Oh man. This actually started off kind of decently and then plunged into "holy shit, WTF am I reading" territory. TITUS GAMBLE came in a box of old pulpy romance and historical fiction that I bought in bulk. It's the story of an ex-slave named Titus who ran away from his plantation after sleeping with his master's daughter. After that, he enlisted in the Civil War, where he kicked confederate ass and became a decorated veteran, whose fellow soldiers helped teach him to read and write. As a "reward" for his service, he was made sheriff of the same town where he used to be a slave. Uhh, thanks, I guess?
After the Civil War, the town of Brennanburg is kind of a clusterfuck. Land that used to be part of plantations was parceled off and given to some ex-slaves as reparation, while others were forced into actual ghettoes, where they are continued to be exploited by the same people who used to own them on a political, social, and economic level. Part of Titus's new job isn't just to keep the law and order; he's basically there to keep the Black people in town from (rightfully) getting pissed off at the slave-owners and rebelling. Which is kind of a shitty position to be in, because everyone resents him. The worst thing is, he knows it.
Titus actually reminded me a lot of Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles. I think TITUS was trying to achieve that same sort of social commentary, as well, but Peter Gentry is no Mel Brooks. And I started really not liking TITUS GAMBLE because it started becoming exploitative at the expense of people who are already being exploited. The N-word is literally used hundreds of times in this book, sometimes multiple times per page (with other slurs as well). A Black woman is raped by an overseer. There's incest (including surprise incest, which I think we can agree is one of the worst surprises of all).
I was on board for Titus punching racists in the face (white racists punched in the face: 4+). And I was there for Titus killing white racists (at least 2). I was even there sort of for his relationship with bitchy Fianna, even though she has more issues than an entire bookshelf of FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC. Actually, the whole family is fucking crazy. One of the sons literally spends all his time wearing an old Confederate uniform, pretending to be a war hero, when he actually got his arm shot off by a prostitute he wouldn't pay and all of his medals are stolen from the dead. Whaaaaat. But the rape of Dulcey really bothered me because it felt so unnecessary, and I didn't like that Titus was thrown together with a completely different woman at the end of the book that there was no indication he was going to end up with in the first place.
Beverly Jenkins is one of my favorite romance authors. I love that she writes historical romance from the perspectives of Black men and women in history, and that all of her books are filled with historical factoids that are true, that I never learned about in school. For example, in this book, I learned about "contraband camps," or the refugee camps that slaves fled to during the Civil War.
THROUGH THE STORM is about Sable, who is Rhine's sister from FORBIDDEN. Characters from INDIGO also make a cameo, and the rest of the LeVeq brothers have their own love stories in subsequent novels, so those Easter eggs are also something you can pretty much count on in Jenkins's books. THROUGH THE STORM opens with a bang, with Sable's aunt telling her about her heritage as an African queen, and the prophecy of fate, before setting the house and their master ablaze. Sable escapes in the chaos, heading North, where she meets Harriet Tubman. (WOOHOOOO!)
Tubman takes her to one of those aforementioned camps where she meets a man named Raimand, who is a charming Haitian officer of high rank. The attraction between them is instantaneous, but he wants her as his mistress, and Sable, with her new freedom, doesn't want any sort of ties or obligations to bind her anew. With the threat of her previous master pursuing her like a shadow, Sable finds a path for herself in the camp, before she's forced to flee again even further North.
I liked THROUGH THE STORM a lot, although I think the beginning is better than the last 25%. I would give the beginning 4 stars, the middle 3.5 stars, and the end 3 stars. I didn't like Raimand as much as I liked some of Jenkins's other heroes, specifically Griffin and Rhine. He's a bit too "alpha" for my tastes and it was a bit off-putting that he had a mistress, even though I understand that this was pretty typical for the age, and it did happen while he and the heroine were separated. The sex scenes in this book were also pretty cheesy with "love-gentled" bites and talk of "swollen gates." Eek.
For those who don't like mistresses and OWs, she's basically the chillest mistress ever. When Raimand goes to break things off, she's just like, "Oh, okay, that's cool." My jaw just about dropped. I guess I've been reading too many bodice-rippers with crazy OWs who are willing to move heaven and earth to wreak vengeance upon the heroine. I must say, that was pretty refreshing.
As always, Sable was a great heroine. I thought it was interesting that she had tribal tattoos burned in her skin by her aunt, and I loved that she was willing to shove the hero aside the moment he became an impediment to her own well-being. Even if I don't love all of Jenkins's books equally, I can always count on the heroine being strong and competent and full of agency.
Also, the villain in this book was AWFUL. I like that he got his comeuppance, although it wasn't as satisfying as in the books when the heroine gets to deliver that comeuppance herself.
Overall, THROUGH THE STORM was a pretty good book. It's not my favorite Jenkins book and I did skim a little towards the end, but it had everything about her books that keeps me coming back-- strong heroine, caring alpha hero, fast-paced action, lovable side characters. Even the cheesy sex scenes have their charm because they are preceded by steamy banter and prompted by love.
If you're tired of wallpaper regency novels, give Beverly Jenkins a try!
