Grade: A-

I love drama in my romance novels. Not just sissy, sniffle-inducing drama, but heart-wrenching, gut-twisting trauma porn. I especially love drama that revolves around incestuous wealthy families sleeping with each other and fighting over money. Yes, I know, I know. I need help. One of my favorite re-reads is Shades of Twilight by Linda Howard because it has all the ingredients of the turgid, overwrought, melodramatic trash that I love so much. The most important element of such a story, of course, is the dark prodigal son come home to claim his inheritance. It is a requirement that he is angry, more than a little crazy, holds grudges like you wouldn’t believe, broods as much as he breathes, and the type of man that you’re not quite sure you can trust. He’s the kind of guy who’ll probably sneak into your bedroom in the middle of the night, ravish you, and slit your throat. The story also needs the head of the household–preferably a matriarch–wasting away from cancer or something; in the past, she and the hero have had major clashes, the biggest of which drives the hero away. For added drama, there must be greedy, grasping relatives who are forever plotting against the hero. They are completely useless, leech off the matriarch, and in between snorting coke, having sex with each other, and making insiduous plots against the hero, find the time to heap loads of abuse… on the heroine. The story wouldn’t be complete without the frail and beautiful martyr, who is technically part of the family, but is for all intents and purposes, an outsider (she’s either a second cousin or adopted). She takes care of the matriarch, endures the abuse of her relatives beautifully like Saint Bernadette, and gains the lust and obsession of the hero for her trouble. The two of them almost always have a past where the heroine was in love with the hero as a child and the hero makes out with her–a child–before he disappears. Well, this book has all of that and more… and boy, is it ever so delicious.

The dark prodigal son, who is the Dark Lord of Darkety Dark and the King of all that is dark and darker, is Alexander McDowell… or is he? Eighteen years ago, he turned his back on his family and the family’s veritable trove of dirty stinkin’ cash because he could no longer deal with his domineering mother and evil, scheming relatives. He goes lookin’ for his estranged father, who reveals a deep, dark secret that only serves to feed Alex’s growing anger, and leads him to decide never to return to the Casa McDowell. Alex spends the next few years being a gigolo, a con artist, a hustler, and finally makes enough of his own money to buy a small villa in Tuscany where he settles down… that is, until he reads about his mother’s impending death on the Wall Street Journal. Like the opportunistic shark that he is, Alex realizes that it is high time that he returned to the nest of vipers he once called family and claim the mountains of money that is rightfully his. As soon as he is reunited with his mother, Alex proceeds to play the part of the repentant, adoring son as though his very life depends on it, making everyone believe he’s the real thing. Everyone except Carolyn Smith, that is. Soon enough Alex realizes that there is more to be claimed at the Casa McDowell… more than money and revenge. That’s because Carolyn, the foster child who was raised as his sister, is now all growed up… and Alex doesn’t want to be her big brother.

Carolyn was raised to believe that her mother was a servant of the family who got knocked up and deserted by her lover, so Alex’s mom took her in. As a child, Carolyn never fit in with the McDowells because they never let her forget that she’s not family or that her real mother was a servant. Nevertheless, Carolyn stayed loyal to them because she has no other family in the world and feels that she owes them especially since they took her in when they didn’t have to. Over the years, Carolyn has made a career of being extremely useful to Alex’s mother, then disappearing into the background when she’s not needed. She has never wanted anything for herself except for the McDowells to accept her as one of their own, but she is starting to realize that that may never happen, so she is currently attempting to have a life of her own. When Alex’s mother gets The Cancer, however, Carolyn’s overwhelming sense of obligation takes over and she drops her job, her apartment, and her social life to race to Alex’s mother’s side in her time of need. Just as Carolyn is coming to terms with Mrs. McDowell (I can’t remember her name) dying of the Big C and finally being free of the McDowells, a startlingly familiar man shows up claiming to be the long lost Alexander McDowell. When he disappeared as a seventeen year old boy eighteen years ago, Carolyn’s thirteen year old heart was crushed. Though the stranger looks like Alex, knows things that only the real Alex McDowell could know, and affects Carolyn pretty much the same as the old Alex did, only Carolyn knows that there is no way in hell that he could be the real Alex. That’s because eighteen years ago, the real Alex McDowell died… and Carolyn was the sole eye witness.

