Brockmann, Suzanne - Sunrise Key trilogy, Freedom's Price
Sat, Feb. 12th, 2011 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterArgh. I can't even say DW ate my post; if I had written it there, it might have saved a draft instead the utter disaster of my computer crashing and my text program not auto-saving. Grrr.
Anyway, Brockmann's contemporaries have hints of promise, but frequently not enough conflict to keep me engaged. Her strengths are her weaknesses: her characters tend to be sensible and practical, her guys understand "no," and her woman have sexual agency. These are all good things, except she's not great at creating long-lasting emotional conflict precisely because her characters are so well-adjusted. As such, most of the twists and turns in these categories feel a bit superfluous, and each book reads as a bit longer than it needs to be, despite only being a hundred-so pages long.
(No need to tell me the Troubleshooter series is much better; I have finished two books and really like them. Will elaborate later; stupid eaten post.)
Kiss and Tell (1996)
Book 1 of the Sunrise Key trilogy. Leila Hunt kissed a ninja at a Halloween party, and now she wants to find out who he is, despite already having a boyfriend. Marshall Devlin, Leila's older brother's best friend, is aforementioned ninja, but because he's been teasing and tormenting Leila since childhood, he doesn't know if he should tell her or not. Also, he thinks she should break up with her jerk of a boyfriend. This sounds like such a sketchy premise, but Brockmann actually manages to pull most of it off. Marsh, thankfully, is not actually much of a jerk; he and Leila have verbal sparring sessions, but he's much better than many an alpha hero I've read. The book drags a bit as Leila and Marsh try to uncover her ninja, and I felt the boyfriend plotline wasn't necessary or should have been fleshed out more, but overall, this is two likeable people liking each other.
The Kissing Game (1996)
Book 2 of the Sunrise Key trilogy. Frankie Paresky is trying to get her detective business off the ground, but her best friend Leila's older brother, playboy Simon Hunt, keeps getting in the way. Unbeknownst to her, Simon has had a thing for tomboy-ish Frankie for quite some time, but he's worried his general commitment issues will screw up the friendship. Now that they're working together on a case, Simon decides he's going to try and see if his attraction to Frankie works out. As with the other Sunrise Key books, this is a little short on plot for the page length. I do like that the main conflict is Simon trying to convince Frankie that he's changed, and I've always been a sucker for childhood unrequited crushes, as well as the hot guy being secretly in love with the girl. Hey, if romance doesn't do female wish fulfillment well, who will? Not memorable, but light and enjoyable.
Otherwise Engaged (1997)
Book 3 of the Sunrise Key trilogy. Molly Cassidy and her hard-of-hearing son Zander have just moved to Sunrise Key, and they're trying to renovate a mansion that millionaire Preston Seaholm has wanted to buy for forever. In the process, the tabloids get involved, and Pres and Molly eventually end up in a fake engagement. I appreciate that Molly and Pres both try all they can to not resort to the fake engagement, but that plotline is still a bit hokey. I very much liked how Brockmann wrote Zander: he's the cute kid and the disabled character, but he felt like a person to me instead of a token, and I especially liked how she treated his disability. It was there, it clearly influenced his life, but it also wasn't the sum of who he was, nor was it the center of the book. I was a bit iffier on Pres, who tries to use money to get his own way in about everything. Molly has a similar problem, but I felt it still wasn't addressed enough for me. Sometimes Pres was okay, as in when he buys CDs for the library, but other times, I wanted to whack him and tell him he couldn't buy his way into everything. This was particularly prominent when he was attempting to use his money to manipulate Molly into doing certain things with the mansion. There's a bit more emotional tension in this book, although I felt it still dragged on a bit too long, and I kind of rolled my eyes at Pres' angst.
Freedom's Price (1998)
I read this back in June 2009, so the details are even fuzzier than usual. Liam Bartlett was a journalist in San Salustiano when a revolution was underway, and in the process, I think he was jailed or something traumatic happened, resulting in his not being able to write five years later. Marisala Bolivar was fifteen when she was a revolutionary, and although the two were attracted to each other, Liam held off because of the age difference. Now she's twenty, and she's elbowed her way in to his house. Brockmann seems to have a thing for childhood or teenage unrequited love, which is nice, as I do too, but she also seems to have a thing for older (non-teenage) guys falling in love with fifteen-year-old girls. This would usually be a dealbreaker for me, except thankfully, all her heroes realize this is very sketchy and usually don't do anything. I also have some issues with Liam's white guy angst originating in brown countries, although it's somewhat mitigated by the fact that Marisala (POC) is the heroine, that she is awesome, and that while Liam did get angst there, most of what happened was the revolutionaries' accomplishments. This issue reappears in the Troubleshooter series, although never enough to make me stop reading. You can see Brockmann starting to make up for her weaknesses here; the war in the background and the PTSD provide much more tension and conflict for her characters than her Sunrise Key trilogy did, and she manages to do so without making the characters lose the practicality and sensibility that I like so much. Her people act like people, even when they are under grave duress. I also like that Mari takes the sexual lead in this book, although because it's set in Boston away from the revolution, it's still a bit too long for the page count.