CONJURE WOMEN is like if John Steinbeck sat down and wrote about the Black experience during the Civil War. It's just as epic in scope and the author, Afia Atakora, does a really good job showing people at their best and at their worst in the microcosm of plantation life. I was so impressed by the depth and complexity of all the characters, especially the two main characters, Rue and May Belle, who are the healing women on the plantation and sometimes due hideously cruel things when their own selfishness and desperation to survive overrides their mission to do no harm.
The novel is told in pieces. The wartime parts are narrated by May Belle, a respected woman on the plantation who delivers the babies and does all the healing. Her position is thrown into flux, though, as her daughter slowly comes of age and with her, the daughter of the plantation, Varina. Brought up in relative shelter from the crueler machinations of the plantation, Rue has grown up blind to what white people are capable of. That blind eye has some glaring repercussions for Rue and her mother.
The second piece of the novel is narrated after the war. Rue has now taken over her mother's duties, but she lacks her mother's warmth and her people regard her with suspicion and fear, especially when a mysterious plague starts to afflict the children, causing them to sicken and die. Rue's foothold of power and respect is then thrown into question when a preacher named Abel comes and his biblical variety of salvation proves more imminently consumable and palatable than her own.
I loved this book so much. In addition to the Steinbeck comparison for its simple but elegant brutality of the written word, I would say that this book also reminded me a lot of Octavia Butler's KINDRED. It's one of the more nuanced books of the Civil War-era South I have ever read. There are some scenes towards the end that are very hard to read, including torture and rape, but it's never too graphic, isn't lingered on, and is crucial to the story.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
I was ambivalent about Alyssa Cole's earliest novellas, but I liked the concept of them. Shorter stories did not really seem to be her forte, and in my review of one of her earliest works, I wrote that she was an author I'd want to revisit if she ever did a full length novel. Well, she did, and that was a while ago, and I've been coming back over and over again, ever since. Alyssa Cole is walking proof that it pays to be an author who is receptive to feedback and works tirelessly to write fresh and engaging stories with developed and diverse characters-- especially strong women.
The Loyal League series is about a secret group of people during the time of the Civil War who go undercover to infiltrate and stymie the Confederacy. The first book in this series, AN EXTRAORDINARY UNION, which is about a woman who poses as a slave and ends up finding romance and wild success as a spy, was good, but this book, AN UNCONDITIONAL FREEDOM, is even better. Part of that is due to the heroine, Janeta, who is one of my favorite recent romance heroines.
Janeta is Cuban, and the daughter of a plantation owner and a freed slave. All her life, she has been told that she is better than those working in the fields. She has a white lover who is a Confederate supporter, and when her father is imprisoned, this lover encourages her to gather intelligence on the North so she can name names and give information in exchange for her father's freedom.
Daniel is a friend of Elle from the first book. He is a free man and had studied to be a lawyer, only to be caught and sold into slavery by two evil men posing as abolitionists. Now he is free again and hungry for revenge. When the Loyal League assigns Janeta to him as his partner, he's skeptical of her and her motivations, and unwilling to trust her. But despite his suspicions, he ends up falling for her because of her strong will and their shared pain brought on by slavery and the war; both of them have been caught between their own desires and what society wants for them their whole lives, and in working to save a Nation and its people, they end up finding the agency to also save themselves.
I. Loved. This. Book. First, I love that Janeta was allowed to be so flawed, and that she had to figure out her own privileges and biases. I love that she did that without help. Daniel didn't have to "teach" her; she was canny enough to figure out that she'd been fed a pack of harmful lies her whole life. The double-agent angle provided so much tension, and it was so well done. Plus, there were no big misunderstandings. Everything had a sound reason and I never felt like Cole was playing things up for drama. The action scenes were intense, and there were some fantastic discussions about humanity, inequality, and privilege that fit the scenes and didn't come across as heavy-handed.
Here are some of my favorite quotes:
"We can be intelligent, we can accrue wealth, we can strive to make this country better, and lose everything at the whim of some pale sir or madam. It doesn't even require much effort on their part. That's the worst of it. They don't even have to try hard to ruin us" (61).
"I care because as long as slavery is sanctioned in this world, either directly or tacitly, we are a doomed species. There is no hope for progress, no hope for a world of peace and prosperity, if some men are allowed dominion over others for as arbitrary a reason as skin color" (190).
Then there's Daniel-- the textbook example of a tortured hero. I loved him so very much. He was kind and noble, but also selfish in his own ways; he had taken his suffering and made his pain into a selfish drive for revenge, even at the cost of his personal relationships and self-love. The love-hate relationship between him and Janeta in the beginning was catnip for my fangirl self. I'm a sucker for the tsundere model of shipping (read: cranky character pretends not to care, but secretly does-- a lot), and he and Janeta were such an easy couple to root for, and an HEA that was easy to smile about.
