the ask@AAR: What love stories DO NOT stand the test of time?
Reader Kris recently commented that when she reread Lisa Kleypas’ Dreaming of You it DID NOT hold up at all. She wrote:
From Sarah saying NO to Derek not listening and the portrayal of the villainess, I won’t be reading it again. And I don’t understand why I loved it so much in the first place.
This is an experience we’ve all had. There are romances we loved back in the day that now make us shudder or, at the very least, wonder what on earth we were thinking.
Earlier this year, I tried and failed to reread Devil’s Bride by Stephanie Laurens. The prose was absurdly purple, Devil is kind of a dick, and Honoria is just plain silly a great deal of the time. Today, it is a hard pass and yet, when I look at Goodreads, I see that in 2013 I gave it four stars which, for me, is high praise.
How about you? What are books that really no longer work for you? Why?
The Trump cameo in Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s It Had To Be You has aged apocalyptically.
Well, yes and no. He really was that person back in the day–his celebrity was astonishingly huge. I actually think that scene is still believable to this day. Yes, he doesn’t come across as the devil himself, but his behavior–completely unsupportable in real life, anything for a hot woman, willing to blow up the established way of doing things–all seem like things he would have done back in the day.
He showed up quite a bit in romances from the early 2000s. Generally a reference here or there, sometimes as a comparison to the hero in terms of prestige or wealth. When he jumped on the birther bandwagon in 2008, he became far too polarizing a figure and I think writers started distancing themselves, but even then Trump Tower was still considered a desirable residence and books continued to have wealthy MCs live in condos there right up until 2016.
This is going to be a controversial opinion, but I recently tried to re-read Whitney, My Love by Judith McNaught and I absolutely could not do it. I read the first time in high school and remember loving it, now however, it absolutely does not appeal to me.
That’s not controversial to me. I came late to that book–I first tried to read it about five years ago and it was a hard pass. I loathed both leads.
Ditto! I loved Whitney, My Love when I was 16, but when I re-read the book a couple of years back, I was filled with disgust at Clayton’s behaviour. I disliked Whitney too, but Clayton’s actions felt more villainous than heroic.
Same here. I attempted to read it for the first time in midlife and pretty much hated it from the start. Big DNF for me – despite it (and this author) appearing on many “recommended” lists about 15 years ago.
I’ve never tried to re-read Whitney, My Love but I did re-read Almost Heaven maybe 5 years ago and I couldn’t believe it was the same book I read so many times back in the day. I rolled my eyes so hard at everything. Julie Garwood’s Scottish brides books are the same. Did not hold up for me.
The hero of Whitney, My Love misbehaves in unacceptable ways repeatedly. Now we look at that pattern and find it abusive. The heroine confuses love with… something else. The book went from being on my keeper shelves to being discarded. I am co-dependent no more with that novel.
There are a bunch of authors I once read that I no longer reread. Kathleen Woodiwiss, Shirley Busbee, Rosemary Rogers are among them. There were quite a few Johanna Lindsay books I got rid of recently. Jayne Ann Krentz’s first Candlelight is one she has said will not be rereleased, and that’s fine, because now it comes across as sexual harassment at work. Nevertheless, there are some Gene Stratton-Porter books from the early 1900s that I still reread — and some I don’t and won’t.
There are a lot of differences in the things considered socially acceptable between my teen years in the 1960s and my understanding of how a relationship should be conducted in the 2020s. I changed, but those copyrighted books did not even if the authors who were alive changed. There were books legitimately called “bodice rippers,” but I don’t read that type of book any more and I get really annoyed when someone uses that term for romance novels.
And… it isn’t only romance where my taste has changed. I don’t reread Robert Heinlein any more, and if you use the word “grokked” in your blog (last month!), I wonder why you and your vocabulary are still 19 even if your chronological age is over 50.
I adored The Foundation trilogy as a teen and then have never really read it–or any mainstream sci fi again. It’s about to be an Apple TV series–I’m hoping it’s good. I miss Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse!
In my Genre Labels list of degrees of divergence from actual history, I included superseded history. A lot of older SF, including Stranger in a Strange Land, the source of “grok”, could be called superseded reality. Quite a bit of pre-NASA SF was written in a much more habitable (and inhabited) solar system than the one we now know. The superseded reality and sexism of Heinlein’s work does not remove “grok” as a useful addition to the English language. Any exploration of word origins will run into a LOT of things and people we now deplore.
