I want to try to do something different here. Recently I read two books from the Harlequin Presents/Mills and Boon Modern line. One I really enjoyed and one I thought a complete disaster, but they had similar tropes – Greek tycoon hero, virginal heroine. I’ve enjoyed books from both authors in the past, but these just happened to be at either end of the spectrum and it goes a long way to explain why I read category romance, particularly this line.

Both books use well-worn tropes of the line, but where one was big fat fail, the other did it with humor and some originality. So I’ll try to see how and why this works. And I have to add the caveat here that these are solely my opinions. You might love them, or hate and love them in exactly the opposite way that I do. It sounds far too personal to put it like that, but reading is an intensely personal experience. And I hate to condemn a book and think that I’m stopping someone somewhere from a pleasurable read.

Okay, so breaking the book down into its components, here are the setups of each:

The Shy Bride by Lucy Monroe
1 Jul 10 – Contemporary Romance

Neo Stamos is a workaholic, so his partner and friend, Zephyr, buys him piano lessons in an auction. Every year, ex concert pianist Cassandra Baker offers piano lessons for a charity auction. The lessons are to take place in her home. She usually gets teenagers, whose parents want their children to take lessons with her, but this year she gets Neo.

Cass is a virgin in her late twenties, but she isn’t saving herself, and she hasn’t somehow slipped into virgin-hood. When she was a concert pianist, driven by an ambitious parent, she didn’t have time, and after that period of her life came to a close, she developed agoraphobia. Cass doesn’t go out.

She is attracted to Neo, but she gives him lessons for six weeks before their relationship develops. Neo knows about her condition, there are no Big Misunderstandings, and they begin to admit that they care for each other. When Neo takes her virginity, she gives it willingly and he treats her with care and respect, even though neither of them sees a long-term relationship at this stage. Of course, it develops from there.

Read an excerpt.

His Penniless Beauty by Julia James
1 Jul 10 – Contemporary Romance

Nikos accompanies a young friend to a club and finds that the woman he once loved, Sophie, is working there as a ‘hostess.’ He suspects the worst and is furious.

Sophie has lost all her money, and her father is in an expensive nursing home after a stroke has left him helpless. All her earnings as an assistant in a shoe shop and a hostess go to his fees. When Nikos met her, she was a music student, a protected, loved child, and innocent. Nikos fell in love with her and wanted to marry her, but she rejected him. He thinks she betrayed him.

Nikos doesn’t want the news of Sophie, his ex fiancée, hitting the papers, so he pays her to go out of London while he’s here and he gives her somewhere to stay, a run-down country house.

Sophie does her hello cows, hello sheep! routine and the story develops from there.

Read an excerpt.

The heroes: Nikos (James) is the ruthless tycoon who doesn’t do much work. He has luxury everything. He is totally, completely selfish and uses Sophie without wondering much about her or her circumstances. But it’s Sophie I really disliked.

On the other hand, Neo (Monroe) is a self-made man who is comfortable in his own skin, but knows how to empathize. He is kind to Cass without being condescending,  and he never uses her for his own ends, despite what she wants. He is autocratic, but Cass puts him right when he assumes too much, and he accepts it.

Heroines: Sophie (James) wasn’t a bright heroine. Sometimes this works, but in this case she was just infuriatingly annoying. Mostly by the way she refused to tell Nikos why she wanted the money, leaving him to assume the worst. When he tried to find out, she’d change the subject by bedding him, losing her temper or running away.

Cass (Monroe) was intelligent although naive sexually. She’s well aware of her naiveté, but it doesn’t make her a pushover. She has a penchant for designer clothes, and I was delighted to see that she knew her designers, and even her collections. Considering my previous post about “designer,” none of that applies to Monroe. Cass knows what she wants and is realistic in her expectations. She doesn’t lean on Neo, or expect him to solve all her problems. She thinks things through and doesn’t keep important facts from the man she falls in love with.

Plot: The Monroe was straightforward, and progressed in comfortable, satisfying stages. There is a problem with the paparazzi, which is a nightmare for Cass, so Neo arranges extra security for her. She doesn’t hide her condition or the results of it from him. Although Neo is commitment-shy, he’s honest about this without being hurtful, and makes it clear what he can give Cass and what he cannot.

The James was packed with big misunderstandings, all of them easily solveable, if they just sat down and talked. There was no believable reason why Sophie shouldn’t tel Nikos about her father’s condition and where the money went, and when he believed the worst, she let him. The martyr complex at its worst. My palms itched to slap her. And her sweetness came across as irritating stupidity. I didn’t believe that she could take a job as a hostess and not know that sex was involved, and Nikos’s reaction was brutal and deeply hurtful. Any self-respecting heroine would have kicked him into touch and left him there. He kept jumping to the worst conclusions possible, and we are supposed to believe that he loved her once, and could love her again?

Style: this is a real killer.

The Julia James is told with so many exclamation marks that I wondered if she’d got a big box of them for Christmas and had to use them up before they went out of date. Hundreds of them in this book. The prose is purple to the max, maybe indigo? The best thing I can do is give you a sample from Chapter One of His Penniless Mistress.