I had an awesome time reading this book because Anne Stuart knows how to write suspense. The woman kept me constantly guessing, revealing one twist after the other, and I totally bought it ’cause they all made sense. The is-he-or-isn’t-he premise doesn’t get tired and even though the Long Lost Son storyline is a dead horse that has been beaten, skinned alive, stripped of meat, and hung out to dry on a rack, Anne Stuart somehow manages to make it fresh. She doesn’t offer anything new or groundbreaking, but she did take the tired old story, turned it over and over in her hands, and examined it from every angle, so that she could produce something… different.

Not only is Stuart a superb writer, but she can write the shit out of a dark, mysterious hero, too. I think what makes this story work is that Alex (or is he?) isn’t just a fake bad boy with fake issues that’ll get resolved with good luvin’. As I read this book, I wasn’t ever sure how I felt about Alex (or is he?) because he scared me and intrigued me at the same time. He is ruthless, cunning, and so damned mean but in a bloody sexy way. What’s specifically sexy about him is his coldness. The dude doesn’t do or say anything without thinking about it at length first. He is methodical, calculating, ambitious, and doesn’t give two shits about who he hurts to get what he wants. What differentiates Alex from the normal bad boy batch is that he doesn’t spend a lot of time brooding about his past and what a sad little childhood he had. He broods, alright, but not about that. He premeditates and schemes and stalks and hunts just like a true predator. True to form, he becomes totally obsessed with the heroine in a way that should have creeped me out, but didn’t. In fact, I found myself a little jealous about it. Ewww, am I malfunctioning or what?

As for the character of Carolyn, I was totally meh about her. She blusters and sputters and stammers and glances coldly at the hero… what else is new? Thankfully, she does exbit a little bit of spine unlike Roanna who could have given lessons to a jellyfish about how to be an invertebrate. I thought she carried the martyr thing a little too far, but she does have her reasons and I do understand why she does some of the stupid shit that she does. What I do like about Carolyn is that she doesn’t whine. She knows her lot in life, acknowledges her limitations, and deals with it. Anne Stuart draws out the “lady doth protest too much” bit a little too long, but I think it says a lot about her writing that I wasn’t that bothered by it. Though I do wish that there were more quiet moments between Carolyn and Alex, I appreciated that Carolyn didn’t throw herself immediately into Alex’s arms even though she has loved him ever since she was a kid. What’s awesome about it is that Carolyn is able to differentiate what she felt for Alex as a child and what she feels about him as a woman. In too many of the I’ve-been-in-love-with-you stories that I’ve read in the past, there was always this creepy “childhood crush” stigma that got stuck with it. Carolyn deals with her feelings just fine.

My only problem with his book is that there wasn’t enough family drama. We get a lot of it from Carolyn and Alex, as well as Carolyn, Alex, and Alex’s mom, but I wish there had been more of ensemble drama. There just wasn’t enough hair-pulling, loogie-spitting, eye-gouging, sibling-sexin’ soap opera type of drama for me. I just felt that Anne Stuart should have gone all out especially with an old used-up storyline like this. There should have been more blood, more yelling, more psychotic episodes… just LET THE CRAZY OUT. As it is, it gets a little saggy in the middle and I found myself almost yearning for the heroine to have a TSTL moment and make some drama for the hero. At times, it just felt like an episode of Days of Our Lives trying its best to look and feel like something better, when really, it should have just embraced itself for what it was.

Boy, there is nothing I love more than a dark hero and Alex is plenty dark. He is constantly scheming, constantly thinking, and you’re never quite sure where you stand with him, but damn… he is a sexy, sexy man. This book isn’t as craaazy as Shades of Twilight and there are some startling similarities between the two, but how many long-lost-son-returning-to-wealthy-crazy-family stories can be written before they all start sounding the same? This book is definitely grittier, more emotionally evocative than SoT, but I wish this one had more drama, too. If you’re looking for a well-written, suspenseful read that’ll keep you up till four o’clock in the morning, then definitely check this book out. Because of it, I’ve become a fan of Anne Stuart and the first thing I did after finishing it was head on over to Amazon to see what else she has written. I can’t believe I’ve never read anything by this author before and I thought I knew bad boys! Oh, man, when I think of all those Bad Boy books that Lori Foster and her friends have written, I just kind of have to laugh a little. Alex on a good day can make the lot of them look like cub scouts and I think that if they ever met Alex, they’d piss their drawers and run the hell out of town, leaving a trail of the yellow stuff. Mmm… Alex.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 at 10:35 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: A, Romance: Suspense. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.