If you enjoy historical fiction and want to read one that's empowering for and stars people of color in roles of agency, replete with excellent character development, The Loyal League is the way to go.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
Reading this book made me so, so happy because it's basically everything I ever wanted in a gothic novel. October is the perfect time of the year to be reading these too. When the leaves start turning and the weather cools down, there's nothing better than bundling up in your favorite blanket with a mug of tea and hunkering down with an old-timey mystery novel from the pre-Internet days.
I was suckered into buying THE QUICKSILVER POOL because the premise seemed to be promising a Daphne DuMaurier/REBECCA-inspired jaunt through the post-Civil War South. The heroine, Lora, was a nurse during the Civil War and ended up marrying wealthy Union soldier, Wade. When we meet her, he is just bringing her home to meet the fam, which includes his son from his previous marriage, Jemmy, and the looming and sinister matriarch, Mrs. Tyler.
Lora quickly becomes miserable because it's clear that her husband still carries a torch for his first wife, whose presence looms everywhere in the house. Her mother-in-law is awful, and when she's not making snide comments about how much better the first wife was, she's mocking Lora for being classless and inferior, and emotionally blackmailing everyone else in order to get her way. Other sinister characters include the sister of the first wife, a woman named Morgan who might have designs on Lora's husband, and a mysterious freed slave named Rebecca. REBECCA. Oh, yes, this was definitely REBECCA-inspired. That absolutely cinches it.
The last book I read by Phyllis Whitney was called THE MOONFLOWER and was also post-war, only that war in question was WWII. Many of the things I liked about THE QUICKSILVER POND were also present in THE MOONFLOWER - a rich and detailed setting, complex and sometimes unlikable characters who develop in interesting ways over the course of the story, and an emphasis on familial relationships and interactions that are strengthened through adversity. Another one of my favorite gothic romance authors is Victoria Holt, but many of her heroines are passive and lack agency, and she tends to fall into the trap of demonizing The Other Woman. Whitney, by contrast, is much more feminist in flavor - her heroines are independent and grow stronger as the books go on, and, even more shocking and welcome: she often has a surprising and interesting twist with the other women you meet in the story, making them into interesting and well-rounded characters.
Like THE MOONFLOWER, THE QUICKSILVER POND is slow to start, but then it really picks up the pace and is full of action. It's largely character-driven, but when those characters might be involved in covering up family secrets and murders, the pace quickly picks up. I couldn't put this book down and was desperate to find out what everyone was hiding. I wasn't disappointed. The ending was pretty great, and showed just how developed each of the characters was, in my opinion.
One caveat: the N word is used once, towards the end, but not in a positive or casual way - and the person who says it is not good. I understand some people will take issue with this, but in a post-Civil War society near the South where people are feeling angry and cheated over the outcome of the war, this felt pretty realistic to me. You may feel differently, and that is your right. /shrug
If you want to get in on the gothic-novel craze but are afraid they might put you to sleep with their harmless coziness, pick up this book. This was a great book. Definitely my fave of hers so far. You can expect to see more paranormal- and mystery-themed romances from me this month as I work through this Halloween-themed challenge. So far, it seems to me that I'm off to a pretty good start. (If you want to take a peek at what other books I'll be doing this month, you can view them here.)
I love vintage romance novels. I can't get enough of them. The way I see it, we all need a vice, and mine is reading the types of books that most people try to forget exist - I SEE YOU, BACKLISTS. Usually, I read these types of books alone (shamelessly!) but this time, my two friends Karly and Heather joined me for the ride.
LAVENDER BLUE is set in the South Western United States, during the Civil War. In terms of setting and scene, it's actually very similar to Rosemary Rogers's SWEET SAVAGE LOVE: Juaristas, Emperor Maximilian, blockade runners, haciendas. Oh, yes. I didn't realize I was still craving that sort of edgy, Western setting until I picked up this book and was hit with the fond, nostalgic vibes of picking up SSL for the first time and sinking into some Rosemary Rogers goodness. This is a very different story from SSL, though.
***WARNING: SPOILERS***
Jeanette was married to a French guy who died young, in the Civil War. I think she owns a cotton plantation near the Mexican border, and she gets the brilliant idea of selling her cotton and then fencing it through a blockade runner in order to purchase arms for the Confederacy, because that was the Cause that her late husband championed. Jeanette is an unconventional lady in many ways, and her only true friend was also a friend of her husband and herself since childhood, Cristobal, the son of impoverished Spanish nobility.
When Jeanette meets the blockade runner, it's in the dark, bound, and blindfolded, and his terms for fencing her cotton is that he wants her. All she knows is that he's French and his name is Kitt - and he's really, really unconventional and attentive in bed (hee-hee). He also says the most amazing things to her in French. I had Google translate open so I could actually figure out what he was saying, since I don't speak a lick of French, and oh my God, be still my heart. *fans self*
What Jeanette doesn't realize is that Cristobal - the foppish, prissy, affected man she often finds herself being alternately disgusted and exasperate by and at one point even believes to be gay - is actually the Frenchman who's using her body for leverage. Not only that, but he's been secretly in love with her for years - basically since they were children. BE STILL, MY HEART.
