Once upon a time, in a mansion deep in the heart of the South, a beautiful blond princess borne to a heartless, cold woman and a cold, soulless man, fell illicitly in love with a beautiful blond prince. This beautiful blond prince happens to be the very much younger half-brother of her father, which makes him a dirty uncle, though not quite so dirty, and yet dirty all the same. The parents of the princess who are very religious people are not so happy with this. They disinherit the princess and the uncle and throw them out of the mansion. The princess and the uncle, shamed and utterly humiliated, flee in the dead of night, never to be heard from in polite society ever again.

But fate is seemingly kind to pretty, blond people and the princess called Corinne and the dirty uncle called Christopher, change their last name to Dollaganger, manage to build a happy little life together, in love and utterly ensnared with each other’s remarkable golden blond looks. Genetics be damned, the two pretty pretty people make love like pretty pretty blond monkeys and produce two perfectly beautiful blond and blue eyed children with two arms, two legs, and are luckily intelligent and talented in their own special way. The blond girl-child is named Cathy and the blond boy-child is named Christopher, after their father. The two children are so utterly perfect and doll-like that they are nicknamed the Dresden Dolls. The girl-child is beloved by the father and shows signs of growing up to be one of those creatures seeking a man to marry who will love her the way Daddy had loved her. The boy-child is favored by the mommy. The mother Corrine, unsatisfied with her current lot and practically mocking fate to give her mutant deformed babies, gets pregnant again and has two more perfectly golden blond babies, fraternal twins called Cory and Carrie. Cathy pouts when she discovers she will no longer be the baby of the family and solicits a promise from her daddy that he will not love the new girl-child more than he loves her and as a testament to that promise, Daddy puts on a heart-shaped garnet ring on Cathy’s tiny doll-like finger.

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I’m really not sure how to review this book. Lisa Kleypas is an auto-buy for me (though I haven’t yet tried her contemporary stuff) and I normally enjoy her tortured, damaged, will-do-anything-to-have-heroine heroes, but there was something about this particular hero that made me go, “whoa, buddy, say what?” Immediately after finishing this book, my first reaction was that I liked it. Upon further contemplation, however, my opinion began to waver. This is the 3rd book in the Hathaway series (the first one is about the eldest sister marrying Cam Rohan from The Devil in Winter and the second one is about the 2nd sister getting together with another one of Lisa Kleypas’ signature heroes: barely civilized, big as an ox, a little nuts, and all the way nuts about the heroine) and I was really looking forward to reading about Poppy, who was socially inept, could talk the ear off of a deaf man, and adorably self-conscious about her awkwardness. Poppy is everything I like in a heroine: she doesn’t rush head-first stupidly into dangerous situations, speaks her mind but knows when it’s smarter to shut up, and intelligent without being precocious. Harry Rutledge, her romantic counterpart, was at first very yummy. When I read that he likes to tinker and make little mechanical things (and weapons!) and that his enormous hotel boasts a bunch of secret passages, I immediately thought, “Batman!” I was all set and ready to love this hero. He’s tortured, mysterious, reclusive, a genius… hey, he’s even starting to sound like a Jayne Ann Krentz hero, but then he had to go and get a little stalker on me. And while reading the book, I couldn’t shake this niggling feeling that poor, little Poppy was bamboozled and manipulated to marrying her stalker…

Spoilers and stuff below, btw.

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Grade: B-

I accidentally grabbed this book from the pile I have on the passenger seat of my car—I meant to grab the Kleypas one— and didn’t realize my mistake until I was sitting in the waiting room of my doctor’s office. Because I didn’t want to go down ten floors on the elevator, walk out to the parking lot, and jay-walk across the street where I parked my car, I was a little more than peeved. Though I had grabbed this book on impulse while I was standing in line at the grocery store with pasta, tomato sauce, and Clementine oranges (I’m addicted to those things. I can eat four in one sitting) in my basket, I was a little leery reading about a heroine called Vanessa Huxtable (who, by the way, is also a middle child. Huh). Seriously?!?! Vanessa Huxtable? Damn, I was expecting Denise to come out, yelling at Vanessa over a sweater she stole while Little Rudy eggs them both on (Man, Little Rudy grew up with some boobies, what?!). But soon enough, I realized that these two Vanessas could not be more than worlds apart. First of all, Tempestt Bledsoe would probably condescend to cutting a bitch if the bitch looked at her cross-eyed and secondly, that Vanessa Huxtable would probably never marry a rich man she doesn’t love right away even if it meant her family could keep their house and be eating nice for a while (like, say, Dr. and Atty. Mrs. Huxtable got kidnapped by Somalian pirates and Denise was the only one holding the family together, and it’s not like Sondra ever gave a shit about any of them anyway once she was out of that house!). Which brings me to my main peeve of this book and every single book that follows this trope: WHAT THE HELL IS SO SELF-SACRIFICING ABOUT MARRYING A VERY RICH, VERY GOOD-LOOKING MAN WHO CAN MAKE YOUR EYES ROLL TO THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD IN THE SACK?!?! True-love, schmoo-love… fancy jewelry, couture clothes, five meals a day, a goddamn mansion, and an orgasm smorgasbord can go a long way in ushering that nonsense in. Martyrdom, my skinny muscled fanny!

