This week's reading...Loretta Chase, Christina Dodd, Stephanie Laurens

Loretta Chase wins my admiration and readership this week.  Her most recent book,  Not Quite a Lady, strings readers along superbly with humor, romance, unexpected twists.  My favorite stories lift me up with hope for the human heart.  This qualifies resoundingly. The opening scene finds Our Heroine giving birth at age 17...then giving the bastard-child up for adoption.  We next catch up with her 10 years later, finding, as in real life, that heart-breaking choices made early can still haunt a woman years after.  Even if she did the best she could at the time.  And we find that even though there are scoundrels who leave women irresponsibly, there are a great number of wonderful fathers and sweethearts in the world.  I am not a man-hater.  Don't identify with 'em.  My guess is that Loretta Chase likes men, too, in all their diversity.

On the other hand, Stephanie Lauren's Devil's Bride failed entirely, especially considering other Amazon readers loved it. I couldn't identify with Honoria, the proud and emotionally cold heroine, and Devil Cynster was just another "tall, loose-limbed, predatory male."  Such a guy underwhelms me.  My taste runs to squatty funny men.  (Meet my husband...)

Oh, it's okay if they're tall and good-looking.  However, they should have some vulnerability.

Another case in point--Christina Dodd's contemporary novel, Close to You, did not make my temperature rise or heart pound despite its mystery elements, although the dark hero was superbly described.  I think Dodd gave away the plot too soon.  And I especially failed to relate to the heroine, a journalist who appeared for work in a too-tight pink skirt with a thong underneath, making all men in the vicinity pant.  (*sigh*) I didn't dress thus even in junior high, and I sure don't now.  Men who respond just don't seem likely to me to throw their hearts where their body parts lead.
 

For me to read a novel, it can be light or heavy, great or lousy.  For me to love, purchase, and re-read, there must be an element of discovery and growth. Loretta Chase delivers every time.  I even read two of her older titles this week--Isabella and Viscount Vagabond.  These compelled me to get online and purchase my own copies of The English Witch and The Lion's Daughter, not available at my local library. Her older books are light in the sex department, quite suitable even for young readers.  More recent works get more steamy, but it's never perverse or cruel, usually in the context of True Love.