I had a huge purge of my bookshelves three years ago. 99% of those that went were CR and what is left consists mainly of my favourite Regency romances. The Regencies that did go were those that were what I think of as disguised CR – Regency ladies wearing leggings and Regency bucks wearing hoodies and bonking like rabbits. They went on the scrap heap and get removed from my kindle PDQ as well if I buy them and then am disappointed. These are the books that don’t stand the test of time. Some of those that do stand the time test tend to be older Regencies – some written even as far back as the 1970s. And, of course, Georgette Heyer stands up well.
I have many books from the 1980s and 1990s on my shelves and am, quite frankly, scared to re-read them. I have such good nostalgic feelings about them and fear reading them through the lens of today will be devastating. I have a bunch of old Jude Deveraux and Johanna Lindsey books. I am not even certain my old Nora Roberts will hold up (I’m pretty sure her characters in the 1980s category romances smoked, for example). I think I would rather just keep the memories of how happy they made me back then!
We watched the 1968 Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway’s heist film The Thomas Crown Affair last night. Both leads smoke constantly!
It was interesting but less satisfying than the 1999 remake with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. It is very much a picture of its time–Jewison’s cinematography is what was then the cutting edge and when asked why he, a multimillionaire stole more millions, Crown answers: “It’s about me. Me and the system.” The plot is a sketch rather than a story and, given that the film focuses almost exclusively on the love story rather than the mechanics of the heist, both leads and their motivations are cyphers. I’m glad we saw it–the chess scene is both erotic and hilarious and McQueen–he was the highest paid actor in the world in the early 70s–and Dunaway exude cool.
I love Dunaway’s wardrobe in that movie! So over-the-top, yet perfect for her character.
Yes. Her clothes were cool. Her hair and eyelashes… not so much.
I find so many books from my early romance reading years don’t hold up and I think it’s for more than one reason.
First because my romance reading was relatively new and every book for a while became a new favorite. I didn’t have the years of romance experience under my belt to discern at a young age what was obviously repetitive or shallow.
Second, because what I consider the first great age of romance novels didn’t come about until the 90’s at least. I think that’s when Jayne Ann Krentz and others really came into their own and started creating books that held up- for others it took until the 2000’s. Outlander, which really changed everything about my romance reading, didn’t get released until the early 90’s as well.
There aren’t a lot of pure “romance” books published in the 80’s that have made it though my book purges over the years. I just can’t abide overly misogynistic heroes and masochistic heroines which were the flavor of the times a la Johanna Lindsay and Jude Devereaux.
Interestingly enough, many, many books that weren’t considered “romances” but had strong romantic elements (but nothing explicit) did hold up for me.
I will re-read about Anne and Gilbert or Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder any day. Even Beverly Cleary romances like Fifteen (written in the 1950’s) or Sister of The Bride are still great reads.
I think the main difference is many of the “romances” I read were all about drama, histrionics and sex more than friendship, kindness and real love.
The well balanced stories hold up, even old teen “Sunfire” romances because there were good values, friendship and respect embedded in the romances.
In the end, no matter how much sex or dazzle the story has, it’s the well written plot and likable characters and relationships that hold up for me.
Have you read Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser? It’s superb? I am about halfway through it and while it hasn’t changed my love for the Little House books, it’s given them a depth and context.
I’ve read a bunch of books on LIW but not that one included the huge annotated version published a few years ago that became a bestseller. I just borrowed this one as I’ve heard it mentioned several times before as well. I’m very curious to know if there is anything in there new to me. We can compare notes!
I am really enjoying it. It reads like fiction.
I just started it and I agree it has a fiction-like feel to it. I don’t agree with all of the author’s assessments off the bat though.
She says talks about L.I.W.’s “gently triumphal revision of homesteading” in her books. Maybe I read them differently or focused more on Laura’s older years and their hardships but I never found the depictions of homesteading triumphal or revisionist.
I always saw homesteading through Laura’s lens as incredibly hard, wearing and even family destroying. The way she depicted the couple with the crazy wife who pulled a knife on the husband, the young woman and her daughter homesteading on their own, all Pa’s failures, the times they almost froze or starve and had to depend on Laura going out to work as a teenager.
