LynneC’s review of  A Dark Sicilian Secret by Jane Porter and Bound to the Greek by Kate Hewitt
Contemporary Romances published by Mills and Boon Modern 1 May 22 and 1 Jan 11

The next two books I read have similar themes, but while one works for me, the other doesn’t.

So for the failure first, Jane Porter’s A Dark Sicilian Secret. This is a DNF. I hate those, I feel as if I’ve paid for nothing, so I do try to read the books I get.

The heroine in this one drives me crazy. Let me explain. She meets Vittorio, who she calls Vitt, falls for him, sleeps with him and gets pregnant with his baby. Unknown to him, she’s been involved with criminal elements before, and she knows how to change her identity and run. So when she gets pregnant, she runs. Turns into a blonde, changes her eye color with contacts, changes her name. Vitt has no problem with that. Although his family was mafia in the old days, they’ve been going straight for a while and they have a chain of successful hotels and resorts (what is it with the Modern/Presents line and hotels?) From the beginning Vitt knows where she is. He’s provided her with a job and safe haven. She has his child and he wants it back.

First, how stupid is the heroine? She’s used to hiding, and yet she’s offered a great job, a nice place to live and a babysitter on a plate? I just don’t buy it. Either she’s savvy or she’s not. The heroine of this book is as innocent as a newborn babe. She’s told by an 18-year-old chambermaid that her husband is mafia, she looks him up on the net, doesn’t realize that several people in his family bear the same name and jumps to the wrong conclusion? What world are we in?

And when Vitt finds her, he’s the typical alpha jerk. He takes over her life, without compunction, and she folds. Just collapses. By this stage I’m thinking that they deserve each other, and I realize that I don’t care about either of them, except that they keep each other off the streets. So I gave up.

My other problem with this book is in the style. There are an irritating plethora of tags. Speech tags (“She said,” “she thought,” “she reasoned”) all those. They are usually attached to a speech when the author can think of nothing else to do. They are liberally sprinkled into every conversation, every thought, so we are constantly reminded, even when we don’t need it, of what they thought and said. Some sentences are just plain clumsy and don’t say what they’re supposed to say.

Vitt takes over. While I can’t really blame him, he’s unnecessarily cruel to the poor, brain-dead heroine, so although I started the story fully in sympathy with him, I ended it exasperated with them both. I gave up because I honestly didn’t care what happened to either of them. I couldn’t possibly  begin to empathize with the heroine. She’s been running all her life, changing her style, her hair color, her eye color, so by the time Vitt catches up with her, I never got a handle on who she is or what she looks like. Once the author loses that, she loses a reader. She certainly lost me.

So to the next book, Kate Hewitt’s Bound to the Greek.

Jace meets Eleanor after several years apart. When Ellie announced to Jace that she was pregnant with his child, he walked out, because he knew he was infertile after a teenage bout of mumps. Misunderstandings, secret babies, things that I always approach with a touch of wariness. As it happens, the secret baby doen’t make it, and the hero has the big misunderstanding about the heroine.

What makes this different to the Porter? Lots of stuff.

For a start, the protagonists of this story are thinking, reasoning human beings. They are hurt, and they don’t deny it to themselves or to each other. Self-honesty is important when it comes to matters of the heart. The explanation above is all in the first three chapters. The rest of the story is concerned with Jace and Eleanor coming to terms with their past, their present, and deciding mutually if they have a future together.

They behave like grown-ups. That’s a big difference between the Hewitt and the Porter. They think about themselves, their unborn child, and each other and they care enough to try to work things out. Oh, yes, it contains tropes similar enough that the two books can be taken with each other. But the execution and the satisfaction are poles apart. Poles.

I like Eleanor and I understand why she doesn’t want to give herself to Jace all over again. She’d got on with the pregnancy after Jace walked out. She tried to contact him, but after a while it didn’t matter so much. She has her career, she’s built a life after Jace. While she still loves him, she appreciates that she’s still a person without him and she deserves better than the way he treated her.

Jace didn’t try to take over Eleanor’s life. He tries to understand. He uses his privileged position to get her in a place he can talk to her, but he doesn’t jeopardize her job or her life. He just wants answers.

The style is smooth and accomplished and takes you through the story effortlessly. There are no or few jarring sentences and passages. The characters progress smoothly toward their happy ending, and Hewitt helps us to care about them both. This is everything the Porter isn’t—grown-ups coping with a difficult situation to the best of their abilities and they earn their happy ending. I love that there are no instant fairytale answers to their problem, too. They would work it out. At the end of the Hewitt, I believed it and I was rooting for them to succeed.

Grade:  A Dark Sicilian Secret – DNF

Summary:
A Dark Sicilian Secret by Jane Porter:

She can run… Lethally attractive Vittorio d’Severano was everything Jillian Smith wanted – until she discovered his secret life and her dreams of a happyeverafter crumbled into dust… Brokenhearted and terrified, Jill disappeared. But she can’t hide! Now Vitt has returned – to claim the tiny son Jill has sworn to keep from him! But to stay with her child she must put Vitt’s ring on her finger. Yet what kind of relationship can they have when it’s based on secrets…and a heat impossible to resist?

Read an excerpt.

Grade: Bound to the Greek – B+

Summary:

Bound to the Greek by Kate Hewitt

Like a moth to a flame… Greek tycoon Jace Zervas’ legendary control is momentarily shattered when he’s confronted by Eleanor Langley – the flame he extinguished years ago! Gone is the sweet, homely girl; now an ambitious yet alluring New York career woman considers him with steely eyes, a hint of anger, and…surely not?… a touch of longing. Jace doesn’t deal in raw emotions. He hires the ice-queen purely for business. But secluded under the hot Mediterranean sun the real Ellie emerges again – and Jace finds the fire of passion still burns…

Read an excerpt.

