TEST
Maybe I’d have liked this book a whole lot better when I was fifteen. Then, again, probably not since even way back then I had a problem with authors requiring me to completely check my common sense at the door and dumb heroines were hardly my cup of tea.
And, lest you think I’m overstating the case, in the world of Have Glass Slippers, Will Travel:
- A 24 year-old unemployed heroine with $5,000 between herself and homelessness, on the advice of her Oprah “life map” and an appearance by the goddess herself in a dream, travels to London so she can find a rich young nobleman to marry her and solve all her problems.
- This same 24-year old heroine has apparently lived her entire life completely isolated from newspapers, magazines, television, and all exposure to popular culture since she styles her wardrobe – a wardrobe designed to attract that lusty young lord – after Queen Elizabeth.
- This hyper-cute 24 year-old manages to adorably whisper the lone word “penis” in the famed Whispering Gallery in St. Paul’s.
- A young duke “forgets” to buy antiperspirant.
- Push-up bras “spring a leak” at exactly the most adorably inopportune moment.
Quite honestly, I don’t do well with “wacky”, especially when the author completely throws reality out the window in pursuit of it and that’s pretty much what happens in this story of a Seattle technical writer and a duke who spends his time wearing moth-bitten clothes and trying to make a go of organic farming. Of course, this adorable twosome have adorable misadventures, involving tabloids, discos, and a really cute encounter with the Queen at Ascot.
In addition to my problems with “wacky”, I also hate brain-dead characters, a quality that heroine Katy Orville pretty much defines. Add in a two-dimensional hero, a cast of secondary characters who either belong in maximum security prisons or filed in the “Eccentric But Adorable Aristocrat” section of Central Casting, and throw in one of those last minute, out of the blue plot twists that magically removes all obstacles between our adorable heroine and hero, and there’s just nothing I can find here to recommend.
I’m not proud of it, but I’m a sucker for a Cinderella story. But, quite frankly, I prefer my rescue fantasies tarted up a bit, if you don’t mind, with the heroine not quite so calculatingly setting out to marry her way out of all her troubles, but instead – and, hey, I know it’s a technicality – accidentally marrying her way out of all her troubles. The last thing I’m looking for is a return to those 1950s versions of the rescue fantasy and it’s hard to imagine that many modern women are. To put it in Disney terms, most of us today would take brainy Belle over vapid, warbling Snow White any day of the week.
I often enjoy light and fluffy romances and, since four of Lisa Cach’s books earned DIK status from my AAR colleagues, I was interested to try her – a mistake I won’t make again. But, quite frankly, the more I think about Have Glass Slippers, Will Travel, the more disturbed I become since this is more, I’m afraid, than just a disappointing book. In this author’s world, a modern and supposedly well educated young woman makes both big and little life decisions so phenomenally dumb she’d have to work her way up to being TSTL and that’s just not a good thing, no matter how you look at it.
And, for the record, I’m more than certain Oprah would be appalled.
Grade: F
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 30/08/05
Publication Date: 2005/09
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Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.