I had problems with the two books you mention even on the first reading. Dreaming of You bothered me because Sarah kills someone and it doesn’t seem to affect her at all. The killing is justified but I still can’t understand how a young Victorian woman could shoot someone yet walk away and never even think about the fact that she took a life. As for Devil’s Bride, Honoria dreamed of travel, yet Devil totally ignores her wishes. Couldn’t he have taken her to Egypt on their honeymoon? That’s what Christy did for Anne in Patricia Gaffney’s To Love & To Cherish. Part of what was romantic about the gesture is that Christy recognized Ann as someone precious but separate from him, and Ann realized that she wanted to be wherever Christy was and geographic location didn’t matter.
A major book that didn’t work on reread was Gone With the Wind. Saw the movie and read the book when I was about 13 and loved them. When I tried a reread as an adult I put it down quickly; the racism, which I barely noticed when a teenager, was too much. With Georgette Heyer’s The Grand Sophy, the problem was the anti-Semitism in the portrayal of the clearly meant to be Jewish moneylender. I might have been able to ignore it if the book were one of her early ones, but it was published in 1950, after WWII and the Holocaust. Spoiled the whole book for me. OTOH, I’ve managed to ignore some portrayals based on when a book was published and whether the comment was a throwaway line or whether a character’s villainy was based on race/religion or separate from it. Fagin, in Dickens’ Oliver Twist is a special case. Almost every reference to him in the first half of the book is to “the Jew, Fagin”. Eliza Davis, a Jewish woman, wrote to Dickens about how disturbed she was about this, and when the story was put together in book form Dickens was able to remove the descriptor from the second half (the first half had already been printed). In his last book, Our Mutual Friend, he has a positive Jewish character.
While Dickens was a flawed individual in many ways, he genuinely did care about people and society. His time as a child working in Warren’s blacking factory really developed in him a sympathy for the underdog and the downtrodden.
Even the charities he supported that tried to get prostitutes out of that work and into other lines of work weren’t the grim, draconian ones like others. He supported giving the women dresses in attractive colors so helping them wasn’t a punishment in disguise made to make people miserable because they needed a hand.
I really find Our Mutual Friend to be one of his most enjoyable works. I think stories where people learned about their prejudices and changed as a result are the most powerful.
I tried to reread Susan Elizabeth Philip’s Natural Born Charmer about a year ago. When I listened to it in 2011, I gave it a 5 star rating, partly because of the incredible narration by Anna Fields, but also because I loved it. My review was gushing! 9 years later and I was bored, I disliked Dean’s self-righteous assholery, and couldn’t believe Blue would, as a complete stranger to both, jump in between Dean and his mother, telling a whopping big lie in the process! It stopped me dead, and I haven’t gone back to any of the other books. NBC was one of my favorites (Match Me if You Can being the other one),I gave several of the others only a B-/C+. I’m afraid they may all disappoint at this time.
I too have found some of the the Susan Elizabeth Phillips books don’t date well!!
Were you guys hijacked? Every time I tried to open the site for the past couple of days, all I saw was a banner promising that All About Romance was coming soon. Anyway, I’m glad you’re back. Regarding the prompt question, one of my favorite sayings is that you never read the same book twice because you’re always a different person each time you reopen the book. I’m sure none of the bodice-rippers I read by the truckload in the 1970s & 1980s have held up very well—especially because even very good writers wrote romances with non-consent & rapey heroes well into the 1990s. I also remember oodles of those bodice-rippers were set in the south either ante- or post-bellum and the attitudes toward slavery and the enslaved (or recently freed) population would certainly not make comfortable reading today. As for contemporary romances, I don’t think boss/employee romances have aged very well, especially CEO/assistant romantic pairings, the wealth & power imbalance is just too great. One of the things I notice about reading contemporaries from the late-1990s or early-2000s is how rare condom usage or discussions about birth control and health status are. Lately, I’ve noticed I’m completely turned off by the “awful/psycho ex-wife/girlfriend” character—which never made much of a ping on my radar in the past. We change, our attitudes and outlooks change, we become aware of elements that we didn’t see in the past and books that brought us joy years ago now seem problematic—I think it’s the nature of being an avid reader and having a curious turn of mind.
We had a problem with Register.com and couldn’t get them to fix it. It was beyond frustrating.
