Wednesday Reading Meme

[shipperx]

What I've just finished reading:
Sherry Thomas' "Tempting the Bride"

shadowkat67 and I have a long, spoiler-ridden talk on the subject in this post where I explain that while enjoying 95% of the book, the ending made me so angry that I didn't properly enjoy the 'happy ending.'  I'm torn by this because I'm not sure how much of that is due to the novel (I think a fairly large amount is due to the novel) and how much is baggage from BtVS, because somewhere early in the novel I was hit by the realization THEY. ARE. SPUFFY!

I don't know whether they are literally an author's Victorian AU version of Spuffy (though David, the hero, having curly blond hair that he tames with pomade along with impressive cheek bones and square jaw doesn't preclude the possibility) or whether Sherry Thomas is Spuffy fan (shadowkat67 thinks she heard Thomas was, and since Thomas also writes urban fantasy it does seem like it could be a possibility) but the RELATIONSHIP DYNAMICS in the story are totally Spuffy.

David and Helena drive each other nuts.  They say terrible, horrible things to each other... but on some level, they enjoy the word play and one-upmanship.  David has also been in unrequited love with Helena for forever, and he ruefully admits to himself that it was unfortunate that when he fell for her way back during their teens, he had been an obnoxious snot, the kind to pull the hair of girls that he liked. However, what's long been love for him is most decidedly not for her. She has eyes only for Angel Andrew, who she fell in love with as a teenager and who she can't and/or WON'T get over (despite now being 27 years old), and despite Andrew being distinctly unavailable. David, in the interim, has adopted a dynamic of saying outrageous, cutting, and/or erotic things to her to get a rise out of her because to him it's better that she scream at him than ignore him.

So David and Helena snipe at one another even though David is always but always there for her and her family.  However in Helena's eyes, nothing David ever does is right while nothing Andrew ever does is wrong... and if it is wrong, she assumes all the blame herself and clears Andrew of any responsibility for it.

Circumstances spoiled in the discussion with shadowkat67 follow.  David and Helena draw close under trying circumstances, he confesses his long unrequited devotion and his screwed up way of dealing with her, apologizing and changing his behavior in the process. He's honest with her about everything.  They actually fall in love and... near the end of the novel, at the drop of a hat she's offered a chance to be with Andrew and SHE LEAVES DAVID!

As I said to shadowkat, it was like Thomas gave me BtVS's Touched followed by End of Days all over again.  It goes from David beautifully attesting to unquestioned, unshakable devotion and loyalty to Helena with unprecedented closeness between them to her doing a complete 180 the next morning, regressing into a giggling teenaged version of herself at the slightest hint that she might get her 'true love' back.  All within the space of a couple of pages!  I had flashbacks to "Does it mean something" with a chaser of crypt snoggage to (hell!) space sex.  Ugh!

(Worse, in David and Helena's situation,  Helena didn't just break David's heart by doing this, when Helena did her abrupt 180 she  emotionally devastated David's special needs daughter by walking out as well.)

After that, I was so angry with Helena that I had difficulty accepting that she got her 'happy ending' simply by realizing that she was nuts to have turned her back on David in the present to go running after Andrew in an effort to recapture a teenaged dream.  David had given her total honesty and his his heart and she (yet, yet, yet again) chose to go running to a deluded fantasy that she should have spanked her inner moppet over years earlier.  Her doing so at that very late point in the story basically made it impossible for me to say 'yay, she came back!"  Because at the relationship stage where she pulled the rug out from under David, what she did amounted to an untenable rejection of someone she claims (albeit belatedly) to love. It was a bridge too far.

At any rate, for all the good parts of the book, the ending was too rushed after having carried Helena's obsession with Andrew too damn far to simply shrug off with David being willing to accept Helena's too damn late ILU as being better than never.

What Are You Reading Now:
Nothing at the moment

What Are You Reading Next:
Don't know. I'm still considering Nalini Singh's urban fantasy series with vampire hunters, vampires and arch angels.  It looks like it might be enjoyable.

