Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Some Fiction Recommendations

Before I go on about this, I'd like to note that I think Paul would love Crusie's "Faking It"...but most of this is unabashedly chick-stuff. :p

I thought I might share the results of my, ahem, research into romance fiction. As you are all aware, some of it is wonderful and some of it is dreadful. Taking my hint from the RITAs, the annual awards of the Romance Writers of America, I have some authors to recommend. I'm bothering because I keep noting as I read how like certain authors' styles some of your fanfic is. Makes me wonder....

Recently read:

Nancy Butler--Prospero's Daughter won the RITA for best Regency. So that was what I picked up first. Her plotting isn't overly complex, but she has a way of bringing normal-fallible people, some with injuries or disease into her fiction and I find it wonderful. After all, nobody needs Mary Sues running around. I'm working down her catalogue and I'd actually recommend that you start with The Discarded Duke (2002 Signet). But all of it is high quality, fairly true to Regency period (not a lot of detail) and in character. It reminds me of Yvonne's writing...except, in truth, Yvonne is even better.

Kathleen Givens--Rita winner this year for long historical, I wonder if she and LabRat are related. This is the stuff that Wendy loves to read and Lynn and LabRat love to write. Angsty and painful and full of difficult choices all set in 17th century Scottish Highlands when loyalty to Scotland or England was a really really big decision. Givens is an American so I'm curious to see how LabRat feels about her language choices. I recommend Kilgannon and The Wild Rose of Kilgannon even before The Legend and The Destiny.

Madeline Hunter--My personal favorite Regency author---and she just started!!!! Her original works were 14th century. But she has a Regency series that is the best ever. I think that's because she's an Art History professor and knows how to do research. She has a new one coming out at this months' end...but, for anyone who likes really well written historical romance wherein the heroine stays strong but also in period with the book, this is your author. The Seducer, The Saint, The Charmer, The Sinner and the new The Romantic are fabulous. (So's the other series)

Jennifer Crusie--Our lady of chick lit is a professor and probably the best seminar-leader/lecturer in writing on the circuit. She's CC's humor combined with chick-lit subjects. Don't ask questions, just read ALL of it. The latest was a take on fairy tales called "Bet Me". But the best of her ouvre (did I spell that right?) is Welcome to Temptation and Faking It. (You don't have to read WTT to "get" Faking It, but it helps.)

As a last comment, I can't help but feel that Nora Roberts is overrated and dreadful. What have I missed? Somebody enlighten me....or is she simply the most prolific?

Comments anyone?

Sherry

Almost forgot...for the "literature" junkies among you....Jasper Fforde has a series of Thursday Next novels (that's his heroine), starting with the Eyre Affair and, most recently, Something Rotten.

If you are well-read in the classics, you will howl at the idea of performing Richard III ala Rocky Horror and conducting "rage management counseling" inside of Wuthering Heights.

He's a cross between Douglas Adams and Dashiell Hammett. The stuff is a riot!

Sherry

Sounds like you and I might share some tastes in reading matter, Sherry! I have also read some of Nancy Butler's work, and enjoyed it.

You've intrigued me, too - I must get around to trying Madeline Hunter some time. I'd heard that she was writing Regencies, but with so much going on in my life over the last six months or so (and such a huge TBR - that's To Be Read - pile) I haven't had a chance.

I'm right there with you on the overrated and dreadful. Same with Catherine Coulter, whose historicals sell in the millions, but she (a) can't write without making endless grammatical errors; (b) has a very simplistic style, with lots of repetition; (c) has a poor grasp on context, meaning that her books are full of anachronisms - characters behaving in a way they would not have in the time-period, dialogue which is so out of place it makes me wince (including Americanisms out of the mouths of members of the English aristocracy ) and so on; (d) uses silly and unbelievable plot contrivances. I've only ever read two of her books. In one of them, a minor character did secret intelligence work for the government. He promptly announced this to the heroine, a woman he'd only just met!