Nikos felt emotion cresting through him like a dark, killing anger. Out of nowhere, like a black tide, he felt the urge to wrest Cosmo’s hand from her wrist, tell him to go and find his fun somewhere else! He clamped it down, quelling it by force, slamming down the lid on it as if it were glowing nuclear waste. Sophie Granton was not worth a microgram of emotion—not a moment more of his time. Not then, not now.

His eyes flicked over her one last time. She showed nothing in her eyes now. Nothing after the first shock of recognition. Or was it dismay? He felt the question sting. Yes, he thought with turbid anger, why not dismay? Four years ago she had nearly, so very nearly, succeeded in making a fool of him. Well, she would deceive no one now! He could look at her with impunity. With the only kind of look she deserved. His mouth twisted in contempt as his eyes flicked over her again. She was blanking him, he could see, and his eyes narrowed. There was something about her blankness, her closed, expressionless face, that sent a stab of anger through him. She hadn’t been like that when he’d peeled her off him.

In contrast, the Monroe is written in an easy style that just slips past the senses. I could immerse myself into this book and enter into the dilemmas of Neo and Cass. Descriptions are evocative and immediate, and most of all, believable. A sample from Chapter One of The Shy Bride:

The bell rang a third time just as she swung the door open. Mr. Stamos, who looked even more imposing than he did in his publicity photos, did not appear in the least embarrassed to be caught impatiently ringing it again.

She stared at him, uncertain how to take his arrogance. He didn’t appear to mean anything by it. His expression said he believed it was simply his prerogative to call her by the name he felt suited her, rather than the one she used with the few people she had regular, ongoing communications.

I believe it will be easier to start the lesson if you let me inside.” His voice was tinged with impatience, but he did not frown.

Nevertheless, he made her feel gauche and lacking in manners. “Of course, I…did you want to park your car in the garage?”

He didn’t even bother to glance over his Armani-clad shoulder at the sleek Mercedes resting in her driveway before shaking his head, a single economical movement to each side. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Okay, then. Let’s go inside.” She turned and led the way to the piano room.

It had been the back parlor when the house was first built in the late nineteenth century. Now it served beautifully to house her Fazioli and practically nothing else. There was a single oversized Queen Anne-style armchair for the use of her rare guests, with a tiny round side table, but no other furniture cluttered the room.

She indicated the wide, smooth piano bench, the same exact finish as the Fazioli. “Have a seat.”

He did as she suggested, looking much more relaxed in front of the piano than she would have in his high-rise office.

A few inches over six feet, he was tall for the bench, and yet he did not look awkward there.

His body did not have the lithe grace or, conversely, the extra weight around the middle of most male pianists she knew, but was well-honed and very muscular. His hands were strong, with long but squared fingers bearing the wrong calluses for a pianist or a billionaire, if she were to guess it. His suit was more appropriate for a boardroom than her music room, and yet he did not look ill at ease in the least.

Perhaps the sable-haired, super-rich Adonis simply did not have the awkward gene like normal people.

So there you have it. For sheer readability, realistic characterization and a great read, go for the Monroe. I loved this book and I’m looking forward to reading Zephyr’s story.

On the other hand, although I have enjoyed James’s books in the past, I won’t be revisiting this one in a hurry. The themes are so similar, that it was tempting to compare them and see what worked and what didn’t.

It also helps to explain why I read so many Harlequin Presents. I love romance, and a good romance makes me very happy. A bad one upsets and occasionally annoys me. Sometimes it can just miss, go over the line between enjoyable into TSTL. The James failed for me because it was written in an old-fashioned style that I never enjoyed in the first place, featured characters I didn’t care about, and provided a set-up I couldn’t believe in. The Monroe I bought, despite the presence of a 29-year-old virgin. It worked because the reason was believable and she wasn’t stupid with it. It featured a powerful hero with vulnerabilities, a man you could understand why the heroine fell in love with.

Summaries:

The Shy Bride

Untouched — and bought for $100,000!

Thrust into the limelight, child star Cassandra timidly enchanted audiences night after night…But when her parents died, Cass retreated into her own world — too shy to leave her home. Once a year she shares her musical passion by offering lessons in a charity auction… This year, money talks…the winning bid: $100,000!

Enter: Neo Stamos, arrogant Greek tycoon. He wants Cass with a burning desire, though he knows that, shy and sweet, she will need a gentle awakening… But Neo’s the master of seduction!

His Penniless Beauty

Four years ago, Sophie loved Nikos Kazandros with all her heart. What she didn’t know was that Nikos would take her virginity and then move on..
Now, not knowing where to turn for money, Sophie has taken a job she wouldn’t normally have considered. But on her very first night things go disastrously wrong when she bumps into. Nikos. He’s outraged to see how she’s earning a living and knows he needs to stop her immediately. But the only way to do that is to keep her close and pay for her time..

The Monroe gets a straight A from me, and the James, a D- because I hate giving Fs. Love to know what you thought of the books, especially someone who felt exactly the other way about to me!