We are at the mercy of our hosting company, our registrar, our software, and internet providers. When one of those things goes wrong, all we can do is ask those whom we pay to fix the problem they’ve caused.
Even with all these pieces, AAR has rarely been offline for more than a day. Part of that is due to our staff who, when the site goes down, devotes themselves to getting things running again.
This typically involves endless phone calls, emails, and messages to our providers. Sometimes, if we are lucky, the technical staff on the other end is genuinely helpful and committed to solving our issue. Sometimes, they are not.
To be fair, the support staff at most tech firms, is overworked and under-resourced. They are usually given scripts to parrot, designed to make the customer feel listened to even as the staff may not be able to solve the problem. This, to us, is frustrating and disheartening.
When our site went down on Friday, we were immediately able to see what the problem was. Our registrar, @Registry_com, had changed our nameservers. These are basically the address at which our site may be found.
We couldn’t understand why they had done so and it is still a mystery why it happened. Nonetheless, we could see the problem and we attempted to change them back.
Register.com wouldn’t let us and after several long conversations, they told us it was a problem on their backend and they would fix it. We were hopeful.
However, over the next 24 hours, when we kept calling to ask why the site still wasn’t up, we were told repeatedly there was no record of our case. When someone could find anything on it, they told us it had been “escalated.”
By Saturday evening, we were reaching out to them via email, phone, and Twitter and almost every time we we were told, it will take 24-48 hours. It was clear in almost every exchange that no one was actually doing anything
We’d get emails from them saying “Thank you for contacting Register.com. Please rate our service.” We’d get Tweets than sent us links about DNS servers in general. We’d talk to people who said “it’s been escalated” and nothing else.
We were dismissed by the Twitter support team and never heard back from Register’s email support.
Finally, I found a place on their page, full of dire warnings, and updated the nameservers myself. It worked immediately.
It was a very frustrating experience both for us and for our readers!
It was great to find info (thanks, Caz! ) on your Facebook page because I was pretty upset/frantic/worried. It’s dreadful that it took you so long and that you had so little help from those folks you pay for services. Glad you had the sense, talent, and guts to update it yourself. Again, HOORAY.
I’m so sorry you had such a frustrating experience. I hate that both tech support & customer service are so anemic these days. I’m glad AAR is back.
Thank you for all your work on this and for all the work you all do EVERY DAY here to keep AAR going.
The past few days were a horrible glimpse of what life would be like without AAR. It was not good, to say the least!
Welcome back!! You were sorely missed.
I have to say while I don’t love the crazy ex-wife/girlfriend trope it really is countered with the horrible ex-boyfriend/husband/partner trope as well. There are just as many, if not more, horrible ex-guys than women in romance novels. At least ones I have read.
I’m not saying they are any more enjoyable, just that so many romance books are predicated on the situation of the hero/heroine having a wonderful new future with their new partner vs. the hell their lives were with their old partners.
My problem with all of them is that it makes the hero or heroine look like an idiot unless there is a compelling reason for staying so long. If the person cheated, was physically and emotionally abusive and the protagonist knew it then why did they keep going back to them? (It’s so common for women’s backstories in romances).
One other thing I really hate that relates, is when an author just completely makes up legal facts and situations that have no relation to the real world. Like when the virtuous full time mother who also works and is a saint has the father of the child (who has ignored him or not been in his life the entire time) threaten to “take him away” from the mother completely.
Well, I can buy women returning to bad men if they meet one of two criteria. First, if she has no economic/social choice–many women stay with bad men because it’s the only way they and/or their progeny can survive. Second, it was one time. I am fine with a significant other cheating/smacking/lying if it was just one time and the person who did that truly regrets it, has learned from it, and will never do it again.
But that’s just me.
No on any kind of smacking for me. That’s a one strike and you are out deal as far as I am concerned.
I can understand the economic necessity situation, and depending on the people and the situation, how someone can forgive someone ONCE for straying.
I have read books (both by Jessica Clare and Kristen Ashley lately) where the heroine forgave the previous boyfriend/fiancée for cheating multiple times on them. They were not financially dependent or with children to support or a family to keep together. They just let the guy treat them terribly for no reason (other than to make a horrible backstory).
When the hero or heroine has an ex they stayed with for a long time who is just so obnoxious and horrible it makes me think less of the protagonist. It’s like if this person is so mean to others, belittles people, is cruel to their help, family and other people as well, why are you with them?
