Brockway, Connie - The Golden Season and Skinny Dipping

[oyceter]

(Possibly a lot of book spam to come in the futile attempt to get my 2010 write ups out of the way.)

Skinny Dipping (2008)

Mimi Olson is forty, and she's never had a responsibility in her life, and she'd like to keep it that way. Joe Tierney is at the opposite end of the responsibility spectrum. There is a meet cute, but ultimately, this is less a romance and more fiction about Mimi coming to terms with the family retreat she's always loved, her responsibilities or lack thereof, and other stuff.

This is Brockway's second contemporary, and I'm glad she's returned to historicals. Points for Mimi's age, older women being sexually active, and the book being centered around Mimi instead of Joe. That said, it's a contemporary! Brockway I think left historicals for a while because she was writing heroines who were pushing the boundaries, and I wish she had pushed even more in her contemporaries. Alas, this one reads as fairly standard chick lit, with funny animals, an all-White cast (or nearly), and brief glimpses of the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Not terrible, but nothing memorable. Read Jennifer Crusie instead.

The Golden Season (2010)

Lady Lydia Eastlake is popular, bright, and famous for her extravagance, but her wealth is quickly running out. Captain Ned Lockton's erstwhile relatives have spent the Lockton wealth, and he's looking for a wealthy bride. Unfortunately for the both of them, they each decide to hide their financial status, and so they start courting, thinking that the other will save them from financial disaster.

The characters remind me a great deal of Brockway's The Bridal Season, which is still one of my favorites of hers. Lydia is flighty and Ned is that rarest of things: a romance hero who isn't possessive, rakish, or an asshat, but is polite and reserved and nice. Alas, they don't come to life as well as Letty and Elliot did for me, although I did like the similar relationship tension of Lydia wanting to overcome Ned's reticence and break his control. Unfortunately, the set up is such that I wanted the two to sit down and stop lying, and although I don't quite remember what happened with the secondary characters, I do remember that I didn't like it.

Comments

[daedala]

You know, I read the Golden book, and hardly remember it at all. Very sad. Brockway has written some of my favorite books, and I remember them better than this one. (All through the Night, of course, and My Dearest Enemy.)

I have a love/hate relationship with books that try to deal with the characters' financial situations. I am somewhat obsessive about finances myself, and I'm not very impressed by the whole living on air and love deal, but I really dislike the way most romances handle it.

[oyceter]

Yeah, me neither. I did like So Enchanting as her return to historicals (and it was even set in Scotland IIRC), so hopefully it is just this book?

I hate how romances handle finances! I did like that in Golden Season, the heroine was basically broke because of her own fault (I understand being broke due to family trouble and etc., but it's refreshing to see something different), but I guess I feel most historicals' focus is on gentry and not working for a living, so when they have people caring about money, it doesn't quite ring true, or it feels like a set up for a Cinderella story, as opposed to an actual look at finances and class and etc.

[badgerbag]

40 is older women!??

[oyceter]

Unfortunately for romance, not only is forty "older," it's actually pushing the edge a bit! Most contemporaries have late twenties or early thirties, and I just read one where 36 was "older"! And yet sadly this is still progress compared to books published a few decades ago. I think I've read one romance with a heroine in her late forties or early fifties (Jennifer Crusie's Fast Women). Oh romances, whyyyyyyy.

[badgerbag]

Ha!!!

I had such hopes that by 40 I would be driving a convertible with a big scarf and sunglasses on and enormous boobs (how!?) picking up handsome young men. Alas no and I would just find them tedious. I would prefer to attract actual kittens.

[oyceter]

Hahaha, no! Your romantic life ends at 40, at least if you are in a romance novel! I laughed especially hard because the erotic romance I read with a 36-year heroine was marketed as "older woman, younger man" (guy was 28), and I think they even call her a "cougar" in the book. -_-;;.

[daedala]

WHUT!?!

[oyceter]

Anne Calhoun, Liberating Lacey! I actually did like it for an erotic romance, but the main conflict in the book is class, not age, and I was just... wow. a) That is really not the hugest age difference imho, and b) they code the heroine as older by making her wear power suits and own a house and have a lot of money, and I was just... 36? Really? Or did you just chop ten or twenty years off for the heck of it?

[daedala]

You know, I wouldn't be surprised if someone wrote a book for 46 or 56 year old heroine, and then did get told to chop ten or twenty years off. Hmm.