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So, over the course of my morning commute, stupid heroine demonstrated her amazing ability to be a pool shark, play Beethovan on guitar perfectly from memory, waltz, and speak flawless French. Each without any explanation or subsequent mention. Each suddenly out of the blue. (Oh, we need to distract this chef? I speak beautiful French at him!) Can we say "Mary Sue"?
She also seems to have written her doctorate in two years while mothering new-born twins, without an affiliation with any university or without having taken any grad classes.
Oh, and the blip of a plot? His mother threatens to sue for custody of his ward unless Perfect HeroineTM goes away, because Evil MotherTM knows that doing so would hurt the ward and Perfect HeroineTM could never stand that. So PH runs off without telling him and travels around the country to hide from the hero, despite being pregnant with his twins. When he finally catches up with her eight months later, her grandfather makes her explain. Hero's response is, "Oh, sorry about that, don't worry, I'll handle her." And that's that. Problem solved. Umm, what? PH was completely convinced that EM would tangle everyone up in a vicious lawsuit and ruin all their lives, and all Nora Roberts does to wrap this up is "don't worry, I'll handle her"?
Arrgh. This book was a marvel of telling instead of showing. This crap is why romance novels have a bad name. (I've read a number of romance novels that were quite excellent - good character development, interesting plots, good overall technique. This was crap.)
She also seems to have written her doctorate in two years while mothering new-born twins, without an affiliation with any university or without having taken any grad classes.
Oh, and the blip of a plot? His mother threatens to sue for custody of his ward unless Perfect HeroineTM goes away, because Evil MotherTM knows that doing so would hurt the ward and Perfect HeroineTM could never stand that. So PH runs off without telling him and travels around the country to hide from the hero, despite being pregnant with his twins. When he finally catches up with her eight months later, her grandfather makes her explain. Hero's response is, "Oh, sorry about that, don't worry, I'll handle her." And that's that. Problem solved. Umm, what? PH was completely convinced that EM would tangle everyone up in a vicious lawsuit and ruin all their lives, and all Nora Roberts does to wrap this up is "don't worry, I'll handle her"?
Arrgh. This book was a marvel of telling instead of showing. This crap is why romance novels have a bad name. (I've read a number of romance novels that were quite excellent - good character development, interesting plots, good overall technique. This was crap.)
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Date: 2010-05-21 03:41 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-05-21 04:09 pm (UTC)From:I've got a good handful of romance authors I actually like, and had kind of always steered clear of Nora Roberts. But I figured I should at least give her a shot. Urgh.