I think what I notice about the “psycho ex-girlfriend” character is that she is used as a mechanism to destroy the heroine’s life and/or the h&h’s relationship. It seems a lazy way to inject third-act drama into a story. I’m not thrilled with the “psycho ex-boyfriend” character either, but (although there are lots of exes in romances) I don’t see that character used quite the same way—at least not as frequently.
Speaking of when a slap might be forgivable: one of the books that brought me back to romance when I’d gotten completely burned out on bodice-rippers was Edith Layton’s regency THE ABANDONED BRIDE (first published in 1985). There’s a scene early in the book where the hero slaps the heroine. He’s immediately contrite and the repercussions of the slap continue throughout the book, but I daresay a romance with a scene like that would not be published today.
I dunno. In all of Evie Dunmore’s books, the heroine belts the hero. THAT kind of smacking seems very in vogue.
I don’t like the recent trend of the heroine hitting the hero either. I think in the Layton, the physical violence was a one-off (at least, in all the books of hers that I read—and I read a lot of her work in the 1980s & 1990s—THE ABANDONED BRIDE was the only one I read that involved one MC hitting the other one).
One day when I was reading a book with a heroine who had stayed with a cheating douchebag for too long I was really frustrated with her, then I realized I’d done the same thing in my first marriage. Funny how sometimes you don’t see yourself until a light bulb goes off and you think, “Oh, wait! That actually was me!”
I stayed in a bad (cheating, emotionally abusive) marriage (I was not physically afraid of him) because at 20-24 years old, I didn’t know what else to do. He was a racehorse trainer, and I’d quit college to marry him. We followed the racing schedule from track to track and moved 13 times in 3 years. My life was the horses and the people we knew. Stepping away was stepping away from what I thought was a life’s dream, to work full time with horses, and to step away from almost everyone I knew.
I can’t really explain how difficult it is to walk away from the things you know, the life you live. To start over. For me it eventually meant giving up my horse, which was a heartbreak bigger than losing my husband. Thankfully, I had great parents who welcomed me home when I finally left and never once said, “I told you so” which they could have. They had one stipulation: I couldn’t have any contact with him for three months.
Since I had that realization I’ve had a little more sympathy in fiction and real life for women who find it difficult to walk away and start over. It’s the death of a dream. (Also, for me, inability to leave was a post trauma response that is all too common irl.)
Wow. That’s quite an experience. I think you must have been so brave to both have gone with him and to have left.
Yes!!
I don’t know about brave! Young is more apt.:-) I admit,even with the painful things, I don’t regret the experiences I had working the backside of the racetrack. It’s similar to any tight knit occupation, like Ren Faire performers and artists. You quit literally live, move, work and hangout with everyone else doing the same job. It’s a very insulated environment in many ways. Horses were the big pull for me, and I loved the time I spent with them, exercising and grooming. But as my life with my husband got worse, I started to be so stressed I found myself snapping at the horses and not enjoying my work. That was the big wake up for me. I knew when I couldn’t be patient with the horses anymore, I needed to leave. Plus, as I said, I had a great family and it was safe to go back. That’s huge. The most difficult thing was knowing my dreams of working with horses full time was not going to happen, and that even affording a horse anymore was unlikely, which proved true. I’ve never owned a horse again. Right now I volunteer at a riding therapy center a couple of times a week helping with the horses and leading horses for the lessons with our disabled riders. So I’m very happy to be kissing horse noses again!
Thank you for sharing that story and I am just so very sorry that you had to go through that and at such a young age.
From what you have written though, your life and your livelihood was tied up with him. You not only had to have the strength to leave him but your entire world in many ways. Everything about your lives were knitted together (in his favor it seems) and it takes a lot of courage and self reliance to break out on your own. I can’t imagine anyone not understanding why you didn’t just snap your fingers and decide to walk out the door.
In the books I was thinking of, a lot was made about the women having their own businesses or livelihoods (no kids, not even living together) and being seemingly independent and generally sick of the guy in many ways -yet happy to take him back four times or more after he cheated and promised not to. It just didn’t make sense because the author was presenting the women as wholly independent financially, even emotionally, (as sometimes the attachment was just because their family liked the guy or they had been a couple for a while). Four times for a guy you aren’t even attracted to anymore and certainly don’t need (or even like) seemed like a lot to me.
