Sakura of DOOM

I really loved this, and then I got to the ending and nearly threw the book at a wall.

Lord Ryderbourne is just coming back from a rejected proposal (her rejecting him, and let me say how nice of a change this is from the usual rake-dumps-mistress-and-insults-all-women first chapter) when he finds a woman in a boat out at sea. Miracle Heather, said woman, isn't so sure she's happy to be rescued.

In the beginning, Ryder basically bullies her into accepting his help, not listening to her saying that she doesn't want his help, that he is overconfident of his ability to help, and that basically, she doesn't need him. He doesn't listen. I nearly whack him on the head (metaphorically, alas, given that he only exists on paper).

Miracle ends up sleeping with him as a means of repayment and then heading off on her own. Turns out she's a courtesan (um, yes, that was why I picked this up). And while I was skeptical at first, thanks largely to Ryder's annoyingly arrogant posturing, the two end up on a sort of road trip together, with Ryder swearing that he won't sleep with her this time and Miracle thinking that if they both are turned on, they should sleep together, and he's a bit of a fool for denying himself.

I adore Miracle. She is confident, independent, speaks her own mind, and completely unapologetic about her own sexuality, her prior love affairs, her chosen profession, and her class. And when she is arch and witty, she is actually funny and smart. The first seduction with Miracle and Ryder didn't work for me, and I felt the dialogue was belabored and not as snappy as the author thought it was, but the subsequent ones really hit my banter button.

While I wasn't as enthusiastic about Ryder from the start, he stopped being so overbearing (wtf is up with overbearing romance heroes? Note to authors and publishers: I do not find it sexy to be constantly overridden!). And we gradually see that he is arrogant because he is an earl and because he has money and the whole world has basically done what he wishes. But he isn't an alpha bastard; he's a nice guy who is wallowing in privilege. The best part is that Miracle consistently points out his class privilege and his gender privilege and punctures his arrogance at every turn. And instead of being huffy about this, Ryder actually stops, notices his own discomfort, and then thinks about what Miracle has said. Amazing!

What's more, the book is about Ryder coming to terms with his own sexual desire and what he thinks of sexual desire (he generally condemns it) and about Miracle learning to love, which is a more-than-welcome inversion of the usual trope.

I also like that Ross doesn't gloss over the obstacles between the two: Miracle is a courtesan and Ryder is an earl, and while Ryder is romantically convinced that things will work, Miracle is more pragmatic and points out that he loves his land, society will scorn them, and he is most likely confusing good sex with love.

And while Ryder is frequently jealous of Miracle's lovers, he is actually good enough to divorce his intellectual assessment from his gut desire to strangle people. Normally this would not be laudable, but given the over-possessive growling alpha males present in romance, it's a nice change.

One nit-picky bit was that I could tell who was going to star in the sequels, given the loving descriptions of how handsome and wonderful they were.

And then comes the ending, which undoes nearly all the good that I mention above. Ryder ends up being an action hero of sorts, despite the constant pointing out earlier that action heroics are generally sort of dumb (by Miracle, of course), while Miracle gets rescued. All the difficulties to their relationship are handwaved away. And (this is what made me want to throw the book at something) the barren Miracle amazingly gets pregnant! This would be a spoiler only for people who have never read a romance. As much as I hate the baby epilogue, I hate the miraculous baby epilogue EVEN MORE.

( Spoilers )

So: this is excellent until the last few chapters, which contain almost everything I hate about romances.

I don't think I remember half the plot points of these -- I finished them a while ago, but figured I'd wait and read all her books before posting. Well, a month or so later, I am still reading... Thus goes the story of my life.

The Seduction: Obviously, the old seduction plot. Unsurprisingly, Alden Granville-Strachan loses a bet, and in order to not lose all his money and thus bankrupt everyone who lives on his estate, he agrees to a bet to seduce the notoriously cold widow Juliet Seton. Luckily, no matter how dumb, I tend to like this plot.

Also, I couldn't help liking it because Alden is such an affable rake. I am in general not very fond of alpha rakes. Plus, the seduction was enjoyable (and sexy) to read about because it was mental -- Alden seduces Juliet into playing chess games with him at midnight, into watching him strip his shirt off to harvest her fields, to enjoy herself. And I like Juliet, because she is one of those cold, mean heroines that everyone else hates ;). Plus, Georgian era! Visions of The Scarlet Pimpernel danace in my head...

I found the latter part of the plot a little to labyrinthian and melodramatic for me in that sort of Kinsalian fashion, but the journey there was quite fun.

Illusion: I swear, I was willing to give this one benefit of the doubt, despite the entire heroine-trained-in-Indian-harem thing. And it was going along all right, and then everything sort of went haywire. I give kudos for having non-orgasmic sex and for psychologically interesting sex. I don't know. I didn't much like Frances (said heroine) because she felt so passive to me, and that the passivity was supposedly a cultural part of her learned from India (blah blah meditation blah blah, sorry). I think it was the whole "let me show you inner peace via these mystical Eastern methods" thing. Also, I figured out the villain very early on in the game, and I still don't quite see how the plot holds together, given the disrepency between the beginning and the end.

To be honest, most of my issues in the book stem from the heroine and the Eastern thing, or the combination thereof. It probably would have been a very good book without that...

Flowers Under Ice: I liked this better that Illusion. Dominic's a bit more of a raffish rake than Nigel from Illusion, although not by much. Angsty heroes, both of them. It's also got the seduction thing going for it, plus the hero falling in love with cold and angsty heroine. Mostly I liked this better than Illusion because I liked Catriona better than Frances. Like the other two, the plot of this one is entirely on crack, especially after the plot twist. Hrm. I just don't remember that much of this one...