This was delightful. I haven’t read a Heyer novel in a month and maybe I missed her, but this is one of my favourite of her novels.

This classic Heyer: most eligible yet indifferent dandy bachelor gets enthralled with an innocent yet headstrong girl. I noticed that with this novel that sometimes I find the men in Heyer’s romances younger than their years and the girls somewhat older so it equals out. In her books, a lot of the rich men are encouraged to be spoilt boys. But they are still gentleman, otherwise they would be poor romantic leads.

Arabella is a lovely protagonist. While innocent and not the most cosmpolitan, she is a good daughter, sister, and a kind person. Also, she is mischevious just enough without being annoying. The fact that her lie was preposterous, but I liked it. She really makes up for it by being one of the few heroines actually to consider social justice and charity. She is flawed, but not overly. She definitely puts Mr Robert Beaumarais in his place.

There is aspects of Pride and Prejdudice in this work, and careful readers of Austen will notice the allusions. Mr Beaumarais is a bit of a Darcy. All handsome, proud, stylish and hiding his good heart beneath it. There are some really nice scenes with him and his dog Ulysses. The extent in which he draws to draw out Arabella is fun to read.

The only thing annoying about the book was Arabella’s brother Bertram. Often times, Heyer heroines have rather silly and not the most helpful brothers.

This was one of those few Heyer books where I love the hero and heroine equally. Usually, I favour one slightly more (or grossly more in some cases) over the other. The only other time I found this was Sylvester which was even more like P&P. I think the merit is that Heyer is able to balance out the time she spent developing both characters. She focused more on Arabella and her lively family in the first half and shifts the focus to Robert in the second half. Not many authors can really balance such nice character development equally, but when is at her best, she makes it look easy.

I would reread this novel. It was sweet and fun. I even laughed out loud once or twice which is not a common occurence for me. A good, light romantic read.

Read September 3rd-4th 2012.

My review of Fifty Shades of Grey is here. While I found that barely tolerable, I found the two books below awful.

Fifty Shades Darker

In fandoms, there is a type of fanfiction called PWP or Porn Without Plot. Alot of this trilogy is basically that. Not much plot, character development, but there is a lot of sex. Surprisingly, I found the constant sexual scenes rather boring halfway through the book.

The beginning of the book quickly resolves the cliffhanger from the first part. All of this second book happens in one week. I don’t know why the author does not spread anything out, but it makes this novel unbelievable. It’s utter fantasy. I was glad when I finished it because I was actually quite bored for most of it.

I still disliked the murmuring, the glaring Britichisms (the use of rude alone), and Ana’s inner goddess and subconscious. Actually, I couldn’t really stand Ana by the end of the novel; she became another Bella Swan. I found her not three dimensional enough. She is too goody goody and implausible as a real character. It wasn’t believable or relatable. She only ever thinks about Christian and that’s it. It’s also unbelievable what happens to her over the course of one week. Predictable novel stuff, but ridiculous.

Also, Ana is dumb. She is not a smart cookie. She constantly asks questions to her own head. She’s slow and emotionally immature. Not as much as Christian, but enough.

All the characters are black and white except for Christian and even he got schmoopy in this novel. He did get some character development, but he was very mushy by the end of it. It was saccharine and frankly, tedious to read them just have sex every ten pages.

This is why I don’t like traditional romance novels where it’s all “I need you’s” and “I love you’s” and blah blah. I sound unromantic, and that’s not the case. I like romances which are more complex and real, which involve more than just two people declaring their love for each other constantly. I prefer ones where both partners grow, develop, love one another against all odds, but without being ‘us against the world’. Hey, it’s great if you have an all consuming love, but your life is more than that.

Ugh, I don’t look forward to the third book because I saw the ending of this one a continent away. In any case, it’s short (Edit: It wasn’t short since I didn’t see the page count) and it’ll be over soon.

Read on my Kindle August 27-28th 2012.

Fifty Shades Freed

So my masochism continues. I found Ana really boring and stupid in this novel. The girl has no major hobbies and very few goals.She spends almost every single thought about Christian. Also for a woman who is an editor, was an English major and as per Christian “most well read woman I know”, Ana doesn’t really have a great vocabulary or diction.

This book was so boring that I avoided reading it on my downtime at work. Usually, I love to read when I can find the time, but this… MEH!

The sex scenes were very redundant. Why oh why did she not get an American to edit this?

I notice that Christian gets his way a lot. They solved 90% of their problems through the same rehashed up sex scenes. They were overdependent on each other.

