Author/Editor: Heather Thurmeier
Publisher: Entangled
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Entangled. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often reward aplenty!
I've hung on with Entangled for a long time because a couple of their early reads were so good that I couldn’t help but continue hoping for more. Just recently I favorably reviewed one of their teen romances which, while problematic, at least pretended that it could break the mold, but I've reluctantly come to the conclusion after several disasters in a row, that this publisher is just not for me, not as its currently operating.
The novels which appear under its banner are far too predictable and formulaic, and perhaps there are readers who love that and live for it, but I am not one of them and I know I never will be.
I can’t tell you what this story is about (except in the vaguest of terms, all of which you know already), because I made it only to page three before nausea hit me when I read this:
"Green eyes with little flecks of gold in them, a chiseled jaw that would make a Greek God jealous, and chestnut-colored hair just long enough to drag her fingers through but not so long it was feminine."
…because god forbid there should ever be anything even remotely feminine about a guy! God forbid we should have a young-adult male romantic lead who doesn't have gold flecks in his eyes! God forbid that we should have any romance novel where the male doesn't have a chiseled jaw and a muscular torso welded to his character! Seriously? I'm still nauseous from reading that even now, several days later. That's so may kinds of trite, trope, clichéd and wrong in one sentence that I scarcely know where to start. 'Sentence fragment' doesn’t even have what it takes to make such list.
Why is it so utterly impossible for female romance writers to take even one small step for a man and make a giant leap for womankind? Why are they so immovably transfixed by trope? Why are they so cramped by cliche and thereby so entangled in this cheap formulaic fabric which they've convinced themselves they must wear to be a romance writer that they hold their readers prisoner to it to? Do they not want to liberate women from this?
Are they so financially comfortable with it that it never occurs to them that they could deliver so much more? They could do a real service for others of their gender if they were willing to stretch a bit, so why do they, in this era of so much freedom for women, labor so industriously to keep their own gender imprisoned like this?
I don't know what any one writer's individual motives are, but I do know that publishers carry the bulk of the responsibility for this situation. There are publishers who will not entertain a romance manuscript if it does not conform to a specific template. In this era of self-publishing, there's no reason why we have to bow down to their demands.
I can't recommend this novel or any other novel like it. And now, in yet another sorry attempt to perk up a negative review with a song parody, and since, on the subject of romance, I've been reading Pygmalion lately, here's my offering this time:
I have often read books like this before,
But must they always sport this self-same sorry list of bores?
All at once am I heaving heavy sighs,
Knowing I'm entangled in this blight.
Do the old growth trees need to be so cut down?
Must we read books with such a complement of clowns?
Does enchantment rage out of every page?
No, not in so clichéd books like this blight.
And oh, the horrible feeling
Just to know this book is so drear
The overpowering feeling
That every page will have a cliché that I fear.
People stop and read - they don't bother me,
They're just trapped in sorry romance reams of entropy.
Let the time go by, I won't care if I
Can avoid reading more of this blight.
People stop and read - they don't bother me,
They're just trapped in sorry romance reams of entropy.
Let the time go by, I won't care if I
Can avoid reading more of this blight.
(composer: Frederick Loewe, Librettist: Alan Jay Lerner, new words: Ian Wood)
