rachelmanija's review

The Way Home—I didn't like this one quite as much as the first three, probably because less angst was there ;). In this one, Chance takes the marriage via pregnancy and turns it around. Eliza Beudry, daughter of a sharecropper, sleeps with Cole Wallace one night, wanting to get out into the world, and intead, gets pregnant. Cole, however, marries her to his brother Aaron instead. This is a slow, quiet book (in a good way), and while on paper the plot points look like sheer stupidity, the characters' motives are in general complicated. Aaron is a non-typical hero; he stutters and can't even manage to kiss his wife, but he's a kind man (and he writes poetry). Eliza manages to come across as not too ditzy, and I liked her. And I liked how she was uneducated and most decidedly not a lady, and how the sight of her did not somehow manage to make Aaron manly and conquer his fears, etc. as a sign of Twu Wuv.