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Grade: B+

I’m pretty sure there’s a rule somewhere that romance novel heroes are supposed to be breathtakingly beautiful, veritable demigods walking around in tight blue jeans to be drooled over and worshipped inch by inch by mere mortals waiting to be swept into their brawny, muscled arms and ravished with punishing kisses. And if they’re “supposed to be” ugly, their genetically blessed mugs are only marred by a “disfiguring” scar, perharps a diagonal slash from the brow to the cheekbone brought upon by the tip of an enemy’s foil; or maybe the other half of his face—a perfect half, right down the middle—was burned in an explosion as he was running away from a towering inferno cradling squalling infants in his arms, thus he wears his hair unfashionably long, so that it would fall over the damaged part of his face, hiding it from the horrified gazes of gasping women. Though the scar is not only physical… at night, he can still hear the cries of those poor El Salvadorean infants… the ones he had to leave behind… I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to be described as bumbling oafs with disheveled manes the color of blazing carrots, ill-fitting and dirty clothes, a honker of a schnozz that would make Cyrano de Bergerac’s look positively patrician, and a mouthful of large, crooked teeth. If they do happen to look so unfortunate—and I assure you, dear reader, they never do—there’s still something about them that sets them apart from the joe-schmoes out there scratching their balls and picking their noses. It’s a certain je-ne-sais-quoi: he’s smarter than everyone else, or so charming that you forget he looks like Quasimodo (ah, the infamous Steve Buscemi charm!), or… I don’t know, butwhateveritis, he’s got it. He’s got presence, he’s got pizzazz, he’s got… “oooh.” And then there’s Geoffrey Ambler, Marquess of Swale, the town idiot— a man who’d be beneath anyone’s notice if it weren’t for his title and the fact that he’s an heir to a dukedom. And then there’s the unkempt bushel of hair on top of his head the color of burnt carrots (the heroine lovingly calls him “Ginger”). Did I mention he’s also known for throwing punches and the occasional tackle due to his quick and hot temper? And that he has the tendency to shove food into his mouth like a Viking who had been subsisting on a ration of water and moldy bread? Sexy. And no, he’s not the heroine’s mentally handicapped brother or the troublemaking sidekick of the long-suffering male protagonist.

He’s your hero.

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Grade: B-

Lisa Kleypas is a whiz at creating dark, tortured heroes with heavy amounts of baggage and issues that can’t be swept away with ONE powerful bout of mad-true-love-sexin’ with the heroine. No, Kleypas’ heroes are soooo damaged that they require at least two or three bouts of mad-true-love-sexin’. One of the trademarks of a dark, tortured hero is that he will do anything for the heroine—even shove her away for her own good—but is often an unyielding, unbelievable, intolerable douchenozzle to everyone else. He is obsessed with the heroine: he will steal for her, kill for her, and even give up his own worthless life for her—for what good is his own life if he fails to secure her welfare? (goddamn it, that awful Percy Sledge song is playing full-blast in a loop inside my skull now.) I suppose that’s all supposed to be romantic and stuff, but can you imagine being the subject of one dude’s every waking thought and fantasy? He has no hobbies except a creepy habit of sitting by your bed and watching you sleep, can’t talk about anything else but you, and has plotted every second of his obsessive existence around you. He dogs your every step; he’s there every time you look over your shoulder, trying to touch your hair or breathe the very air you exhale. That’s not romantic, that’s stalkerrific! As the Bitches say in their brand-spankin’ new book Beyond Heaving Bosoms:

Why is it that romance readers can tolerate any number of crazed behaviors from a romance hero, whereas if a real life dude did one-tenth of a hero’s dastardly deeds […] she’d be calling 911 faster than you can say “restraining order”?

And that is why the hero, Kev Merripen, a savage wild child who might as well have been raised by wolves but was taken in by a kind, genteel family, does not quite work for me. He didn’t rev up my engines, he didn’t get my motor running. Instead, he creeped me out. He is one disturbed dude who would have wallpapered the walls of his bedroom with pictures of the heroine if he had a digital camera and could capture every second of her life. He seemed one step away from slaughtering small animals and laying them at her feet in sacrifice. *shudder* That’s so not hot.

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