Skylark by Jo Beverley
Oct. 30th, 2009 01:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreSix years ago, Laura’s childhood friend, Stephen Ball, proposed to her. Thinking he wasn’t serious, she laughed him off and married the far more dashing Hal Gardeyne. But now Hal’s dead, and Laura fears that his brother, Jack, plans to kill her young son, Harry, so that his own son will be the heir. Thankfully, Stephen returns to her life just as she discovers a mystery that possibly involves Hal and Jack’s long dead cousin, Henry, not being dead-or at least possibly having a son-which would make Henry the proper heir, and give Jack no reason to kill Harry.
I tend to like Jo Beverley for three primary reasons. The first is that she puts slightly different spins on common tropes, the second is that her men, no matter how angsty or arrogant or misguided they may sometimes be, tend to be genuinely nice, and the third is that she typically isn’t afraid to give her heroines at least a few traits typically reserved for Evil Others, and/or Silly Man-Hungry Twits. Here, Stephen hasn’t been Sekritly In Love with Laura for years, he told her, she just didn’t believe him. He also doesn’t particularly try to hide the fact that he still is, but he doesn’t advertise it, either, and while he was hurt by being rejected, he doesn’t go around being bitter or judgmental as other romance novel heroes are prone to do in similar situations. Laura, meanwhile, is flighty and on the materialistic side, and not ashamed of either, and while she feels bad about hurting Stephen, she doesn’t truly regret her choice, or waste time on self-recrimination.
The two are both clearly repressed fans of gothics, and are all to eager to run around in disguise, looking for the missing heir. Unfortunately, this also results in racist attitudes being portrayed as funny for part of the plot, and while they’re treated as racist attitudes and the characters’ real attitudes are much less bigoted, and they question even the real attitudes, it’s still racist attitudes portrayed as funny.
This is book umpteen-bajillion of at least umpteen-bajillion-and-two-more of Beverley’s “A Company of Rogues” series, and I swear I could happily never see the word “rogue” in a romance novel again, especially characters referring to each other as such. Sadly, I know there are at least two more in the series to go, based on the titles. At this point, even if the individual stories are fun, the Rogues and Mallorean series keep getting added to so much that being part of the series tends to bog down the books and threaten to push the main plot and characters to the side as all the other characters (and their masses of children, though Beverley controls that better here than elsewhere) and previous plots threaten to take over. I can’t help but think she’d be better off writing these same Regency and Georgian set books without tying them in to overly long existing series.
I tend to like Jo Beverley for three primary reasons. The first is that she puts slightly different spins on common tropes, the second is that her men, no matter how angsty or arrogant or misguided they may sometimes be, tend to be genuinely nice, and the third is that she typically isn’t afraid to give her heroines at least a few traits typically reserved for Evil Others, and/or Silly Man-Hungry Twits. Here, Stephen hasn’t been Sekritly In Love with Laura for years, he told her, she just didn’t believe him. He also doesn’t particularly try to hide the fact that he still is, but he doesn’t advertise it, either, and while he was hurt by being rejected, he doesn’t go around being bitter or judgmental as other romance novel heroes are prone to do in similar situations. Laura, meanwhile, is flighty and on the materialistic side, and not ashamed of either, and while she feels bad about hurting Stephen, she doesn’t truly regret her choice, or waste time on self-recrimination.
The two are both clearly repressed fans of gothics, and are all to eager to run around in disguise, looking for the missing heir. Unfortunately, this also results in racist attitudes being portrayed as funny for part of the plot, and while they’re treated as racist attitudes and the characters’ real attitudes are much less bigoted, and they question even the real attitudes, it’s still racist attitudes portrayed as funny.
This is book umpteen-bajillion of at least umpteen-bajillion-and-two-more of Beverley’s “A Company of Rogues” series, and I swear I could happily never see the word “rogue” in a romance novel again, especially characters referring to each other as such. Sadly, I know there are at least two more in the series to go, based on the titles. At this point, even if the individual stories are fun, the Rogues and Mallorean series keep getting added to so much that being part of the series tends to bog down the books and threaten to push the main plot and characters to the side as all the other characters (and their masses of children, though Beverley controls that better here than elsewhere) and previous plots threaten to take over. I can’t help but think she’d be better off writing these same Regency and Georgian set books without tying them in to overly long existing series.