I absolutely agree with you. It’s true that leaving any long term relationship means breaking away from a lot of connections. You definitely are probably going to lose friends and contacts, even favorite places and activities. But I know we’re talking about fiction here, and what we’re all saying is we don’t like it when an author uses a flimsy plot line like this to build a “tragic” backstory. In this case, real life plays out with a lot more complexity than is often trying to be achieved in a romance novel.
I don’t think less of heroines (or heroes) who stay in a bad relationship. Abuse and control are tricky. I have experienced emotional abuse and it’s common for the abuser to first isolate someone from family and friends before starting doing the openly horrible things, whether it is hitting someone or cheating on them openly. At that point it’s easy to feel down, lose sense of your own worth, find it difficult to leave simply because the support network isn’t there.
What I tend to worry about is contemporary romances where a character leaves an abusive relationship but love conquer all and they recover just because they met someone. From personal experience again if this was a truly abusive relationship, it’s not likely to go better the second time unless one gets some therapy to deal with the fallout.
It seems for me it’s less of an issue in historicals. Well, obviously therapy isn’t available, but there are other ways to get that sort of support, whether it is clergy or community of friends. But somehow I don’t see this working all this well in the modern society – I tend to go “this person needs help and unless I see them reaching for it, no, I don’t buy that it will get better, not the way we lead our lives now”.
I don’t think less of heroines (or heroes) who stay in a bad relationship. Abuse and control are tricky. I have experienced emotional abuse and it’s common for the abuser to first isolate someone from family and friends before starting doing the openly horrible things. It’s also common to have a pattern of remorse/being super nice/regretful after a “mistake” and women in particular are taught that forgiveness is a virtue and relationships are work. By the time it gets really bad it’s easy to lose sense of your own worth and find it difficult to leave simply because the support network isn’t there.
What I tend to worry about is contemporary romances where a character leaves an abusive relationship but love conquer all and they recover just because they met someone. From personal experience again if this was a truly abusive relationship, it’s not likely to go better the second time unless one gets some therapy to deal with the fallout.
It seems for me it’s less of an issue in historicals. Well, obviously therapy isn’t available, but there are other ways to get that sort of support, whether it is clergy or community of friends. But somehow I don’t see this working all this well in the modern society – I tend to go “this person needs help and unless I see them reaching for it, no, I don’t buy that it will get better, not the way we lead our lives now”.
Lately, I have too many books on my TBR pile to do much rereading. But I’ve been a romance reader for a long time and there are some books from the 70s and 80s that I know won’t hold up well. Mostly books by Rosemary Rogers, Johanna Lindsey, and Catherine Coulter. Although there are a couple Johanna Lindsey books in my “keeper” bookcase (Gentle Rogue) that I reread every so often because they make me laugh. As I get older and am contemplating downsizing, I’m seriously thinking of getting rid of many of those keepers. The dilemma is that some of the books I do really want to keep are not available as ebooks and may never be (at least in my lifetime).
As for more current books that may not hold up well, Julia Quinn comes to mind. I thoroughly enjoyed her Bridgerton series and they are in my keeper pile. But I’m thinking that one reading may have been enough.
Gentle Rogue is also the only Johanna Lindsay book I have held onto. All the others I owned I got rid of some time ago. I find she is a classic example for me of books that didn’t hold up at all and truthfully, I had problems with even when they first were released.
Julia Quinn was one of the first historical authors I’ve read in english and I liked her books mostly because of the humour. But every time I tried to reread one I gave up after a few pages. Fluffy, amusing but without substance.
Interesting timing on this question! After finishing Kleypas’ latest (Devil in Disguise) and loving it, I decided to listen to the series. I liked every single book better the second time around. So I thought, well, let’s try another series. I’m halfway through the first Pennyroyal book and I don’t know if it’s the narrator, the story or me – or all of the above! – but it’s been a slog. I thought I loved the story but I was wrong! Or I’ve changed! Or the narrator isn’t so great?! Who knows?!
That book is not one that works for me. It and Chase’s story are my two least favorite in the series.
I was devastated when they used Justine Eyre for the Pennyroyal series because I wanted to catch up with the series in audio but I can’t stand her! So my response would be “it’s because the narrator is crap!”
Unfortunately I think you’re right (although the story is weak, too)! She’s….not great. Wish they’d redo them.
