Corduroy > Recent Status Updates

Oh my goodness. COULD IT BE? An outstanding new-to-me historical romance author? Chapter One is very promising.

I don't think I get this. I like the idea of it, but the execution seems so shallow to me. It introduces these very intense emotional/psychosexual ideas and then when they show up they feel so bland! I don't ove the prose or the characterization - it's all so the hero generically smouldering and calling the heroine "Kitten" and not-real characters. I thought it was going to be much more ominous and sexually charged.

7 kindle pages of the hero and heroine pretending (but not in a funny way) to be swans. Maybe that sounds good? it isn't good. I don't like it. I don't know if I can finish this book, and I'm only at 25%.

I want to like this so much, but four chapters in, I find it talky, precious (way, way too much of a certain type of overstuffed wordplay for me), too many unnecessarily complex minor plot elements, too much backstory dumping. The hero just said "shite" in front of heroine. It's 1866. He's a marquess, she's an earl's daughter. It feels too modern for me. I am having worried, disappointed feelings.

Starting to seem like I just don't get Mary Jo Putney. I find the writing here to be so hamhanded I'm highlighting sections I find especially egregious or illogical. Probably not a good sign. Should probably just quit. Argh.

This book has really awful characterization. The main dude is so totally boring and character-free, and the only significant female character exists so he has something to "win". Grumble grumble, I found myself reduced to googling for spoilers so I could quit reading. Then the spoilers disappointed me. *Shakes fist*

I heart Carolyn Crane/Annika Martin, she's one of my few contemporary autobuys. This book is not really working for me so far, alas. (And I wanted it to.) The heroine is really young, 18 or 19, and wears a pencil skirt to teach an English class at a prison. Already I am mentally checking out.

Would that I could swap this brain for one less concerned with realism.

I am afraid to hope, but I am kind of enjoying this so far. Everyone seems to have a sense of humor about themselves, and be aware of things that are awkward. Could this be it? Could this be the contemporary romance I am able to finish?!?

I would like someone to make a graph of the number of very small heroines in historical romances contrasted with the number of heroes who are "well over six feet", contrasted against the population occurrence of both of those things in period. I know aristocrats got better food, but really, how many 6'2"+ dukes could there have been?!?

Ugh. I want to love this (Dissolute marquis? Stop talking. I'm all in.) but it is just so... I don't get it. This is the third Carlyle book I've had this problem with. Maybe we are just not a match.

It's possible I don't actually like Tessa Dare books. This one strikes me as unenjoyably silly, the ridiculous "Stud Club" (which doesn't even make sense as a ridiculous club), the unnecessary instant marriage, the wallpaperiness of it all. I don't know. I'll give it a few more chapters.

This is a good book. But I think the author is very interested in writing about blue-collar men, and the hero in this is a master carpenter who can't get work in his field because of the housing bubble, and he's worried about his mortgage and I AM HAVING ECONOMIC PANIC and I can't relax into the romance! It's nearly enough to drive me to a book with "and the billionaire" in the title.

How long can I stall out before I admit that I'm not going to finish something? It's hard to keep interested once two strangely dull characters get engaged, I'm finding.

Heroine is a financially successful 24-year-old children's picture book author. Hero is a mid-30s tow-truck operator who is apparently also rich. I'm having such a hard time with the economics of this I barely have any time to grumble about the actual plot and prose.

I am rereading and no one can stop me!

"Do as you please. But when you're with Rohan or any other man, you had better keep in mind that you belong completely to me."
Trying to interpret the comment, Evie stared at him with astonishment. "Are you...is it possible... you're jealous?"
Sudden bafflement flickered across his features. "Yes," he said gruffly. "It would seem so."