(Mind you, Coulter is not alone in getting historical details wrong. I recently read a Regency in which the hero had 'biscuits' (the implication was of American-style hot biscuits) for breakfast! )

Sherry, if you enjoy angsty plots which have rather more to them than your average frothy romance, then try some of Mary Jo Putney's earlier work (I really don't much care for what she's been writing lately). In The Rake, the hero is an alcoholic, and his fight against addiction is painful and gripping. In Thunder and Roses, the hero is tormented by a painful past. Mary Balogh, too, writes excellent, well-researched regencies, well up to the high standards I demand of my reading matter. And, if you can get hold of them, I strongly recommend Jean Ross Ewing - mostly for Illusion, though the sequel, Flowers Under Ice, is also very enjoyable.

If you're interested, you can get a better idea of my reading tastes here


Wendy

Oh. My. Goodness. Wendy, your reviews are possibly more entertaining than the books!!! I'm ROFL and I can't wait to get through all gazillion pages of your reviews. I can 'hear' your voice so clearly that I'm beside myself with amusement.

Yes, go get Hunter immediately. You will be rewarded.

Sherry

Absolutely! I always tell her that.

I'm particularly fond of the "one star" ones. Simply hilarious!

Thank you, Sherry! El, you know that appreciation of my Amazon reviews is always welcome. Especially when one or two 'helpful' votes might just happen to accompany it...


Wendy

Even if you're not particularly well-read in the classics <g>, Jasper Fforde's books are hysterical. I'm sure some of the jokes are going over my head, but the ones I catch are both hilarious and clever. I must admit I liked the first one, The Eyre Affair , best, but the later ones are fun too. I second the recommendation!

Kaylle

Oooooooh, although Romantic Fiction per se isn't my most favourite genre, I'm a sucker for this stuff. Thanks for the tip, Sherry. Adding them to my 'to be checked out' list.


LabRat

I'm going to attempt a hit and run comment here because my 80 year old mother both fractured her pelvic bone AND got a pacemaker this last week and I'm only home for a flying visit but I simply can't resist this thread. She doing great by the way but with both parents being elderly we're trying to keep someone with them all the time this first week or so as she begins to get back on her feet. So, sorry in advance I pop in and out of the discussion.

Anyway back on topic:

I'm not sure if she's the most prolific but she's probably in the top ten of the "current" list that would qualify and most of those started out as series/category romance authors, which accounts for a lot of the way their writing styles developed. That's neither a put-down nor a compliment but rather an acknowledgement that the most successful long-term series authors learn to be both efficient with words as well as prolific with them. It works better for some than others. (Crusie started in series and still does some, I think, although she's no where close to being in Robert's league in terms of quantity of books produced.)

Personally, of the romance authors that fall into that extremely productive & seemingly endless backlist category, I much prefer Jayne Ann Krentz (AKA Amanda Quick & Jayne Castle most notably) to Nora Roberts (AKA J.D. Robb). There's a certain smoothness to Krentz's writing while she's immersing the reader in romance symbolism that covers a multitude of sins. And I've always adored her quirky, many times strangely unorthodox and atypical characters. By contrast, Robert's characters have always struck me as extremely stereotypical in a bad way and her plots seem, I don't know, just awkward to me. My daughter, OTOH, adores Robert's IN DEATH romantic suspense series under the Robb pseudonym and considers them her all-time favorite books. So, go figure.

The really interesting thing to me is that while neither Roberts nor Krentz have won that many awards - if any? - they are absolutely consistently popular with readers over a wide variety of sub-genres. They've each written historicals, contemporaries, and futuristics, many with paranormal/fantasy and/or mystery/suspense elements. We're talking about the ability to dip their toes into a very mixed bag of types of books within and without the romance genre itself and still consistently deliver satisfying reads for the most part.

Something is working for them.

Beverly:

While I haven't read lots of Krentz, I think I agree here. She's just a better writer. (And you would know good writing, based upon the fact that "In the Beginning" is one of my all time FAVORITE fanfics.) Nora is successful commercially, but she's not that good a writer (technically). I, too, find her stuff repetitive. I find it amusing that her reissued novella anthologies are actually testimony to her lack of originality. But what do I know either?