Unfortunately, they were only recorded quite recently; there had been no audio for the series at all until Tantor started doing them a couple of years back – and now she’s being used for the new JAL books, too. I don’t know why she’s so popular – her English accent is horrible. And I still haven’t forgotten the book in which she gave a Scotsman an Irish accent.
I also think that Kleypas’ Ravenel’s series improves upon re-reading and I liked them a lot the first time around.
Knowing the personalities and who is who and how they are connected really added to them the second time around.
Yes to all of this! The narration is excellent, too.
I started reading the Pennyroyal books when most of the series was already out. I didn’t love the first book and if not for positive reviews for the series, I would not have gone on to the 2nd book. Luckily, I loved it so I did wind up reading the entire series. In general I liked the books about the Redmonds more than the Everseas, although What I Did for a Duke (about an Eversea) is one of my favorites of the series.
I feel the same way about the Everseas vs. the Redmonds.
I can’t think of a book offhand, but I can name a movie that sadly fills the bill: The Graduate. I saw it maybe 5-10 years after it was released and thought it was marvelous.
Sadly, FF to a few years ago, when I decided to watch it again. Yikes. Dustin Hoffman’s 21-year-old Benjamin–an unambitious yet somehow sweet and endearing soul to my 1970s eyes–now comes over as an aimless college grad who spends his days first having an affair with 40-something Mrs. Robinson and then dating her daughter Elaine (who eventually dumps him), and then stalking Elaine until she agrees to give his aimless ass another chance.
Yep, the magic is gone.
I think the music is one of the best things about that movie, and Anne Bancroft. But yeah, when I watched it years ago I thought it was a great movie. Now I find it on the boring side. Same with Lawrence of Arabia. The music and the cinematography are wonderful, but the movie itself is way too long.
Roger Ebert (movie critic) was asked one time what he considered his greatest movie reviewing “miss” was. His response was his comment in his initial review that the soundtrack was “instantly forgettable”.
And to both KarenG and stl-reader’s points, here is Ebert’s “rereview” of the movie at its 30th anniversary in 1997. . . ;-)
The Graduate movie review & film summary (1967) | Roger Ebert
Can’t think of anything in Ebert’s review that I disagree with. Thanks for the link.
This review slaps. Thank you for sharing!
It is interesting to me how much less patience I have for slow TV/movies. Things that used to seem reasonably paced to me now drag. I’m on crutches for six weeks and have been thinking about rewatching Rear Window. But I’m somewhat worried I’ll think it’s too slow!
Rear Window holds up well. Enjoy.
Good to know!
We watched it today and it was FABULOUS. Kelly, Stewart, and Ritter were all amazing. It’s such a slyly funny film.
That said, there is no way, Grace Kelly could have wandered around Chelsea looking like this with having caused car crashes and possibly riots.
All her amazing outfits, by Edith Head, are here.
They remastered Rear Window about 10 years ago and we saw it in a theatre. I was blown away by the first shot of Grace Kelly as she leans over Jimmy Stewart — she is just so gorgeous. Even though my attention span is significantly shorter than it used to be (I blame age and too much time online), I still enjoyed it. Hope you enjoy it too.
I love Rear Window. Hitchcock packs so much detail, character development and background information into it you can spend your time just looking at the scenes around the apartment complex and be entertained.
And any movie with Thelma Ritter in it is always a treat.
My favorite Ritter role is Birdie in “All About Eve”—she’s the only one who immediately sees right through Eve Harrington’s schemes.
She’s fantastic in “Letter To Three Wives” as well.
“gapes”
I thought I was the only one who loves that movie. I am constantly recommending it to others. It is the best!
Its a great movie. I love all of the characters and stories.
And it has such a satisfying ending. Plus it was in the era where women’s stories were at the forefront on many movies. It’s kind of amazing that Kirk Douglas and Paul Douglas are the supporting characters and that the women playing their wives–Ann Sothern, Linda Darnell, and Jeanne Craig–are the leads.
Love this so much. (Although I do want to shake Jeannie Crain at times).
Linda Darnell is a tour de force. I wish half the movie was her and Thelma Ritter playing off each other.
And Celeste Holm as the offscreen “Queen” Addy Ross was the O.G. gossip girl.
That’s a great insight about GG.