This makes it all the more frustrating when Cristobal undergoes a total change of heart around the 80% mark and inexplicably becomes cruel, raping the heroine and slapping the heroine and saying all manner of cruel things towards her. He doesn't seem to get why Jeanette might feel betrayed, instead mocking her and basically making light of her misery until her anger reaches a fever pitch that pushes him over the edge and causes him to hurt her.
I read a lot of cruel heroes in bodice rippers so this didn't upset me as much as it did some readers, but it definitely felt out of character and the rating took a hit because of it. I still loved Cristobal's character and I guess you could argue that the things that made him so obsessive and impulsive could just as easily work against him, kind of like Stanley's animal passions in Streetcar Named Desire. Still, this was a lot better than the other book by Bonds I read, DUST DEVIL. Nobody gets their nose cut off in this book. I always consider that a plus.
AN HONORABLE MAN is set first right before and then in the early times of the American Civil War. Cameron is the daughter of a Mississippi Senator who owns a plantation. For her whole life, she has basked in the privilege that came at the cost of the exploitation of others. When a man named Logan - a man who Cameron did some heavy petting and almost lost her V-card to before he broke her heart, coincidentally - comes to the plantation, however, he drops a heavy truth bomb on Cameron's father: war is coming to the South and he's got to make a choice about which side he wants to be on.
Cameron's father decides, since this is a modern romance novel, that of course he wants to help out the North and free all his slaves/servants. He's been sleeping with one of the servants for decades and in fact, Cameron's own personal house-servant, Taye, is actually her half-sister through this union. When he informs Cameron's brother Grant that not only is he giving up his inheritance (the plantation), but also the servant that he's been lusting after for years is also his half-sister, Grant goes crazy and murders him.
Cameron must put her feelings for Logan aside to save the servants and Taye from Grant's insane scheming and plotting. But time is running out, because the South is beginning to starve, and Grant is putting up all of the servants for auction and isn't above hurting Cameron and Logan in order to get what he wants: a bloated pocket book and the preservation of his shriveled sense of honor.
I liked this book but it had a lot of flaws. First, a word of caution: Rosemary Rogers is pure trash. Glorious, decadent 80s trash. If Jackie Collins wrote historical-fiction, it would probably look a lot like Rosemary Rogers. And like Jackie Collins, vintage Rosemary Rogers is better than modern Rosemary Rogers, when her cheese was unfettered and didn't bother with things like political correctness and word count limits. SWEET SAVAGE LOVE this most certainly is not, so if you picked up AN HONORABLE MAN expecting a bodice-ripper, you won't get that.
I actually liked Logan - he wasn't a bad man, and in fact is an honorable one for the most part (he does threaten to take advantage of the heroine, in his assurance that she does want it). He was just alpha enough to be interesting, but not so much that it felt like borderline or actual abuse. The villain of this book was also completely cray-cray - cray-cray in a way that was charmingly reminiscent of the ghosts of bodice-rippers past.
I did not like Cameron. I liked her in the beginning, but then she became a foot-stomper and insisted on treating Logan like garbage, even though he sacrificed so much to help her. I'm a fan of love-hate romances but there has to be a reason for the hate beyond spoiled, irrational pettiness. That's not sexually charged; that's just annoying. The attempts to write black dialect were also cringe-worthy, as was the rather dubious decision to include voodoo and a very white-washed "mulatto" secondary character who was fetished for her blue eyes and fair skin. Stuff like this is easier to stomach when the author is clearly throwing all caution to the wind and writing an un-PC mess, but when you try to make things like this diluted, it becomes extra cringe. Go big or go home.
This was a fun book to read on the bus but if I was reading it at home, I probably would have tossed it aside in favor of something else. I'm still a Rosemary Rogers fan but this was not her best work.
The first book I ever read by Alyssa Cole was BE NOT AFRAID. Like AN EXTRAORDINARY UNION, BE NOT AFRAID is a Civil War-era historical romance told from an African American perspective. Unlike EXTRAORDINARY, BE NOT is short & wasn't able to utilize its length well. As much as I appreciated reading a fictional account of history from a perspective we need more of, I ended up being disappointed, although I did say that if the author wrote a full length novel, I would be back.
Well, she did, so here I am!
And I am glad to be back, because AN EXTRAORDINARY UNION was everything I had been hoping to get out of BE NOT AFRAID. EXTRAORDINARY features a strong, female protagonist in the form of Elle Burns, a young African American woman with an eidetic memory who is a spy for the North. The hero, Malcolm McCall, is also a spy. He's Scottish, but is in a better position than most white people at this time to understand what it's like to be used and dehumanized because of the horrible things he experienced during the Jacobite Rebellion.
Their paths cross at the house of an odious Southern family, the Caffreys. Elle is posing as a mute slave. Malcolm is posing as a Confederate soldier, come home to bask in the glory while secretly gathering information and exchanging it with other spies. He falls for Elle pretty much on sight, and his admiration of her only grows as he learns more about the role she's playing in the house and the secret brilliance of her mind. Getting her to trust him is another thing entirely, though.
