I'm kinda in love with this book. I devoured Sarina Bowen's Ivy Years series last November, and then her Gravity series in January, and I liked them all quite a bit, but I loved "The Shameless Hour." I loved the way it explores sexual politics and double standards and shame and purity and commitment and class divisions without being preachy or judgey, subtly enough that the message (while obvious) doesn't detract from the story, which is wonderful.

Rafe and Bella are both students at Connecticut's Harkness College (a fictional Ivy League institution modeled after Bowen's alma mater, Yale). They come from radically different backgrounds. Rafe is a Dominican-American who grew up in Washington Heights in NYC, working in the family restaurant. He is the only child of a teenage single mom, and he's been raised to know the consequences of getting a girl in trouble. Consequently, he's made it to his sophomore year in college without losing his virginity.

Bella is a senior at Harkness, student manager of the hockey team, and like Susan Sarandon's character in Bull Durham, Bella considers sleeping with hockey players to be one of the perks of her position. She enjoys sex and makes no apologies for it. Like Rafe, she's also from NYC, but she's never even been to his neighborhood. She's the daughter of a real estate developer, and her family thinks nothing of buying whole tables at $1,000/plate fundraisers and vacationing in the Hamptons, and they're paying Bella's school fees even though they barely speak to her.

Bowen's books are told in alternating narratives from the two main characters, and at the start of the story, Rafe is preparing for the big night with his girlfriend, Alison, where by prearrangement, and after more than a year of dating, they've agreed to turn in their V-cards. The date doesn't go as Rafe plans, though, and he finds himself drowning his sorrows in champagne with Bella instead of with Alison. He is disappointed enough, and just drunk enough (though by no means sloppily so), to accept Bella's invitation to bed, but in the morning second thoughts consume him.

It's important to note (and it's one of the best things about this book) that while Rafe feels guilt and shame about the hook-up, he never blames or judges Bella for it. Later in the book, Bella tells him:

"You're just not comfortable with my sex life. You're shaming me."

 

"No!" he protested immediately. The anger in his eyes startled me. "I think you're amazing, and I've said so every chance I get. Don't put words in my mouth. I never said your way was wrong. It's just wrong for me."

Rafe's shame stems from the fact that he has standards for himself about commitment and respect and sex, and he has fallen short of them in a moment of personal weakness -- but he has no problem with the fact that others don't share his same code. He doesn't judge Bella or begrudge her experience, but he knows that they can't have a relationship because they wouldn't be playing by the same rules.

Overcome by his regrets, Rafe sneaks out of Bella's room after their hookup in the wee small hours. (He is in all other respects an extremely sensitive and upstanding guy, so such a dick move is out of character for him and understandable only because of his own personal torment. Also, much as I think this move was out of character for Rafe, it saves him from being a Gary Stu. He's really a darling hero: sensitive, funny, vulnerable, romantic, feminist, the kind of guy who even does his own mending and cleaning. He'd have been too good if not for this monumental mistake to humanize him.) Then, because of his embarrassment and tongue-tied-ness, Rafe compounds this initial mistake of leaving by avoiding Bella for the next few weeks. She understandably but mistakenly interprets his distance as judgement of her, and she keeps her distance as well.

They might never have spoken again, except then something very, very bad happens to Bella. It's a major plot point, so I don't want to spoil it, but I do want to warn that, while it's not rape, it's bad enough that it might be triggering for some readers. In the aftermath, Bella is scared and depressed, humiliated and shamed, and though they are only casually acquainted, Rafe happens to be the one to help pull her out of this dark place. (As he puts it, "You're not okay. And I'm the one who noticed.")

I really enjoyed that, while Rafe takes care of Bella in the aftermath, he doesn't rescue her. He takes some of the weight off her shoulders by bringing her a few meals and keeping her company, but he knows he can't fix this for her. He makes her go running -- but she does the work. He has her back, but she speaks up with her own voice. Her vengeance, when it comes, is sweet, and it is hers: Her plan, her execution, and her reward. (Sorry if this sounds vague--I'm trying to avoid spoilers.) 

Anyway, not only is this an entertaining and satisfying book with a strong romance, it's an important read that deals with weighty issues in a compelling, nuanced, and wonderfully sex-positive way, and I hope lots and lots of LOTS of people read it, because it's awesome.

I read the novella Her Christmas Earl over the holidays, and liked it well enough to check out some of Anna Campbell's full length books. I started with Seven Night's in a Rogue's Bed because it was already in my TBR, no doubt due to some sale or recommendation a long time hence. I found this story very readable and entertaining, though parts of it annoyed me considerably. 

The Set Up:  Jonas Merrick is a brooding bastard who has made it his life's ambition to take revenge on the cousin who scarred his face and stole his title. He lures his cousin's wife, Roberta, into an Indecent Proposal at the gaming table: having played too deep, she must now spend seven nights with Jonas. Upon learning of the terrible bet, Roberta's sister, Sidonie, offers herself to Jonas instead. Determined never to marry, Sidonie is willing to sacrifice her innocence to save Roberta's life, because Roberta's husband is an evil, violent man who would kill his wife if he learned she fulfilled her bargain. 