It was predictable because Ana continue to be stupid. I did genuinely like her for a moment when they had their first real fight. Then I lost respect for her when she saved the day. Sigh, as predicted.

I saw all the plot twists. I generally see a lot of plot twists in movies or books, but that’s fine because sometimes, you have fun along the ride. But for this book, it was not fun. It was mind-blowingly tedious.

I’m glad to be done! I should have stopped after the first book, but now I can laugh about the fact I read books two and three.

Read on my Kindle August 28th-September 1st 2012.

It is clear I am not a fan of these books. I have nothing against people who think the opposite. This was not the worse thing I have ever read, but it was a long journey of boredom for me. I don’t hate it, but I struggled towards the end. It also offers a poor view of people with fetishes, kinks, and girls who are English majors. Do I recommend this? No, but if you want to laugh and see why this book is the fastest paperback bestseller of all kind? Go right ahead. Just try not to buy it and get it from the library or a friend or something. I find it sad that a woman is going to the bank on this work. Also, I will probably watch the movie with morbid curiosity and also laugh.

Here are some other reviews of the trilogy which made me laugh:

Fifty Shades of Bad Writing
Jen Reads Fifty Shades of Grey

From The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle to Fifty Shades of Grey. Well, people can’t accuse me of not having eclectic taste in books.

I got these books on Kindle some time ago right when it was getting a bit of buzz. I didn’t even know what they were about other than vaguely it was romance. Two of my best girlfriends read it, and both of them got into it. The more popular the books became, the more I saw the necessity of reading it. I am always fascinated by certain bestsellers

A couple months ago, I randomly read a chapter of this book, and I was put off by the bad writing. This book was in serious need of an editor’s touch or rather, a severe dress down. Last week, one of my friends told me to look at the hilarious Amazon.com reviews of the book, and I finally buckled and read the book. One of the reviews on Amazon pointed out the bad writing and the author’s repetitive use of words.

The following words made me roll my eyes ad nauseaum (and Grey can come on over to punish me for it): murmuring (don’t these people know how to talk?!), muttering, control, control freak, hot as a synonym to describe Grey, the Briticisms (which would be fine if any of these characters were actually British), and many other small things. For example, why didn’t Ana have a computer? I don’t know any person who went to university/college in the last five to ten years to not have a personal computer. How can two high GPA college girls share one laptop?

Ana’s vocabulary also ranges from preteen to decent adult. It is inconsistent for an English major. I also did not like references to Ana’s subconscious and inner goddess. It was amusing the first couple of times, but grew increasingly juvenile.

I have read a lot of fanfiction spanning several fandoms over the years. The novel reads like fanfiction. Not surprising since it was originally a piece of Twilight fanfic. It still feels like it though. It’s unpolished and it feels indulgent. Even the comparisons to Tess of the D’Urbervilles is half-hearted. It’s a lot of sex, but not a lot of character development or much of anything.

Ana is slightly better than Bella (the reason I dislike Twilight the most), and there some moments early on when I even related to Ana. As the novel progressed, I became more and more indifferent to her due to the inconsistencies and the feeling that she wasn’t all that well developed.

I admit that Christian Grey is different and much better than Edward Cullen, but like Cullen, he feels more like a product of women’s fantasies than an actual man. Not to say that good looking, wealthy, kinky young men don’t exist, but they are hard to come by especially the way Grey is. I think the reason that this book is so popular, aside from the sex scenes, is that Grey is one of the best fictional sex symbols I’ve read in a long time. The author makes him mysterious, sexy, charismatic, cold, playful, bad, passionate, communicative, intelligent, severe, attentive, strong, beautiful, distant, warm and it goes on. He has traits enough for most women’s fantasies and traits for the ideal romantic man. He is both repressed emotionally and sexually expressive. He is wealthy, cold, and distant, but needy and in lust enough for the heroine (who is the reader’s stand in). I have to say the author did a good job of making a character that so many women desire. On the other hand, it sometimes feels that Grey is a vacuum as a result and not a real character. He is made to be a perfect man even with his flaws; his flaws are what make him so appealing to many women. There just isn’t enough character development in this first part. I will give credit where credit is due; it’s not often an author creates a character that affect the admiration of so many women.

I won’t say I love this book, but I finished it quickly enough both because of the vocabulary, the content, and there is a certain addictive quality. I am rather disheartened to think that such a mediocre piece of writing is making this much money. Ahh well, the mass wants what the masses want. Anyway, onto the sequel.

Read on my Kindle August 25-27th 2012.