That is one of my favorite movies! The themes somehow manage to still seem modern. How great was Kirk Douglas as the guy who was perfectly fine with his wife making more money than him? He didn’t want her to quit or cater to his ego, just not let the job take over their lives or morals.
My favorite line is when Thelma Ritter tells Linda Darnell her dress is too plain and maybe she should get one with beads or something and Linda Darnell replies dryly “What I got don’t need beads.”
Yes!
I loved The Thorn Birds when I was fifteen and read it for the first time. But now the love story seems more like the sad depiction of a woman who spends her entire life pining for a man who never puts her first.
As for the man, he’s a piece of work. I especially like how he’s described as intelligent and perceptive, yet it doesn’t occur to him even once that when you have frequent unprotected sex with a healthy young woman who longs for children, a baby might result!
Even better, when he finds out about the child, he immediately jumps to the conclusion that she went back to her husband, a man who wasn’t in the least interested in her or children. What causes him to make this leap of illogic isn’t clear, but he never, ever wavers from this conviction during the next decade or so even when he discovers the son, like him, has a gift for languages and an interest in the same profession. As for the line, “Do you think I tamper with children? I am, after all, a priest!” let’s just say it didn’t age well.
The complete erasure of Aboriginal Australians is another glaring issue. I think now my favorite part of the book is the description of working-class life in New Zealand at the start. At least that doesn’t feel as frustrating and problematic as the rest.
When I started reading romance a friend
He recommended several new adult or juvenile books that she liked. One was by a Spanish author. The soul of a dead girl falls madly in love with a demon. At that moment it seemed super romantic to me he denied his feelings with all that “I am a demon I cannot feel”, she suffers to see him have sex with a demon girl … but oh finally he admits that he loves her!
Now I don’t know what I was thinking as a teenager:
– Boy spends almost ALL of the book treating the girl like trash “I don’t care about you, you are a tool, if your soul dies it will be your fault” every time he saves or defends her then he yells at her.
– Although he feels something for her, he has sex with a demon girl knowing that the heroine can see everything he does because she cannot separate from him (magic thing) and he does not care about how she feels.
– When the heroine admits that she loves him, he gets angry with her.
– Only in the last pages he admits that he loves her (mentally) but he only gives her a hug (not even a kiss) and says “I guess I care a little about you, maybe I’ll look for you when you reincarnate.”
The book was “misleading” it had enough cute scenes between the two of them, mental dialogues of the hero implying how much he loved her and cared for her when she was in danger and the girl … I got carried away by all that ignoring the HUGE problem of that the guy had problems and his actions contradicted what he said he felt. About 20 years old I don’t understand what I was thinking hahahaha.
I suppose that the author wanted perhaps to approach the Christian concept of the devils by making a lustful hero, acid, prone to hate and who does not know how to love, but the point is that it was a book not for adults, new adult or dark romance is YA or middle grade (not a lot of blood and not even a kiss) I don’t think it’s the best idea to make heroes that bad mentally when your readers are just learning about healthy romance dynamics, I was 13 and other blog readers with reviews were obviously teenagers.
I’ve seen people say lately, and I agree, that we need to stop telling young girls that when a boy hits her, it means he secretly likes her.
I think over the years there have been so many stories like that, along with the excuse of “men, even young boys, can’t express their feelings well so we have to divine that they like you by them being mean to you.”
Sometimes, as Berger famously said on Sex and The City “He’s just not that into you.”
I have never once thought that when a boy hits you it means he cares for you. And, honestly, for most educated young women today, that would be untenable.
I meant really little kids along the lines of “he pulled your pigtail because he likes you”.
Not, heaven forbid, actual teenagers or adults hitting people. Just the idea of the “Oh he’s shy and doesn’t know how to express himself” mindset as a little boy extrapolated to teen and adult women trying to figure out “what he really means” when he isn’t nice, ignores you etc. etc.
I have seen young children that if they make that mistake of throwing the hair of the girl they like, or even teenagers who are acidic and treat the girl badly out of shyness, but there is the matter of how it should be approached:
-Don’t push the girl to be “more understanding” aggression is aggression period.
– Correct the boy so that he understands that this is not a valid way of expressing himself, it is bad and not justified.
Hitting or mistreating is not a sign of affection … or the guy hates you or is in trouble. And if it is a child, it needs correction, not that they think it is cute.