What I *am* glad of is that Cruisie is seeing the commercial success that she deserves.

Sherry

As a matter of fact, I was in attendance this summer when Ms. Roberts won the RITA award not once, but twice. She won Best Romantic Suspense for REMEMBER WHEN, which is written in two parts -- the first as Nora Roberts and the second as JD Robb -- and she also won Best Contemporary Single Title for BIRTHRIGHT. I have both books in my TBR pile. Heaven only knows when I'll get to them.

Among my favorite romantic suspense authors is Linda Howard. She began her career writing category romance but has since branched out into the single title field and her books always grace the NY Times bestseller list. They run the gamut of emotion. I'd be hard pressed to name my favorite, but if you put a gun to my head, it would probably be DYING TO PLEASE with MISTER PERFECT running a close second.

If you like quirky-funny, try Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. There are ten books in the series so far. I'm a Morelli cupcake. What about you?

I don't much like historical novels so I'll have to pass on your other suggestions. Jennie Crusie is on my list of new authors to try. Her latest, BET ME, sounds good.

It does seem as if Nora Roberts has to be the most prolific writer out there. I've never managed to read one of her books in its entirety - I imagine I just haven't selected the right one yet. But I figure she must have something pretty special to maintain the level of readership that she has. She's always showing up on the NYT Bestseller list - an accompishment to be sure.

I've recently discovered the books of Suzanne Brockmann. I never liked contemporary romance fiction until I started reading her Navy SEALs books. And now I'm totally hooked! Just ask CC and Lab - I've been preaching to everyone how great they are <g>. I think she manages the perfect balance of a-plot and romance and her heroes and heroines all ring very true for me. I've really been enjoying trolling through her backlist and am looking forward to her new release this December.

As for Jennifer Cruisie, I have "Bet Me" sitting on the top of my TBR pile. She comes highly recommended, so I'm looking forward to reading it.

Lynn

I just picked up a copy of PRINCE JOE by Brockmann for $1 at a thrift store. It's the first of her Tall, Dark and Dangerous series and so far, so good. She head hops a little in this book and I tend to be a POV purist so it bothers me. But maybe her style has changed since she wrote this in 1996. I got this because it was mentioned in a workshop I attended this summer (though for the life of me, I can't remember in what context ). I'm sure when I get to "that" section of the book, I'll remember.

Marilyn, I started reading Brockmann's "Troubleshooters" books, which are one-off titles. I loved them so much I plowed through them. Now I'm going back and reading her series of "Tall, Dark and Dangerous" books that she did for Silhouette Intimate Moments. Currently they are being re-released as one-off titles by Mira, so the "oldest" ones are now "current" on Border's and Barnes and Noble bookshelves and through Amazon. It is really really hard to find the old ones that haven't been re-released yet (everything written after "Harvard's Education") because they seem to be keepers. The book "Get Lucky" is nearly impossible to find - it was IMO the best I've read so far and the cover was something of an industry joke because it was so horrendous.

I agree with you about the head-hopping. I'm not a POV purist by any degree although I do prefer one POV within a single scene (unless it's a love scene, because then I like the give-and-take/action-reaction flow). So it didn't detract too much for me from the stories even though I wish she'd done it differently.

One good thing is that I've found that she does this head-hopping in her series books but not in her one-off titles. If it really annoys you, you might want to try those instead. "The Unsung Hero" is the first title in the series, but they can most definitely be read out of order. I like the build-up of backstory that happens by reading them in order. Even so, my favorite title wasn't her first but rather the fourth book in the line. I liked all of them, though, reading them into the wee hours <g>.

Also, the one thing I like better about her one-off titles is the fact that she is free-er to use realistic language. She does much better creating real characters when her big macho Navy SEALs are allowed to use a few select four-letter words.

Lynn

Wendy, thank you for the link to your reviews! Yes, they are excellent, well written, and entertaining, especially the one-stars.

Uh, that kind of sounds like LnC after they got engaged. Think the author was an advisor to the show?

~Toc