I’ve been having multiple massive demands on my creative energy and wanted to read non-taxing fiction. Do you know how taxing it is to seek out non-taxing anything though? Pre-screening stuff for yourself means reading it, which means being taxed. A dilemma.

Anyway, eventually I remembered Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and decided to read through the A reviews until I found something I liked the sound of.

Conclusion: I have no idea if I’d like paranormal romance. I kind of suspect I might, but the reviewers can’t sell the books to me, they’re really picky about, eg, pack loyalty issues that I can’t get into without first reading paranormal romance, which is rather circular. So, I ended up with three of Caroline Linden’s Regency romances from this review. And may I say what a blessing having a Kindle is, because having to look at romance novel covers would have been a step too far for me.

My thoughts:There’s a trilogy, involving each of the aristocratic Reece siblings having a romance (in a romance novel? SHOCK).

What a Gentleman Wants: Hannah Preston is the vicar’s widow, about to move back to her hateful father’s home. Lord David Reece, the (slightly) younger brother of Marcus Reece, the duke of Exeter, is laid up in her home with a broken leg for weeks, and it changes her life forever. But maybe not how you’d think.

I quite liked What a Gentleman Wants, although in large part because it simply took a bunch of trashy elements and stirred. Identical twins with very different personalities! Identical twins impersonating each other! Constructing massive lies in order to avoid moderately disappointing someone! Which backfires! Family loyalties past the point of sense and reason! Family betrayal! Crime mystery as subplot!

Linden is a good writer though, also, and I appreciated some of the smaller touches of realism here: Hannah’s determination to keep doing her own good honest work (eg mothering her own child and doing her own hair) melts under repeated application of having servants to do it, which while maybe not ideal I do find realistic.

What a Rogue Desires itself, the one reviewed on SBTB, I liked a lot less. David Reece’s saviour complex and impulsiveness carry over from the first book, except this time he gets more screen-time. At least he isn’t as shamefully easily led as in the first book, although possibly that’s only because no one really tries.

Plus, well, he locks a poor woman up in his house and then eventually she falls in love with him. Urgh. Vivian is a good heroine though.

A Rake’s Guide to Seduction was by far my favourite. In this Marcus and David’s considerably younger half-sister Lady Bertram, the former Celia Reece, returns to the family after her disastrous first marriage ends in her husband’s illness and death. (Useful note if I ever become a romance writer: widows are great candidates for a modern writer of historical romances because they’re allowed to be sexually experienced.) She spends much of the novel depressed, and I thought Linden did the depression quite well.

The rake in question is Anthony Hamilton, one of David’s more scandalous university friends, whose reputation has in fact been earned by his attempts to make his own way financially in a way that the ton doesn’t understand (well mostly, that and sleeping with his investors, admittedly). And Anthony is most of the reason I like this book: he’s a much more sympathetic hero than either of Celia’s brothers managed to be. He’s clever, emotionally available, and self-contained: with a Reece man you only get at most two out of three and sometimes not that.

The most annoying thing about Rake’s Guide was how Vivian, David’s wife, was conveniently more or less written out of it (debilitated by a difficult pregnancy). I can see how it was tempting to avoid it, but Linden should have bitten the bullet and written David’s half-Irish former pickpocketing wife at the duke’s house party, dammit. There’s also a couple of quite handwavy bits around the scandal: what on earth do the duke and also Celia’s mother tell the guests to remotely quiet the scandal of her being caught having sex with Anthony? That I wanted to see on-screen.

So there we have it, leaflitter successfully negotiates the shoals of spending her time on trashy novels without having to agonise too much over whether they will be trashy enough but not too trashy. Thank you SBTB.