I am currently reading Mary Jo Putney's Dancing In the Wind, which is set in 1814 and involves a spymaster with (unsurprising) trust issues and a heroine who is a master of manipulation and disguise who is on some sort of investigation of her own and, not knowing hero has infiltrated bad guys to track down a spy, makes him one of her suspects. They are spending the book so far deceiving and out-manipulating each other while being sexy and super-hot together. Mmmmm.
On the Putney front, I did read Dearly Beloved, which I so badly hoped to be a trainwreck. Alas, except for the utterly gonzo prologue in which hero drunkenly marries and rapes the heroine (!!!!!) and the bit about hero having been raped by his mother at 13, which was surprisingly quickly dealt with seeing HERO WAS RAPED BY HIS OWN MOTHER, the book was utterly normal and actually even quite lovely if you could get over the prologue. (I realize, that is like saying 'other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?') Actually, I spent the bulk of the time wondering why on earth Putney had that prologue in there - she could have gotten hero and heroine where she wanted them for the bulk of the book without it - he could have been forced to marry her, had a really unsatisfying for both (but not rapey!) sex with her and left her an annuity without wanting to see her, thus setting the book in motion. He could still feel like a heel because she'd be trapped etc. I mean - really? Really, MJP - there was no need to try to out-Woodwiss Woodwiss.
I did read a completely delightfully trainwrecky book that compensated though, Bonnie Vanak's The Panther and the Pyramid - hero is a Victorian Duke (!!!) who was kidnapped by evil Arab raiders as a child (!!!!) and made into a sex slave (!!!!) and eventually killed his captors and joined a different tribe as a Bedouin fighter (!!!!) and then somehow eventually got back to England to be a Duke (!!!!) Oh, and heroine is an aristocrat whose dream is to go to Radcliffe and she plans to finance it by selling her virginity (!!!!). And hero orders a virgin as being one himself (as far as hetero sex is concerned, at least) he doesn't want someone to tell he has no experience and that is how they meet (!!!!) Oh, and did I forget to mention the little detail that he marries the heroine to get close to her father so as to get revenge, because her father raped him when he was kept captive by evil tribe as a child? (!!!!) OK, I am out of exclamation points by now, but will bravely continue - in the middle of the book everyone treks off to the desert to hunt some mythical treasure for no earthly reason I could see and heroine gets mistaken for a genie and hero has to protect his virtue from lustful tribesmen (clearly, deserts of Sahara = Turkish baths in 1970s San Francisco as far as this author is concerned), but decides to give it up when it's the choice between him or the heroine. Oh, and they run into heroine's father who gets forgiven by clearly by now driven insane (by either heatstroke or the author) hero before falling off a cliff. Oh, and in the middle of all this lunacy, somehow hero manages to midwife (midhusband?) the birth of his brother's child. And all this is still somehow less than the full total insanity of this book. I was very satisfied. It's not every day you have the hero and heroine bond over drinking camel blood.
To get back to less insane grounds, I think I am on a Jo Beverley kick. I ordered An Arranged Marriage, which sadly was not on Kindle and I had to buy a paper copy *gasp* and cannot wait for it to get here. Apparently in AAM, hero marries the woman his brother raped (not sure whether the marriage is because he loved her, out of noblesse oblige, blackmail, or the orders of the Moon God) and falls for her but he is also a spy of some sort and has been ordered to sleep with an eeeeeeeeeeeeevil Frenchwoman to get info out of her. My advice to heroine would be to get an STD panel asap. Sounds pretty much written to specs, though this being Beverley, I don't think it will be as angsty as it gloriously could be (give it to Kenyon or Anna Campbell on a good day and watch a truly epic miseryfest!).
On the Putney front, I did read Dearly Beloved, which I so badly hoped to be a trainwreck. Alas, except for the utterly gonzo prologue in which hero drunkenly marries and rapes the heroine (!!!!!) and the bit about hero having been raped by his mother at 13, which was surprisingly quickly dealt with seeing HERO WAS RAPED BY HIS OWN MOTHER, the book was utterly normal and actually even quite lovely if you could get over the prologue. (I realize, that is like saying 'other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?') Actually, I spent the bulk of the time wondering why on earth Putney had that prologue in there - she could have gotten hero and heroine where she wanted them for the bulk of the book without it - he could have been forced to marry her, had a really unsatisfying for both (but not rapey!) sex with her and left her an annuity without wanting to see her, thus setting the book in motion. He could still feel like a heel because she'd be trapped etc. I mean - really? Really, MJP - there was no need to try to out-Woodwiss Woodwiss.
I did read a completely delightfully trainwrecky book that compensated though, Bonnie Vanak's The Panther and the Pyramid - hero is a Victorian Duke (!!!) who was kidnapped by evil Arab raiders as a child (!!!!) and made into a sex slave (!!!!) and eventually killed his captors and joined a different tribe as a Bedouin fighter (!!!!) and then somehow eventually got back to England to be a Duke (!!!!) Oh, and heroine is an aristocrat whose dream is to go to Radcliffe and she plans to finance it by selling her virginity (!!!!). And hero orders a virgin as being one himself (as far as hetero sex is concerned, at least) he doesn't want someone to tell he has no experience and that is how they meet (!!!!) Oh, and did I forget to mention the little detail that he marries the heroine to get close to her father so as to get revenge, because her father raped him when he was kept captive by evil tribe as a child? (!!!!) OK, I am out of exclamation points by now, but will bravely continue - in the middle of the book everyone treks off to the desert to hunt some mythical treasure for no earthly reason I could see and heroine gets mistaken for a genie and hero has to protect his virtue from lustful tribesmen (clearly, deserts of Sahara = Turkish baths in 1970s San Francisco as far as this author is concerned), but decides to give it up when it's the choice between him or the heroine. Oh, and they run into heroine's father who gets forgiven by clearly by now driven insane (by either heatstroke or the author) hero before falling off a cliff. Oh, and in the middle of all this lunacy, somehow hero manages to midwife (midhusband?) the birth of his brother's child. And all this is still somehow less than the full total insanity of this book. I was very satisfied. It's not every day you have the hero and heroine bond over drinking camel blood.
To get back to less insane grounds, I think I am on a Jo Beverley kick. I ordered An Arranged Marriage, which sadly was not on Kindle and I had to buy a paper copy *gasp* and cannot wait for it to get here. Apparently in AAM, hero marries the woman his brother raped (not sure whether the marriage is because he loved her, out of noblesse oblige, blackmail, or the orders of the Moon God) and falls for her but he is also a spy of some sort and has been ordered to sleep with an eeeeeeeeeeeeevil Frenchwoman to get info out of her. My advice to heroine would be to get an STD panel asap. Sounds pretty much written to specs, though this being Beverley, I don't think it will be as angsty as it gloriously could be (give it to Kenyon or Anna Campbell on a good day and watch a truly epic miseryfest!).