Anyway, Brockmann's contemporaries have hints of promise, but frequently not enough conflict to keep me engaged. Her strengths are her weaknesses: her characters tend to be sensible and practical, her guys understand "no," and her woman have sexual agency. These are all good things, except she's not great at creating long-lasting emotional conflict precisely because her characters are so well-adjusted. As such, most of the twists and turns in these categories feel a bit superfluous, and each book reads as a bit longer than it needs to be, despite only being a hundred-so pages long.
(No need to tell me the Troubleshooter series is much better; I have finished two books and really like them. Will elaborate later; stupid eaten post.)
Kiss and Tell (1996)
Book 1 of the Sunrise Key trilogy. Leila Hunt kissed a ninja at a Halloween party, and now she wants to find out who he is, despite already having a boyfriend. Marshall Devlin, Leila's older brother's best friend, is aforementioned ninja, but because he's been teasing and tormenting Leila since childhood, he doesn't know if he should tell her or not. Also, he thinks she should break up with her jerk of a boyfriend. This sounds like such a sketchy premise, but Brockmann actually manages to pull most of it off. Marsh, thankfully, is not actually much of a jerk; he and Leila have verbal sparring sessions, but he's much better than many an alpha hero I've read. The book drags a bit as Leila and Marsh try to uncover her ninja, and I felt the boyfriend plotline wasn't necessary or should have been fleshed out more, but overall, this is two likeable people liking each other.
The Kissing Game (1996)
Book 2 of the Sunrise Key trilogy. Frankie Paresky is trying to get her detective business off the ground, but her best friend Leila's older brother, playboy Simon Hunt, keeps getting in the way. Unbeknownst to her, Simon has had a thing for tomboy-ish Frankie for quite some time, but he's worried his general commitment issues will screw up the friendship. Now that they're working together on a case, Simon decides he's going to try and see if his attraction to Frankie works out. As with the other Sunrise Key books, this is a little short on plot for the page length. I do like that the main conflict is Simon trying to convince Frankie that he's changed, and I've always been a sucker for childhood unrequited crushes, as well as the hot guy being secretly in love with the girl. Hey, if romance doesn't do female wish fulfillment well, who will? Not memorable, but light and enjoyable.
Otherwise Engaged (1997)
Book 3 of the Sunrise Key trilogy. Molly Cassidy and her hard-of-hearing son Zander have just moved to Sunrise Key, and they're trying to renovate a mansion that millionaire Preston Seaholm has wanted to buy for forever. In the process, the tabloids get involved, and Pres and Molly eventually end up in a fake engagement. I appreciate that Molly and Pres both try all they can to not resort to the fake engagement, but that plotline is still a bit hokey. I very much liked how Brockmann wrote Zander: he's the cute kid and the disabled character, but he felt like a person to me instead of a token, and I especially liked how she treated his disability. It was there, it clearly influenced his life, but it also wasn't the sum of who he was, nor was it the center of the book. I was a bit iffier on Pres, who tries to use money to get his own way in about everything. Molly has a similar problem, but I felt it still wasn't addressed enough for me. Sometimes Pres was okay, as in when he buys CDs for the library, but other times, I wanted to whack him and tell him he couldn't buy his way into everything. This was particularly prominent when he was attempting to use his money to manipulate Molly into doing certain things with the mansion. There's a bit more emotional tension in this book, although I felt it still dragged on a bit too long, and I kind of rolled my eyes at Pres' angst.
Freedom's Price (1998)
I read this back in June 2009, so the details are even fuzzier than usual. Liam Bartlett was a journalist in San Salustiano when a revolution was underway, and in the process, I think he was jailed or something traumatic happened, resulting in his not being able to write five years later. Marisala Bolivar was fifteen when she was a revolutionary, and although the two were attracted to each other, Liam held off because of the age difference. Now she's twenty, and she's elbowed her way in to his house. Brockmann seems to have a thing for childhood or teenage unrequited love, which is nice, as I do too, but she also seems to have a thing for older (non-teenage) guys falling in love with fifteen-year-old girls. This would usually be a dealbreaker for me, except thankfully, all her heroes realize this is very sketchy and usually don't do anything. I also have some issues with Liam's white guy angst originating in brown countries, although it's somewhat mitigated by the fact that Marisala (POC) is the heroine, that she is awesome, and that while Liam did get angst there, most of what happened was the revolutionaries' accomplishments. This issue reappears in the Troubleshooter series, although never enough to make me stop reading. You can see Brockmann starting to make up for her weaknesses here; the war in the background and the PTSD provide much more tension and conflict for her characters than her Sunrise Key trilogy did, and she manages to do so without making the characters lose the practicality and sensibility that I like so much. Her people act like people, even when they are under grave duress. I also like that Mari takes the sexual lead in this book, although because it's set in Boston away from the revolution, it's still a bit too long for the page count.
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