shipperx | What Are You Reading Wednesday

What Have You Just Finished Reading?
Sherry Thomas' "Not Quite A Husband": An estranged British couple is caught in an uprising against the British in turn of the (19th to 20th) century Pakistan (though that area was part of India at that particular time).

I felt a bit 'blind' re: the locale and the political conflict of this one. I don't know much about it, and I didn't feel that the book told me more than the very basics. Plus, I didn't think the locale was described well enough to 'see it' in my minds eye. (As a kid, I remember reading 'Merlin's Keep' and being enthralled with 19th Century Tibet. I've retained some of that fascination ever since. This book didn't bring that sense of place). However, I did like the developmental stages of the characters' estrangement with their long term marital problems and the emotional minefield that the story navigated. The situation effectively prevents them from running from one another (as they would've if not prevented from doing so) and forced them to depend on one another such that they actually have to reveal, discuss, and face their issues, which they never would have done otherwise. So, while I would've liked more background, I did like the central emotional arc.

What Are You Reading Now?
The Leopard Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

What Are You Reading Next?
Haven't thought that far ahead.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ah, you read "Not Quite a Husband" - I read it so long ago, my memory of it is admittedly a bit vague. Will admit that I completely forgot where over half of it took place, I thought India. Thomas isn't really into describing place. (Meredith Duran did a slightly better job with India in Duke of Shadows. But romance novelists tend to fall short in this area for some reason or other.)

It's called India throughout the novel, which is accurate because during the time period of the novel it was part of India. But the area where it is taking place is today part of Pakistan (knowledge gained from watching a documentary on HBO about the India/Pakistan border being one of the most volatile and potentially dangerous borders in the world.)

From Wiki:

Relations between India and Pakistan have been strained by a number of historical and political issues, and are defined by the violent partition of British India in 1947 {...}

After the dissolution of the British Raj in 1947, two new sovereign nations were formed—the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. The subsequent partition of the former British India displaced up to 12.5 million people, with estimates of loss of life varying from several hundred thousand to a million.[1] India emerged as a secular nation with a Hindu majority population and a large Muslim minority while Pakistan was established as an Islamic republic with an overwhelming Muslim majority population.

Edited 2014-03-05 23:28 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. Didn't know that. For some reason - I remember it being around Cairo - but again, I'm probably confusing it with Meredith Duran's Duke of Shadows, which I read around the same time.

They do blur together a bit. ;-)

Still enjoying Wicked Intentions. The hero reminds a lot of Spike though, not that that's a bad thing - Spike is clearly my go-to archetype (I have weakness for this type of character)...there's even a paragraph regarding the hero's inability to feel empathy until he begins to fall for the heroine and cares for who she cares for. And he's a poet. With mother issues.

I'm guessing the writer and I share hero archetypes...looking forward to Winter's book, I rather like him in this novel.

And history/politics aside, I liked the romance in this one.

I did too - preferred it to Private Arrangements. The male hero is adorable. And I loved the gender flip...on the two characters. She's older, and worried he can't deal with it. And she's a brilliant doctor.

It reminded me a little of Courtney Milan's The Countess Conspiracy.

The reviews that I had had issues with the fact that they make love to each other, when the other one is asleep. They saw it as unrealistic. But I found it fascinating...in how she used it to explore the insecurities in their relationship.

That was my first Sherry Thomas novel. I have a review of it somewhere in my lj.

I thought the sleep sex was used as a way of slipping past conscious emotional barriers that they had placed. I don't know that they would've achieved intimacy without by-passing those barriers near the beginning. Though, I thought at the time when reading it that there would no doubt be kerfuffles over this. Still, I was unbothered. I thought it worked in an almost (but not quite) metaphorical way.

And what I liked was that there was no 'good guy' and 'bad guy' in the relationship. Both did hurtful things. Both were hurt. Neither is really afforded the moral high ground here and has to accept. Yes, hurtful things were done to me AND I also did incredibly hurtful things to this other person. Then their learning that if they wanted a future together they had to find a way of working through and beyond that.

I liked that they were both flawed and -- almost despite themselves -- long loving (even when it would've made sense for either of them to have fallen out of love long ago.)

Oh - I finished Wicked Intentions finally and posted my review to my LJ - it's long. So here's the link:

http://shadowkat67.livejournal.com/1019249.html

Short answer: unless you have unresolved issues regarding Spuffy in S6, not sure you'd like it. Felt like the writer was trying to work out those issues through the central relationship in this novel. (Hey we've all been there.)
But not sure she accomplished it. (Seen it done better elsewhere in fan fic, actually.)

Warning: Went into a side rant on people criticizing novels as being like fic, which you may or may not want to skip over. I've decided some self-published or fan-fics are better written than the published ones because evil marketing people haven't tinkered with the content. ;-)

(Hey we've all been there.)

Hell, when I dip my toe back into fic, I still do!

What Are You Reading Wednesday

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Wicked Intentions - review

Re: Wicked Intentions - review