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September 20, 2004
On the Lighter Side
If all the talk of unprofessional reporters has you down, read the following book review I turned in a few minutes ago for one of my classes. I am taking a class on developing adult fiction collections for libraries and have to read books from a wide variety of genres (western, sci-fi, etc.) to get a feel for each genre. This week the genre is romance and although the book I read was not that good I was very proud of my review. The book by the way was Rachel by Linda Lael Miller, which for some unholy reason is part of a best selling series called Springwater Seasons:
'This story falls in the Historical Romance or Western Romance genre. It begins with Rachel English riding into the frontier town of Springwater, Montana on a stagecoach to be the towns teacher. On the way there she gets stuck in a stream and has to be rescued by the handsome owner of the Brimstone Saloon, Trey Hargreaves. They both immediately fall in love with each other, but are in denial until the last chapter (the saloon owner and proper teacher can not be in love after all), so they fight with each other the entire novel until almost the chapter. In the mean time she goes around rescuing neglected orphans from despair, is on the verge of huge emotional calamities the entire time, and we learn that both of them thought they would never love again. He is a widower and she is in essence a widow, her fiance having been killed in the civil war.
My first reactions to the book were not very positive. It needed a good rewrite to get rid of the sappy expressions and it could have used an antagonist or two. The worst of many bad similes was 'somehow it always remained elusive and somewhat magical, like the shadow of a unicorn, barely glimpsed at the edge of a moon-splashed clearing.' That was Rachel describing a tea party. Another problem I had was that even though this is a rugged frontier town and despite their sometimes very scruffy appearance, everybody has a heart of gold. The only bad guys described are always talked about in a very distant past tense.
There were moments that I enjoyed in the book, but they were brief and sometimes at the books and authors expense. Once again: Unicorns?!? I laughed for a while at this and even had to set the book down for a minute to regain my composure. I do not think that laughter was the authors intent with this passage.
In a lot of ways I did not need to read this book as I knew exactly what would happen by page five or so: The proper teacher (with a heart of gold) would fall in love with the roguish saloon owner (with a heart of gold) who was finally described as a 'rogue' on page 39. I also knew that they would deny their love until the final chapter or so and that they would bicker a lot in the mean time. I also predicted that their broken hearts would somehow be mended by love and that at some point Trey would have to save Rachel from certain death. All of my predictions were proven correct.
It seems that Rachel is on the verge of weeping, holding back tears, having an ache in the depths of her heart, or going weak in the knees every other page. This woman can barely hold herself together. And Trey is a very tough nut to crack indeed (how many guys in 19th century Montana were named 'Trey' anyways?). Before he met her he had never lost an arm wrestling contest until the one day when she barged into his saloon and distracted him. They then fight some more (we are still in the middle of the novel at this point so they still fight) and start to talk about his daughter Emma (with a heart of gold) that he takes care of on his own, which only goes to further show Rachel that Trey has heart of gold. Later on he saves her from certain death during a stampede and she promptly beings weeping over her lost love/broken heart or something like that. There are a few other characters as well like June-Bug the kindly woman with a heart of gold who helps Rachel take in the orphans Toby and Christabel (both with hearts of gold). Could not the town have at least one jerk or brat? Not in Springwater Montana apparently. Even her horse has a heart of gold and a sappy name: Sunflower. Like gun toting saloon owners named Trey, how many horses in 19th century Montana were named 'sunflower'?
I thought for a while that I could almost recommend this novel to a western fan or someone who just wanted a very light read. I might still recommend it to a romance fan. I picked this book out because of all the books I looked at in the Romance section of the library this one was the only one I saw that did not have two figures wearing ripped clothes embracing each other on the cover (the cover is a picture of a snow covered pastel mountain) and from the back description I did not think it would be that sexually graphic of a novel and for the most part I was right. It was not graphic at all until the last few pages where (after they are married of course) it goes into a somewhat graphic description of their honeymoon night. This really caught me of guard as up until that point they had only kissed twice before (the first kiss showing them love in a way they had never seen before and transforming them as they had never been transformed before) and the novel was very tame until this point. I assumed it would leave it to the readers imagination maybe ending with Trey carrying Rachel up the stairway of the saloon, which would be appropriate to the proper mood the book had set up until that point. Instead it contains an fairly anatomical description of what happens. At least Trey untied Rachels bodice and did not rip it off like I expected, when I first saw the word 'bodice' on one of the last pages.'
I hope you enjoyed my review more than I enjoyed the book. Oh, and Dan Rather should be fired.
Posted by Pete at September 20, 2004 03:35 PM
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