The good: I enjoy Campbell's writing style. She sets the scene very well and the pacing moves right along, unlike some authors who tend to drag out background detail so much that the story drags and then gloss over the good parts. I also enjoyed this plot, which took a lot of familiar tropes -- the gothic castle, the scarred hero with the tortured past, the hero in pursuit, the wrongful arrest, even

! -- and took them in new and sometimes unexpected directions. Finally, I liked the gender flip of the afraid-of-commitment trope: here, the heroine, not the hero, was determined to avoid marriage. 

The bad: On several occasions, the hero and heroine behaved in ways I felt were melodramatic and not in keeping with their characters, and that diminished my overall enjoyment of the story. The heroine had one such moment where her behavior crossed the line into too-stupid-to-live territory and was completely irrational, though she was otherwise a reasonable, intelligent, and sympathetic character. (For details, click:

) 

The hero has a similar bout of out-of-character irrationality, one which really soured the last quarter of the book for me and brought my rating down at least one star. Sidonie has kept a secret from him --

-- which she keeps for an extremely sympathetic reason, and which she reveals under circumstances which literally save Jonas's life. It's a pretty big secret, so I'd have been okay with him being pretty mad ... for a few days or until they have the kind of conversation that grown ups in relationships have after fights. Instead, he gets all butthurt and behaves like a total douchecanoe, cutting off all contact with Sidonie

. I might have been more sympathetic to his cause, but it seems to me that a guy who trapped a married woman into infidelity in a card game doesn't have a whole lot of moral high ground to stand on. 

I also found the sex scenes to tend toward purple prose. That's a minor quibble for me since I tend to skim the smexy parts anyway, especially in historical romance, but I know that makes some people crazy... so fair warning. 

This book might have the beta-est beta hero ever, notwithstanding the fact that he's a fierce medieval knight who wields a broadsword, leads a band of loyal men, and is undefeated on the battlefield: despite all that, he's got serious self-esteem issues. Thayer has lots of battle scars, plus he's a freckled ginger, all of which combine to make him--in his own mind at least--the "Beast" of this book's title. I've never encountered a romance hero so obsessed with, and so insecure about, his own appearance... and it did not go over well.

Thayer returns home from battles in France to attend the wedding of his cousin, the heir to Seitun Manor, only tor learn that his cousin is dead and according to the terms of the marriage contract, Thayer himself is now heir to the Manor and to the late cousin's bride-to-be, the prodigiously beautiful Gytha. Rather than greeting this arranged marriage with joy, Thayer gets butthurt because Gytha's beauty means he'll spend his whole life chasing lovesick swains out of his wife's bed... because all pretty girls are cheaters, of course. 

After some sexy times and near misses on the battlefield, Thayer and Gytha fall in love, but neither wants to tell the other because ... reasons. Plus, Thayer still doesn't trust Gytha's chastity, never mind that she's never given him any reason to doubt her, and his inability to believe that a beautiful woman would hitch her wagon to his star nearly unravels their marital felicity... that, and Thayer's uncle keeps trying to kill him, which also puts a damper on things.

Time passes, Gytha almost gets raped, gets kidnapped, almost gets raped again, Thayer rescues her and defeats the dastardly uncle... and then, just when you think the story is wrapping up, there's a surprise plot twist that makes it all too clear that Thayer still doesn't know what the fuck he's doing when it comes to women.

There's enough catnip in this story--arranged marriage trope (a weakness of mine), medieval setting, spunky heroine, amusing dialogue--that I stuck with it even though Thayer's awkwardness with women was not so much endearing as insulting and infuriating, but in the end, this book is simply "meh."

There is much about this book that I really, really liked:

1. The gender-flip of the "scarred hero" trope. Catriona has been scarred/disfigured in a terrible carriage accident and now must learn how to get along without beauty, which had been her defining feature. Physical allure is more important to women then men, beauty more critical to women's identity and social value, so it was a thought-provoking reversal of a fairly standard plot device.

2. Catriona was not a virgin. More than the loss of her beauty, she mourned the loss of passion and feared no man would ever want to be intimate with her. I found it refreshing that she recognized that she'd been bad by society's standards, but knew that if she'd followed the rules, she would never have known sexual fulfillment. A sexually-liberated heroine is a rare treat in historical romance.

3. A really, chillingly evil villain. I'm not usually a fan of murder-mystery subplots in romance novels, but this wasn't a mystery: the reader knows from the start who the bad guy is, and the scenes written from his perspective are gut-churningly dark.

4. Secondary characters, like Mark's grandfather and his housekeeper, were really unique and interesting. Often characters like these fade into the background; I appreciate that here, even minor characters were vividly drawn.

Other things about this book I didn't enjoy so much:

1. The pacing of the plot and flow of the dialogue was choppy/uneven. Parts of this book dragged, and parts went so fast they were hard to follow. A few times I had to re-read a few pages because I lost the flow of the narrative. Sometimes dialogue didn't make sense. This story is unique enough that I think if someone else had written it, I'd give it five stars, but I found Ms. Ranney's narrative style clunky and unwieldy.

2. Neither hero nor heroine were very likeable. Mark is busy, self-righteous, judgmental, and kind of self-absorbed. At the start of the novel, he is betrothed to another young woman, Anne. Though he has not formally declared his intention to marry her, he knows his behavior, public and private, has given the impression that they have an understanding. When he begins to fall for Catriona, he blows off the blameless Anne with a brutal lack of delicacy, tact, or remorse.

3. Catriona is selfish and vain, though given her injuries and physical and emotional pain, her self-pity is understandable, if tedious to read. More than Mark, she exhibits substantial character growth over the course of the novel.