EXTRAORDINARY UNION is a roller coaster of a read. There is so much action, so much danger, and the main characters are both so likable that you desperately want them to survive and find happiness. Elle is such an amazing heroine, she's so brave and smart. And Malcolm is a dashing hero who is so ahead of his time. I shipped them immediately, and spent the rest of the book gnawing at my fingernails the way hardcore Game of Thrones fans do whenever they start the new season. Cole manages to capture the sheer awfulness of the time period and the inherently racist societal structures that helped perpetuate slavery and racism with the ease that Octavia Butler did in KINDRED (although far less graphically!), while also showing the complex nuances that relationships at this time period could have, whether it's the kindness a slaveholder might bestow upon a slave (and how disturbing it is, that treating someone as a human being might be regarded as a mere courtesy), or the hypocrisy some Union soldiers had, seeing the people whose rights they were allegedly seeking as nothing more than a means to an end. The result? A romance that lays out the facts and makes you think.
I saw that this book was the first in a series, and I am so excited because it's been a while since I found a historical romance series that captured my fancy like this one. Her style is reminiscent of Beverly Jenkins's (and you can imagine the shrill fangirl squeal I emitted when I saw her thank Jenkins in her acknowledgements section), with a dash of Elizabeth Hoyt. Somehow, she manages to combine Jenkins's broad scope with Hoyt's steamy romance.
P.S. Eff you, Susie. You're officially the Joffrey of this book universe.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
There are a lot of books that talk about the antebellum south, especially in romance novels where it is a popular setting, but few seem to capture the sheer unfairness of what it must have been like as a non-white person living in the South in the nineteenth century. I love Octavia Butler's science fiction, but KINDRED is a book that I purposely put off reading because I'd heard it was brutal. Good, but brutal, and utterly unflinching in the portrayal of that brutality.
Dana is a black woman living in the 1970s. Her husband, Kevin, is white, and both their families disapprove of that union, even in the twentieth century. Things are pretty good for Dana, though; she has a decent job, a husband who loves her, and her own house filled with books. All that changes when one day, without explanation, she's plunged into the past to save a white relative from death.
Rufus is the son of a plantation owner, and one of her relatives, the Weylins, although her family history is so occluded that until now, she never realized he was white. There's a bond connecting them, tightening whenever Rufus is about to die - and the only way that Dana is able to return to her own time is when her own life is threatened. Some people have said that this reminded them of OUTLANDER, and that's true: the time-travel is just as sketchy and mysterious, and neither shrink back from cruelty and rape.
What makes KINDRED such an interesting book is the complex way that Butler portrays slavery. She makes so much social commentary about both the twentieth century and the nineteenth century, and despite being published about forty years ago, it still feels fresh and modern. Dana struggles with slavery as a modern woman, and yet even she realizes how sinister a trap it is: when you have no rights, any concession feels like a blessing, to the point where you may start to feel affection for someone just treating you like a human being. She experiences something akin to Stockholm syndrome, and sees firsthand how some of her peers struggle and are oppressed by those same societal constraints.
KINDRED is not an easy read. There is rape, and torture, and cruelty of all colors. The N-word is bandied around a lot (because this is the South in the nineteenth century, and it would not be realistic otherwise). I think many readers, white readers especially, will probably be shocked at the no-holds barred approach, especially if they're accustomed to the version of history that sugar-coats the antebellum period and has slaves and black servants being adored and treated like family. Dana herself has a similar moment of disillusionment when she is researching the period and picks up a copy of GONE WITH THE WIND, only to put it down in disgust.
The fact of the matter is, slavery happened. It happened and it was awful, and it happened. But it's important to know that it happened, and what it was like; it's important to know that real human beings suffered at the hands of other human beings, and were made to feel different based on where they came from and the color of their skin; it's important to know that injustice is a real and painful thing that is mired in our shared history and continues to be perpetuated to this day.
It's important to know that, so we remember why we must never go back; and why we must do our best going forward to work towards a future of true equality. We still have a ways to go.
Okay, wow. It's been a minute since I've disliked a book enough to give it a one star but this book was AWFUL. In one of my Colleen Hoover book reviews, I talk about how sometimes a book can be well-written but one of the leads can just totally ruin a book for you, and that was how I felt about Meg in this book. I don't think I've despised a heroine THIS much since, like, THE DUKE AND I by Julia Quinn. She was awful.
So the plot of this book in a nutshell is that it's set just after the Civil War. Clay, the hero, is a conscientious objector to the war and to slavery, and so despite living in the South, he refused to fight. This got him hated by everyone, arrested, and nearly executed as a traitor. But the people at the jail were moved to spare him because he prayed for them and not for himself just before his death. When he goes back to his hometown, he's hated and spurned even more, and no one hates him as much as Meg Warner does, because she basically single-handedly holds him responsible for her husband and brothers not coming home.
In the words of Peter Griffin, Shut up, Meg.
Meg decides the best way for Clay to repent is to build her and the town a statue-- for FREE-- glorifying the Civil War. She wants it made out of white marble, because it is a material "as pure and white as the Cause" (excuse me while I vom), and before we've gotten to 20%, she's screamed at the hero, slapped the hero, and basically treated him like a subhuman, all the while talking about how he's going to build her this statue and that he OWES her. Like, girl. Get out of that r/choosingbeggars forum on Reddit. It's not meant to be instructional.
