book review

Book Review: Mistress of Mellyn

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Sometimes when you pick a random book off a library shelf, you get lucky. Last week, I wandered toward the H’s. Which is why I’m writing a book review of Mistress of Mellyn.

Victoria Holt was Eleanor Hibbert’s pen name when she was writing gothic novels. But she was also Jean Plaidy (fictionalized historicals) and Phillipa Carr (family sagas). So lots of the romance books I read and loved as a teen and young adult were actually written by the same person.

Mistress of Mellyn was published in 1960 and I was curious to see if time and social changes had impacted on it. Well, yes. And no.

The main character Martha Leigh is an impoverished but intrepid gentlewoman who takes a position at an estate in Cornwall as governess for a troubled child. There is a very nice progression of growth as Martha transitions from embarrassment at and resentment of her low status to fascination with the challenges of working as a governess.

Necessarily (spoiler alert) she falls in love with her boss, the mysterious and crabby Connan TreMellyn, and they live happily ever after.

I know exactly how romantic I would have found Mistress of Mellyn as a teen. Very.

But.

As an adult reader in 2017, I have trouble figuring out just exactly what Martha sees in Connan. I know, I know – tall, dark, handsome, brooding, wealthy Alpha male.

Still, they spend very little time together. Their conversation is limited to arguments about the welfare of the child. He travels for business at the most inconvenient moments. Since they are in different social strata, Holt has to work hard to come up with reasons for them to interact at all.

Their relationship is so distant their first kiss is almost as surprising to the reader as it is to Martha.

Most important, Connan has a significant emotional issue he has to surmount in order to love again and because the story is from Martha’s viewpoint only, we don’t get to see much of his character development.

He’s probably a nice guy underneath it all – hey, Martha likes him. But he’s kind of a standee hero. Which is distressing, because I liked Connan too, in the abstract. I just wish I could have seen more of him.

I guess, from a reader, that’s the ultimate compliment.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. Wednesday is generally book review day. Unless it isn’t. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online. Waiting For You is coming soon.

book review

Book Review: Heroes Are My Weakness

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When I was thirteen, a friend gave me my very first gift certificate – a $10 ticket to happiness at a local bookstore. I bought Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. So last week, when I happened on Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ tribute to gothic romance, Heroes Are My Weakness, I was thrilled to write a book review of it.

Gothic romances are, by their nature, prone to clichés. It’s one of their charms. Also one of their dangers. It’s a short step from a broody, alpha male hero, to an insensitive jerk.

So I couldn’t wait to see what Phillips would do with her story. It was like anticipating a high wire act starring an elephant wearing high heels.

But Phillips takes what could have been a catastrophe and turns it into a triumph. She incorporates all the beloved motifs of gothic romances, the castle on the hill, the slightly off townsfolk, the mysterious man with dark and painful secrets, and gives them the respect they deserve. But she also tweaks them to work for contemporary sensibilities.

As a result, the reader doesn’t have to struggle through page after page of tortured Yorkshire dialect.

Yes, Wuthering Heights, I’m talking about you.

Nor does the obligatory child character make precious remarks in French a la Jane Eyre. Oui. I still remember penciling in the translations in that paperback. It was the first time I ever wrote in a book, a practice so unacceptable in my family as to be almost illegal.

The most fun character in Heroes Are My Weakness is the heroine. Annie is wounded, sure. She wouldn’t be a proper Gothic heroine if she wasn’t. But like Catherine in Wuthering Heights and the eponymous Jane Eyre, she has a sharp wit and a strong sense of self.

Romance plots require a certain enforced proximity. It’s the only way to ensure the two main characters are forced to deal with each other. But in old Gothic romances the heroine is more trapped, more beleaguered than we expect a contemporary heroine to be.

Authors of contemporary Gothics have to work around things like cell phones, fair labor laws and the lack of societal censure for an unmarried woman who hangs around with an unmarried man unchaperoned.

