The Devil's Heiress by Jo Beverley

George Hawkinville’s father sunk the family estate into debt expecting to inherit a fortune when a relative, Lord Deveril, dies. When Deveril is considerate enough to die, however, he instead leaves his entire fortune to his young fiancée, Clarissa. Dear old dad’s solution is for Hawk* to marry Clarissa. Hawk, however, is suspicious, and suspects the will is a forgery, and that Clarissa was involved in Deveril’s death, and decides that proving her guilty of murder and the will a forgery is a better way to get the money.

Clarissa, for her part, is young and inexperienced, and Deveril’s money gives her freedom from her family, who already sold her to one creepy man. She believes Hawk is the chivalrous fortune hunter he pretends to be, and decides to have an adventure by engaging in a flirtation with him in Brighton. Thankfully, Hawk stops planning to get Clarissa executed for murder pretty early on and starts angsting about how he’s really a jerk for continuing to lie to her about his motives. (Even though he’s technically truthful about the fortune hunting part.) Really, once you get past the early motives and the lying, he’s kind of a sweetheart. Who likes cats. Beverley does a surprisingly good job of portraying Clarissa as a girl caught up in an exciting crush. I say “surprisingly” because most romances don’t really seem to be aware of the concept of a crush. Unfortunately, she may do a little too good of a job. While I’m convinced that Hawk falls in love with Clarissa, I’m never really convinced that Clarissa’s crush completely turns to love. Not that I don’t believe she could love him, I just didn’t feel the transition, as it seemed that most of the focus there was Hawk dealing with his guilt and loving her.

This could have been dealt with in the last section, after Clarissa learns the truth** but this is book 10 or so in a series (most of which, thankfully, I’ve read over the years, even if I’ve forgotten a few of them) and the tail end becomes dealing with fallout and dangling plot threads from earlier books, with Hawk and Clarissa’s plotline brushed to the side. So, in the end, not Beverley’s best book, but a pretty enjoyable one for the most part.

*Sometimes I think Beverley is worse than most romance novelists when it comes to names, but usually, I think she’s making fun of the trend.

**As a side note, during this, Hawk tries to paint Clarissa as his victim to help with his guilt wallowing. He’s told to stuff it and that she’s tougher than that, which I appreciated. Though I wish it’d been Clarissa to say it.

One Night For Love by Mary Balogh

A year and a half ago, Neville Wyatt, the Earl of Kilbourne*, married his sergeant’s daughter, lily, in Portugal after his sergeant’s death, promising to take care of her. The next day, however, Lily was shot and apparently killed in an attack. Now he’s set to marry his step-cousin and childhood friend, Lauren, who he’s been expected to marry most of his life, only to have a bedraggled Lily run into the church as he’s about to exchange vows.

Having unintentionally read A Summer to Remember (the sequel to this) first, I admit that I started the book not really expecting to like Neville, given that I adored Lauren in A Summer to Remember and knew that he dumped her at the altar, resulting in everyone always trying to get her to host a pity party, even though I’d gathered enough of the plot to know that he couldn’t really be held responsible. Thankfully, he turned out very nice, and probably the most sympathetic “My true love is gone…oh no wait, there she is. Where’s she been all this time?” romance hero I’ve come across, and spends a fair bit of time wallowing in guilt between hurting Lauren and not having known Lily was still alive, not to mention having his relatives unleashed on her. Lily, for her part, is naïve about England and the aristocracy but not naïve about life, and has to deal with her experiences during the time she was missing. There aren’t exactly a lot of options for what happened when a woman disappears on the battlefield and isn’t able to contact her husband for well over a year.**

I like that most of the conflict is external, and about dealing with Lily’s experiences without blame, and with how she’ll be able to adapt to his lifestyle, given that she’s never actually been to England since infancy, and I like that Balogh seriously looks at it from the perspective of Lauren and the people who care about her (including Neville, and, later, Lily) without vilifying them. I typically find external conflict in romantic fiction much more interesting than the endless misunderstandings and will they/won’t they and people attempting to interfere in the relationship and whatnot.

I understand that, like Connie Brockway, Balogh’s novels tend to alternate between romantic comedies and angsty dramas. The two I’ve read have both been of the (very well done) angsty drama variety, but can anyone recommend any of her lighter books? For reference, I have the Bedwyn books, the “Simply” books, the “Web” books, the “Mistress” books, and the recent “First Comes…” “Then Comes…” books.

*Romance novels and heirs running off to war/not allowed to run off to war because they’re the heir give me a headache, so lets just go with it.

**This is actually one of the better handlings of rape that I’ve come across in fiction. Strangely, one scene between Lily and Neville reminded me greatly of a scene in a Hemingway book that I read when I was about 15 that did a lot to scar me for life regarding rape in fiction, gender in fiction, Hemingway, and “real” fiction in general. Except that while Hemingway made me think that a woman only still has value and self-worth after being raped if a man tells her she does, Balogh makes me think that anyone who thinks rape affects a woman’s value or should lower her feelings of self-worth should have their opinions forcibly rearranged. (I read the Hemingway at 15. At 28, I may have a completely different reading of it-based on what else I’ve read of his and what I’ve heard, though, I doubt it-but I literally flinch at the thought of trying it again.)

Woes!

So, before I left town last weekend, I forgot to turn off y DVD player, so there was a DVD paused in it for three days.  I got back, took that disc out because I had Netflix DVDs, and it wouldn't load them.  So I put the DVD that HAD been in there back in, and it wouldn't load that, either.  Or any other DVDs.  I got a DVD player cleaner today, and it couldn't load it either.

The DVD player is only 6 months old, so it can't possibly be dead yet.  (I hope.)

As near as I can tell, it isn't even spinning the discs inside.

Does anyone have any idea what could be wrong with it that I might be able to fix?