When I'm reading a romance, I have to believe in the couple. I don't have to necessarily like them as people or want them as friends (case in point, AIN'T SHE SWEET? by SEP where the heroine and the hero both do some seriously questionable stuff), but I have to kind of be able to catch a glimpse of how they could end up together and believe that they're capable of redemption. Ms. The South Will Rise Again and her stupid white purity statue can go to hell, as far as I'm concerned. Clay was fine, but he felt like a Christ figure, created just to be martyred, and I don't think I've seen a character created for such a beating since the heroine of REDEEMING LOVE. I don't think there's nobility in suffering and I don't think Meg deserves or is worthy of Clay. Reading this just filled me with disgust. It's a shame because I've loved some of Lorraine Heath's other works but this one was just so bad for me.
💙 I read this for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' New Years 2018 Reading Challenge, for the category of: Antebellum/Civil War/Reconstruction Romance. For more info on this challenge, click here. 💙
Every time someone says romances are too light, and that they don't have enough action, I want to throw a bodice ripper at them. SWEET SAVAGE LOVE is one of the early bodice rippers, when the authors were still working out the formula, and was published just two years after THE FLAME AND THE FLOWER.
SWEET SAVAGE LOVE is a Western romance set amid the backdrop of the Franco-Mexican War and the American Civil War. Ginny Brandon is the daughter of a Southern senator who has a vested interest in the Confederates beating the Union. After spending her childhood in France, growing up in the lap of luxury, she is now joining her father on his trip to petition the sympathetic French.
Steve Morgan is a Yankee spy, as well as a Juarista (the people who supported Benito Juarez and were very much against Emperor Maximillian's presence in Mexico). He has signed up with Brandon's men under false pretenses, intending to lure them to bandits who will make off with the gold they're planning on using to bribe the French.
If you think these two romantic leads are at odds, oh boy, you have no idea. SWEET SAVAGE LOVE was a 600+ page psychodrama that was less about love than it was about Stockholm syndrome, hate sex, and physical and psychological torture. I thought reading one of her later books, SURRENDER TO LOVE (published in 1982), had adequately prepared me for SWEET SAVAGE LOVE, but I was woefully mistaken. As dark as SURRENDER was, it couldn't hold a candle to SAVAGE.
SWEET SAVAGE LOVE has a bitingly realistic portrayal of war, in the sense that it doesn't shy away from the squalor of living life on the run, in the field, or in prison; the desperation of men in tough situations, and the cruelty they'll inflict when they're either cornered or on a power trip; and the violence (physical and sexual) that occurs in all of the former situations. Steve is party to all of these, and his sexual encounters with the heroine are often unconsensual (in fact, when they first meet, he mistakes her for the prostitute he thought he ordered). He kills without mercy and sleeps with every female character who appears in this book, including the heroine's stepmother(!), his grandfather's servants, and his own godmother. The heroine also has a number of partners who aren't Steve, but, again, a lot of these are unconsensual, and she doesn't really enjoy herself even when they are.
The western setting is truly glorious. I love the detail. The sensory descriptions. This was what won me over in SURRENDER TO LOVE, when Rogers lovingly details what it was like to be in Victorian-era Ceylon. She brought the setting to life, as she does her (albeit to a slightly less vivid and sympathetic extent). SWEET SAVAGE LOVE is very un-PC and if the sex scenes aren't enough to get you, the racist stereotypes and incredibly poor Spanish translations will. Seriously, the Spanish in this book was awful. It's only my second language and I don't speak it too well, but I know enough to know that "mi casa esta su casa" is not correct, that La Caseta does not mean "The Little House" (she meant "La Casita"; La Caseta means "The Booth"), and that it's "abuelo" and not "abielo." How hard would it have been to get someone who speaks Spanish to look this over?
Still, despite everything, until about 75% in, this was going to be a 5-star book. Ginny was a spitfire. Steve was fascinating - in addition to being involved in two wars, he was also affiliated with the Comanche people (and married one at 15), half-Mexican and fluent in Spanish, fluent in French, and the grandson of an incredibly rich and influential plantation owner. The problem comes when Ginny is captured by the French and Steve bursts in to save her and both characters (but especially Steve) are subjected to some of the worst horrors imaginable, and due to a series of incredibly long misunderstandings, each blame the other for their predicaments. For the next 15% of the book or so, the hero and heroine remain apart, wallowing in misery and being tortured emotionally, sexually, and psychologically. It was agonizing, and I could hardly stand it. The last time a romance book brought me to my knees (figuratively) was probably in Patricia Hagan's Coltrane saga, particularly in LOVE AND WAR, where she seemed to delight in torturing her heroine. Rosemary Rogers does the same with Steve and Ginny, in a gigantic misery-fest that finally blows out around the 90% mark.
