Book review: Rose, from the Seven Brides series
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Not usually one for Westerns, I’d picked up this book during a long weekend break, expecting to be slightly bored. Not so! Leigh Greenwood writes a great epic romance, but also packs quite a series of adventures, so you’re left panting after the plot.
First published in June 2005 by Leisure Books (Dorchester Publishing), Rose heads up the book series of seven brides for seven brothers. Apart the name of that famous musical/film/TV series, the Seven Brides series has nothing to do with Stephen Vincent Benét’s short, The Sobbin’ Women. (Which, if you think about it, is quite scandalous. The men ought to be shot.)
For this story anyways, there’s no crazy wifenapping although predictably, Rose faces off with a family of grubby boys-to-men, and becomes an integral part of their home. All the while looking very fetching while sweating it out over a gutted turkey out in the big, bad brush. Of course.
What was less predictable: the action, which starts from the first page and only eases up for a little while over meaningful looks and chaste kisses, before something else happens. Considering there are 7 brothers – which means two major characters and six minor ones – you had to wrap your head around quite a few names and all their hang ups, as well as latch on to the action, which comes thick and fast. But Leigh – who is a man! – writes well, reeling us in easily with his languid storytelling manner, and crafting characters so memorable, you have little difficulty figuring out who’s doing what by the time of the first plot twist.
As for the sizzle quotient, mostly lots of sweet cuddles and kisses with one semi-explicit sex scene. Otherwise, a good old-fashioned romance that leaves the insides all gooey and happy.
I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Got it free from Kobo when they were having an offer, but now I want the rest and I’m willing to pay for the privilege.
Going quiet
Going to spend the next week with the in-laws, which will be lovely but it’ll also mean sporadic internet access.
So I’ll talk to you on Thursday, peeps!
Show vs Tell: the art of not stating the obvious
I just read arguably the worst romance novel I’ve read in a long time.
It’s taken me a while to work up the courage to blog about this (22 hours), because I am now aspiring to be published and have my book loved and accepted by dozens (I have small aspirations). Ripping into another work of fiction that actually got published is therefore kinda hypocritical. Who am I to cast the first stone? I can’t even finish a damn draft, right?
So as a writer, I tried really hard to root for the book. And I liked the premise – it had great promise. There was a hunky has-been celebrity. There was a young mother of a teenager. There was a bed and breakfast. Which meant there was a bed. And there might have been breakfast after. Cosy.
But as a reader, I couldn’t get past the annoyances. So as a book lover, I’d like to glean a couple of lessons learnt and share them with you.
- Writing from different viewpoints only works if it’s believable
This one actually freaks me out, because I’m writing in third-person which means I get to report on what each character might think or feel. This book did a Jodi Picoult, however – and wrote in first person from three points of view (POV). Which is challenging, because you’re now trying to articulate the inner-voices of three radically different characters. And if your hero’s inner voice sounds like a woman fretting – you know you’re really hearing the author, and then your character’s screwed. - Again with the hidden story!
Because of the 3 POV, the other two characters sounded like a Greek chorus to the protaganist. And I was therefore left in no doubt as to why the other two characters were behaving the way they were behaving. Seriously, the author took the mystery out of everything so there was no hidden story. And because romance novels are typically predictable (“The Hero and the Heroine end up together? Forshizz???”), all the reader has left is the fun of guessing why the hero’s being so distant, and when he’s finally going to fall in love. But instead, I got treated to a running commentary of his brain. No fun. - This is not a blog or a screenplay
If the action starts at the bar, start your scene at the bar, paint the picture, and show why your protagonist is there. Don’t tell me what she had for lunch. Or how she arrived at the bar. Or what she and her girlfriends chatted to each other about – in detail – on the way there. There were so many superfluous details that could have been done without. Again, this one makes me tremble because my characters talk heaps. And after reading this book, I’m now petrified that I’m flooding my pages with banal dialogue.
I don’t know. Perhaps I’m being too harsh. There’s a part of me oddly cheered that if a book like this got published anyway, there’s hope for me yet.
And then there’s the other part of me that’s petrified I won’t even make it that far.
My To-Be-Read pile
Was reading Katie Ganshert’s blog, and she was asking about what our to-be-read (TBR) piles are, and what that says about us.
And I just had a good look at my TBR pile in Goodreads, and I’m hoping it just says, “Look! She wants to write romance novels! That’s why she’s bought all this stuff!”
To an extent, books do send a message about who I am. And at this stage, my list is saying, “I’m curious about how to write simple romances, and epic ones. Which is why they’re all women’s fiction”. I hope it doesn’t say, “Gee, she’s vacuous.”
And there are other books waiting in the wings that have not made the immediate list above. The Shack is one of them. Men In White is another. I also bought Pagan Christianity on Saturday – a book I’ve been eyeing for ages. And then there’s Anne of the Island that I want to re-read, and Mansfield Park waiting in the wings. But at this stage, I’m researching and trying to teach myself the story-telling process as fast as possible.