Lynne Connolly‘s review of The Sheikh’s Chosen Queen by Jane Porter
Contemporary romance released by Harlequin Presents 1 Apr 08

At last, a title I can remember!  Jane Porter has done some research and describes the scenes, especially one set in Dubai, very well. It does make a difference to the story and helps to set the world in something a little closer to ours than many of the sheikh romances out there. 

Pause for a confession. I love me a good sheikh book. Which is strange, because I don’t in general like European royalty stories. But shiekh’s – it’s all that Ethel M. Dell stuff. Fantasies about tents and oases (I looked it up – betcha didn’t know the plural of oasis before this!) and gorgeous olive-skinned hotties. Oh and we can’t forget the young Omar Sharif and Oded Fehr, can we?

Anyway, the hero of this book, Sharif Fehr (someone else with the same fantasies as me?) fits well into the mold. He’s a conscientious monarch, perhaps more than he should be. He met the heroine, then they broke up, he married someone else and had three girls by her, then he comes to find the heroine. Not as a wife, but a teacher, at least that’s what she thinks.

The heroine, Jesslyn, is a teacher in the United Arab Emirates. She’s American by origin, but she enjoys the challenges of teaching abroad. At the start of the book, he walks into her classroom after she’s closed for the summer and asks her to teach his girls.

The girls do have problems, real ones, and to my mind they were too easily solved. The kind of treatment they were subject to would have left deeper traumas. Their father had little time for them, he was guilty over the death of his wife and busy with his duties, and their grandmother was, well, a bitch.

You do know that from the start, and one of my problems with the book was that I wanted to see her suffer, and she didn’t really get proper punishment for what she did. And all the villainy was down to her, so it got a bit old by the end. A partner in crime would have varied things a tad.

Other problems – the hero was only sketchily drawn. I know HMB prefers to concentrate on the heroine, make it her story, but I’d really like his side, too, sometimes. After all, a romance is between two people and I’d love both sides. I’ve read a lot of HMB Moderns and Silhouette Desires recently where the hero is more like an object, and the heroine, however well drawn, doesn’t make up for the out-of-the-box alpha hero. And how about a blond or two, just for variety?

Jesslyn is a bit of a saint, too much for my taste. She’s a good teacher, she’s practical, she’s, well, pretty much perfect. And a tiny bit bland. By the end, when the hero calls her a miracle, I felt like I’d OD’d on candy.

But the book was well written, with some nice details and the characters did have a few surprises, enough to keep me reading. I’ll look up the next book in the series, presumably about one of Sharif’s brothers, who are mercifully absent but mentioned in this one, but I won’t be waiting with bated breath for it to arrive.

So a B- from me and thanks for a nice, comfortable read.

Grade: B-

Summary:
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She would live by the Sheikh’s rules–as his bride and queen!
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When Jesslyn once knew him in London, Sharif Fehr was a playboy prince–their romance was carefree and fun.
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Now Jesslyn has been summoned to the desert land that Sheikh Sharif rules. The intervening years have proved harsh and cruel and Sharif has grown used to his word being law. No one dares challenge him- except Jesslyn who refuses to take his orders! But for all her sweet insolence, Sharif is sure of one thing: she will obey his ultimate command and submit – to becoming his wife and queen!
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Read an excerpt here.

This just in…

Romance Writers of America’s 28th Annual National Conference is about to kick off in California. Authors, readers, publishers, agents, just to name a few, will be gathering in the city by the bay, San Francisco, starting today, July 30, through Sunday, August 2, at the Marriott Hotel at Union Square.

~ The Annual Conference is a four-day event filled with educational workshops, career enhancement, and community involvement.

~ Wednesday, July 30, is the Literacy Signing where a list of who’s who of authors will be signing books, the proceeds of which will go to ProLiteracy Worldwide. This event is open to the public and is scheduled from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in the Yerba Buena Ballroom.

~ Victoria Alexander will be the Keynote Speaker and Connie Brockway is the speaker for the Awards Lucheon. Suzanne Brockmann wraps up the conference as emcee for the 2008 RITA and Golden Heart Awards Ceremony.

~ Lisa Kleypas, Lisa Jackson, Jayne Ann Krentz, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Barbara Samuel, and Jane Porter will deliver other keynote addresses during the conference.

~ Some interactive news at the conference this year – two radio shows are slated to stream live on the web, featuring some of the very best authors in paranormal romance and historical romance with the Ladies of the Night Blog Talk Radio Show, and you’re encouraged to participate.

~ Wednesday, July 30, 8 – 9 PM PDT, 11 pm – 12 am EDT will be a night of romance and the supernatural, featuring: Jocelyn Drake, Kerrelyn Sparks, Kathryn Smith, Melissa Marr, Terri Garey, Jeaniene Frost and an introduction by Kim Harrison. You can call in and chat at (347) 826-9686 or just listen in. Or you can just listen on the web. Send an email to avoncontest@harpercollins.com if have any questions you’d like answered by one of the authors.

~ There will also be Historical Romance Radio, a discussion of all things historical romance. For any questions, send an email to avoncontest@harpercollins.co.

~ More than 100 workshops are being offered on a variety of subjects from leadership development for authors to choosing new clients for publishers.

~ Career-focused romance writers will be networking with fellow writers and have interaction with editors, agents, publishers, booksellers, and other romance publishing industry professionals.

Consider yourself flashed.