Phillips managed to pull off the best contemporary Gothic I have read. Her elephant not only stays on the tightrope, it never fumbles the chainsaws it is juggling.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. Wednesday is generally book review day. Unless it isn’t. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.

block

Writer’s Block and How Not to Conquer It

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Writer’s block is a problem for almost everyone at one point or another. I, for instance, am suffering from it right now. At this very moment, I have no idea what I will write this blog entry about.

I considered current events and lost a half an hour combing through intriguing stories looking for a clue to solve my writer’s block. But the article comparing a newly found dinosaur carcass to the Mona Lisa didn’t do it for me. It would have if the dinosaur had resembled Lisa in any way, but aside from having two eyes and a nose, no.

Then there was an article announcing a new position at NASA for a Planetary Protection Officer. But that article proved less exciting than I had hoped.

Turns out the officer will be in charge of making sure no space microbes make their way to earth and no earth germs make their way to planets we visit.

I had been hoping for laser guns and fancy fighting moves. But it turns out some cleanser and a scrubby pad will do the job.

This has taught me that news articles these days tend to promise more than they deliver.

But I digress. From my writer’s block. No, I don’t have a writer who has a block. Although now I think about it, playing with blocks might not be a bad idea. Or sharpening my pencils. Even the automatic ones.

Because one of the features of writer’s block is a sort of lassitude when it comes to conquering it. I would think that out of sheer stubbornness I would force myself to write a blog entry even if I didn’t have anything of significance to say. But writer’s block is kissing cousins with procrastination.

Brainstorming ideas and writing prompts are tried and true ways to conquer “The Block”. So I sat in front of my keyboard eyeing the blinking curser sullenly. Nothing came.

No problem. There are lots of writing prompts online. I’ll check as soon as I upload this article and let you know if I find anything good.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. Wednesday is generally book review day. Unless it isn’t. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.

mermaids

Mermaids and Their Public Persona

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Book Review Wednesday is back and better than ever. Except it happened on Monday which leaves me with nothing to write about today but mermaids.

I live in Rhode Island which seems to be the mermaid capital of the world. Not counting Copenhagen. So maybe it’s the mermaid capital of the United States. I say this because mermaid décor is a thing here.

Mail boxes and fences all over town are decorated with them.

A gas station not too far away has a Rube Goldberg type invention which features, among other moving metal parts a mermaid on a swing flicking her tail saucily in the wind.

Local shops lure tourists with mermaid figurines, mermaid ashtrays, mermaid statuettes in much the same way mermaids are fabled to lure sailors to a salty demise.

Actually, according to legend, the sailors are lured to their demises by mermaids’ singing.

Right.

A whaling ship has been becalmed for days. The sailors are losing their grip. The captain is at his wit’s end. The crew is muttering about a mutiny, until a pair of mermaids swim into view.

The mermaid on the starboard side is wearing an oversized bright yellow rain slicker and is singing with the sweet finesse of Kathleen Battle.

The one on the port side rides the waves silently combing her hair and beckoning coyly. She is dressed, well, like a mermaid.

Which side do you think the sailors will jump off? Me too.

Which raises a basic problem.

If the singing part of the story is an exaggeration, you have to wonder what else mermaid explicators have been lying to us about.

For instance, salt water makes long hair dull, sticky and painful to comb. Which means mermaids have to carry conditioner with them at all times to maintain that silky shine. That never seems to be in the pictures I’ve seen of mermaids.

Or how about what a mermaid eats. She lives in the ocean. At least one of her ancestors is a fish. I’m assuming mermaids aren’t cannibals since none of the pictures show razor sharp teeth, so that leaves seaweed and plankton. Nothing wrong with a sea vegan diet per se, except she wouldn’t have time or energy for lolling about singing and combing. She would be too busy eating.

The biggest issue is the question of what mermaids sing. It has to be mostly a capella although she could tap sea shells for rhythm and blow on a conch shell for emphasis. So that leaves out rock and roll and probably jazz. Brazilian music might work. What do you think?

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. Wednesday is generally book review day. Unless it isn’t. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.