This book is not for everyone, and it's hardly a traditional love story, but if you're into bodice rippers and edgy reads, SWEET SAVAGE LOVE is a fantastic book. There really is nothing like it and the story is so epic, and Rosemary Rogers makes you suffer and sweat for that HEA. I'm really glad that my friends Korey and Heather joined me in this buddy read; it forced me to endure and keep going!
(Speaking of "keeping going," I happen to have book 2 if anyone wants to join...)
When I started reading LOVE AND WAR, I wasn't sure what I was going to get. Sometimes bodice rippers are epic tales of melodrama doused in history...and sometimes they're just awful. LOVE AND WAR was great - it had history, it had a compelling female protagonist, and it had heroes who were virtually indistinguishable from the villains. My only qualm was that the pacing was uneven, but that's a common issue with 550+ page tomes of that nature.
Despite said qualm, I immediately raced out to buy the sequel, THE RAGING HEARTS, to see what happened to my new favorite romance heroine, Kitty Wright, next. Kitty managed to survive the Civil War and so did her lover, Travis Coltrane. But now Travis wants to finish up all his loose ends and retire to the Bayou, and Kitty doesn't want to do that - she wants to stay on her father's land.
The two have a falling out, and Kitty tries to make her living in the town that not only hates her father but also hates her lover. Things get pretty ugly, fast. The jealous OW is determined to see Kitty humiliated, if not hung. The KKK is gaining momentum - headed by one of the other "love" interests, no less! - and Yankee carpetbaggers are buying up all the Southern land at cheap, cheap prices...and God help those who get in their way.
If you really liked Travis, you might be a little miffed at RAGING HEARTS, because except for the beginning and the end of the book, Travis isn't really in here. And once he does finally drag his ass through the door, he behaves like a total jerk. I wanted to slap him for being such a horrible person. I mean, he was always a horrible person...but this was particularly bad.
In his place, we're left with two replacement love interests. There's Jerome Danton, who is a member of the local KKK chapter, and then there's Corey McRae, the Yankee carpetbagger, who is Creepy with a capital C. He uses unorthodox methods to get people to sell their land, manipulates Kitty over and over again with all sorts of schemes in an effort to get her into his bed, and upstairs on the third floor of his house, he's got a box of BDSM gear locked in a closet that he likes to use with the ladies.
THE RAGING HEARTS doesn't have the history or the depth of the first book, but it compensates with drama. I actually thought the middle section - the one with all the scheming and the manipulation - was incredibly well done and for a while, I thought this would be a five star book. TRH gets dinged because Kitty becomes a doormat in Act II (as she always seems to whenever Travis walks in), and she gets especially annoying once she has her baby. Plus, there's Travis and his annoyingness, and I had a lot of trouble buying that HEA at the end. She had to do that to gain your trust again? I said it before, but I'll say it again "what a jerk!" (Also, this book is waaaay repetitive.)
Overall, I enjoyed THE RAGING HEARTS. It was good and it kept me engaged, and didn't suffer from middle book syndrome the way so many books these days do. In some ways, it was even a better book than the first. I think I can safely call myself a fan of Patricia Hagan now. As soon as I finish some of the other books moldering in my to-read pile, I'm going to go out and get book #3. :)
The prospect of a romance between a Seminole war chief and a half-black slave seemed like too good an opportunity to miss, despite that terrible, terrible cover. (Seriously, what is that girl wearing? And I'm pretty sure that those are belt-loops that I spy on the man's pants. Anachronistic, much?) But despite its solid start, SEMINOLE SONG really fell flat for me in the second half.
**WARNING: spoilers**
Calida is the slave of a man named Reddin Croon. Well, his wife's, actually, although that doesn't keep him from "borrowing" her. Reddin has a really creepy sexual obsession with Calida and whenever his wife goes out of town, he rapes her. The wife has been suspecting this was going on and one day she catches them in the act and threatens to tell her father (who owns the plantation). Reddin loses control & kills his life, and suggests that he might implicate Calida and cut out her tongue so she can't talk.
Calida flees and ends up in the Everglades with a man named Panther. Panther has encountered Reddin before, for various reasons. He's also familiar with slaves because a lot of the runaways seek asylum with the Seminole tribe. Panther's best friend is an escaped slave from Reddin's own plantation named Gaitor, and the Other Woman, Winter Rain, is half-Seminole, half-black.
Reddin realizes that the death of his wife is a major problem. His father in law, Isiah, comes down to micromanage things, and Reddin has to convince him that his daughter was killed by Seminoles (and he kills a few more slaves in order to keep them quiet). Reddin ends up waging a major war against the Seminoles, getting the military involved, all because he wants to punish the Seminoles for harboring Calida and get her back so he can have sex with her without the inconvenience of his wife.
I didn't really like the relationship between Panther and Calida. Panther was interesting but didn't have a lot of depth. He felt like a Marty-Stu character. Calida really annoyed me. Most of her dialogue was "No! No!" and crying. She was constantly running into danger, falling for just about every trap that came her way. This felt like an excuse to introduce Reddin Croon back into the narrative and show what a creepy pervert he was. She was also fetishized by Croon, who was super pleased that she has a "white lady's mouth" and described her as "high yellow." Ugh.