Comments

[sp23.livejournal.com]

Man, I would hate that book. In a slight way, it reminds me of a book I read years ago where a woman comes to America as a bond slave (I think). Anyway, the captain of the vessel rapes her, and she falls in love with him! The fuck?! I hated this guy so damned much. Anyway, stuff happens, he continues to be a prick and abandons her, and then she meets this other guy who is just everything a woman would want. She's with him but she doesn't love him because of the prick. Then she gets captured by Indians, the good guy rescues her AT THE COST OF HIS OWN LIFE, and she goes off with her rapist at the end of the book happy as a lark without another thought over the guy that gave his life for her. Man, I hated that book SO. VERY. MUCH. I don't remember the name of it or wrote it because I'm pretty sure I threw the damned thing away.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Seriously!

I wanted to punch this 'heroine.' I really, really did. David had not only exposed ALL of his vulnerabilities and stood by Helena through her own self-generated scandals but he'd also included her in the totality of his life.

David was a freaking fantastic, heart-meltingly devoted father. His little girl has what appears to be Asberger's (no diagnosis in Victorian England, but that's what it looks like to a modern reader). The elementary school-aged tyke CANNOT handle change. At all. David paints her beautiful kiddie murals on her nursery room walls and illustrates childrens books for stories that he writes her. He's INFINITELY patient, giving the child time to process and respond to things. He doesn't rush her. Patiently explains everything to her so that she can process. He gives her as much physical affection as the child can handle while keeping his distance as needed because she can't handle very much. Basically, he is AMAZING with the child and it makes the reader adore him.

Then, the morning after Helena and he become engaged A) Helena unceremoiously dumps him to go running after Andrew. B) Blames him for it (He didn't DO ANYTHING, witch!) C) And his daughter has a complete emotional breakdown owing to both Helena leaving them AND her pet dying. So while Helena is running off trying to recapture her teenaged fantasies, David is left with an inconsolable child who cannot verbalize her pain and thus has withdrawn into a tight little ball of sobbing agony on the nursery floor who he dare not touch for fear of sending her into further distress but who he spends hour upon patient, agonizing hour trying to calm and reassure. He and his daughter are still sitting on the nursery floor in abject misery nine hours later when Helena waltzes in to announce her revelation that it's time to give up her nostalgic attachment to the past and is immediately forgiven for having NEEDLESSLY having put two people who loved her through HELL.

Apparently her 'revelation' that it was time to put away her fantasies was supposed to be a happy ending. I was too bothered by the special needs child and her father in abject MISERY for no damn reason that either of them ever deserved!

[sp23.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, David should have dropped kicked her self-centered ass right out the house. Yeah, never going to read *that* book!

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

As I told shadowkat, the scene I wanted and did not get was Helena's brother confronting her over her bullshit, telling her that he was DONE trying to protect her from her own bullheaded mistakes when what he should have been doing was protecting his best friend David from her.

[femmenerd.livejournal.com]

Okay, weird. I only just reread this book a week or two ago. And now that you point out the Spuffy-like thematics I get even more why I keep turning back to it.

Maybe I was being handwavey, but I didn't interpret Helena as really *leaving* leaving David when she went to go see Andrew - I thought of it as more like she needed to close the door on that first.

And I have read and enjoyed both Singh's wingfic Angels & Vampires series as well as her Psi-Changeling series. Both of them have up and down points for me, but are always auto-reads, so.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

It was a timing issue for me complicated by David's daughter. Had Helena done it before she had thought that she'd love David forever, I could've taken it. But it coming SO late and it coming alonside David's daughter melting down, (and with Andrew being SUCH a uninspiring dumbass), I just could not handle the way that Helena handled the situation. She needed more blowback than she got.

Singh's stuff looks potentially interesting. Haven't read about her Changeling stuff. What are they like?

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I'm still considering Nalini Singh's urban fantasy series with vampire hunters, vampires and arch angels. It looks like it might be enjoyable.

There's this Psi-channeling series that she wrote - which keeps being heavily rec'd over at smartbitches and good reads, that I've considered. But I'm not sure if it might be a wee bit too dark for me at this point.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I picked up her name because she was mentioned in "what made you ugly cry" with one of the urban fantasy novels. That book was well into the series though and I thought I'd probably check out an earlier book to understand the 'world' where they are staged.

[eilowyn.livejournal.com]

Have you read your very own Post-Traumatic Joss Syndrome post recently? Because yeah. I would have issues too. Is there fix-it fic for romance novels?

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Heh. I tend to always write a mental coda to a book. :)

And, ironically enough, one of the endearing traits of David in the novel is that he writes his own smutty AU fanfic of their relationship (I'm dead serious).