Three things I did like about this book:
1) The love interest was full Seminole. So many classic romance novels about Native Americans have the hero being "half-white." There is nothing wrong with this in principle, but it happens so frequently in romances that it does kind of feel like a cultural cop-out.
2) Winter Rain, the OW, isn't a bitch. She loves Panther and resents Calida, obviously, but she isn't catty about it. After reading THE FLAME AND THE FLOWER, which featured the Queen Mother of shrewish, antagonistic romantic rivals, I really appreciated that.
3) The heroine is hesitant about having sex with the hero despite being attracted to him because of the rape. He is very nice about it, and doesn't force her at all; he waits for her to come to him.
Despite those benefits, I didn't really like SEMINOLE SONG. The premise ran too thin too quickly, and I didn't identify with any of the characters. Reddin Croon is a rapist creep, I get it! Panther is a dreamboat, okay! Calida is really, really good-looking! Give me some dimension. Give me some depth.
I was looking at the premises for some of the author's other books, though, and some of them seem intriguing (there's one about the Donner party!), so I might give her books another shot at some point.
P.S. This book flings the N-word around like rice at a wedding, so if that is something that upsets or offends you, take heed.
P.P.S. While we're on the subject of Native American romances, does anyone know of any good Choctaw romances? I'm of Choctaw descent, so it would be cool to see a romance novel about that group. :)
I actually own a copy of this which makes me very happy because now it's quite rareI actually own a copy of this which makes me very happy because now it's quite rare...more
Edit/09/01/17: Does anyone know why these books were removed from the Kindle store? All the Coltrane titles used to be up there for sale, as well as some of her older bodice rippers, and I just checked back recently and it appears that even more of her titles were removed. What gives? Is there a publishing rights issue? A delicate sensibilities issue? I must know. I wanted to buy all her books in ebook format...
One of the greatest things about the Goodreads community is that it has introduced me to books I never would have picked up on my own. I got interested in bodice rippers two years ago, and there's been no turning back.
LOVE AND WAR is a brutal read. It takes place during the Civil War and doesn't try to romanticize or sugar coat it at all. There's blood and gore and corruption and violence and rape and treachery and greed...entire family members are split down the middle of their ideologies with terrible consequences...relationships are destroyed...
Kitty Wright is the daughter of a Federalist sympathizer. Since he lives in the South, this has made her father the object of suspicion among the other men in town, with some of them even speculating that he has ties to the Underground Railroad. Kitty's mother is a spoiled, selfish woman who aspires to be a wealthy plantation owner's wife, and is resentful of her husband for freeing their slaves & having a simple living.
Kitty is a really cool protagonist. She can shoot a gun, ride a horse, and sticks to her principles. The town doctor trained her in medicine when she was young, so she treats the slaves and the poor, and she's damned good at what she does. The author doesn't tell us that Kitty is amazing - she shows us, time and time again, replete with many gory and unpleasant passages involving sutures, amputations, and even sucking out snake venom (which you are apparently not supposed to do).
The love interest, Travis Coltrane, doesn't show up until about halfway through the book. Her first romantic liaison is with one of the wealthy Southern gentlemen's sons, Nathan, although he doesn't understand Kitty at all, and wants to mold her into something he can enjoy. Kitty, however, doesn't want to settle for someone who can't love her for who she is and resorts to sneaking around with her because he's too cowardly to stand up to his own father and declare their relationship publicly.
Then something terrible happens, and Kitty's father gets beaten and lynched. Kitty is kidnapped by an overseer named Luke Tate, who rapes her repeatedly. Kitty's reaction to this is pretty realistic and horrifying. Travis Coltrane and his regiment of Union soldiers eventually rescue Kitty, but it's out of the frying pan and into the fire, because once he finds out that she's not only smoking hot, but also a) part of the Confederacy and b) a skilled doctor, he holds her hostage to fulfill various needs.
LOVE AND WAR is five hundred-plus pages of fucked up adventures, with Kitty somehow managing to stand strong and survive in spite of the carnage and the battles going on around her, being kidnapped and raped multiple times by multiple men, and being treated like dirt by the men who allegedly love her. Nathan and Travis are both horrible love interests who do terrible things to the heroine. I really admired her as a character; she was tenacious and intelligent and resourceful. Even though she did stomp her foot on occasion, she was also quick to pick up a gun and shoot someone in the chest, if it meant defending herself or someone she loved.
I wouldn't recommend this book to the faint of heart, because it is very violent and gory. It's also very dense. Hagan weighs down the narrative with lengthy descriptions of the battles and the horrors of war. At one point, she actually sits down and has a conversation with Robert E. Lee. Kitty experiences lice and mange and body odor. She sees gangrene, advanced syphilis, and amputations. Some soldiers are frozen solid or forced to eat rotten mule carcasses. At one point, she is kidnapped by Native Americans and treated as their medicine woman. It might be a train wreck, but I spent the better part of today reading this in a fever, desperate to see what craziness would happen next.
GONE WITH THE WIND doesn't have anything on this! I'm giving LOVE AND WAR an extra half-star just because Kitty was so awesome.
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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