Anyone Got A Good Historical?

Many of you know that I hate giving up on a book, even if it’s a bad book. I will almost always struggle through something once I’ve begun it. In fact, I only gave up on two novels last year, and I think I will go back to one of them, because I think it’s important to learn to appreciate Kafka. (The other one was a wallbanging contemporary romance, and it sucked so much that I won’t even give it away, thereby preventing its awfulness from being inflicted upon another unsuspecting individual.)

Well, we’re four books into the year so far and I’ve got another wallbanger on my hands. This one is a historical romance. Now, I love a good historical romance, and frankly, the more bodice-ripping it is, the better. I cut my romance-reading teeth on Johanna Lindsays and Amanda Quicks and Jennifer Blakes. And I can suspend a lot of disbelief when it comes to historical romances. The usual historical-accuracy claptrap doesn’t bug me in the least. I can accept that the heroine is the one chick in town who knows how to read. I can buy that the guys all have perfect teeth and good grooming habits. I will look the other way when it comes to progressive opinions about slavery and servitude and other social issues. I’ll even buy that the silly chit has some romantic fancy in her head that makes her want to marry for love.

Unless that hasn’t been her character throughout the whole book!

So, to protect the not so innocent, I’m not going to discuss the details of the current wallbanger. Instead I will discuss another book that had this same problem. Last year, one of my favorite books was The Companion, a regency vampire novel by Susan Squires. Now, with the understanding that this was one of my top five books read last year, let us discuss the ten pages of the novel that drove me absolutely batty and which are remarkably similar to this other, less-than remarkable novel I’m reading now. (Avoid if you don’t want to be spoiled.)

So the heroine of The Companion is a half-English, half-Egyptian daughter of an archaeologist who has spent her whole life doing the dig thing, a bit like Rachel Weisz’s character in The Mummy. She is characterized as an almost painfully practical and pragmatic individual. In fact, at the book’s opening, she is unsuccessfully attempting to propose an in-name marriage to her deceased father’s business partner, a gay Frenchman more than twice her age, because such an arrangement would allow her to stay in Egypt and continue her archaeological duties. Alas, he turns her down. Things get worse for the poor dear when she arrives in England (where she is considered an ugly, too-tan Arabic bookwormy nerd) and learns that her father invested her inheritance in his last unsuccessful dig, and that she will have to swiftly wed someone in England or risk the streets.

Being painfully pragmatic, and mourning the fact that she will never return to Egypt or her beloved archaeology work, she tries to win the hand of any old codger with a living who doesn’t completely disgust her, because, hey, girl’s gotta eat. So far, I’m with her. Life sucks when you have no money and you aren’t allowed to do the one thing in life you’re trained for. Unfortunately, no one wants to marry her boring, bookish, too-tan ass, so she decides to hire herself out as a lady’s companion or governess, because, it’s respectable work, and hey, girl’s gotta eat.

Re-enter the hero (I say “re” because the two of them shared quite the intimate little sea voyage, during which he thrilled her mind with chess, her body with his abject hotness, and her sense of adventure with his nifty ability to behead pirates with his bare hands). He’s decided to go back to Egypt for a variety of very important vampy reasons, sees that she’s in dire straits, is as attracted to her as she is to him, and thinks he likes her just fine. So he proposes, saying that if she marries him, he’ll make her rich, take her back to Egypt, and let her plan an enormous archaeology project.

Now, this painfully pragmatic heroine, who is totally in love with Egypt, more than a little fascinated with the hero, previously willing to marry gay men who could be her grandfathers in order to get back to archaeology work, and who has nothing going for her in England aside from a dreary life addressing correspondence for doddering old dowagers in Dover — what does she say?

She says no, because it will be a loveless marriage.

WTF? Seriously. W. T. F??!??!?!?! I actually went back and re-read those ten pages where she whines about how awful it would be to be in this loveless marriage with Mr. Hotty McHotVamp, living the high life, in Egypt, digging for lost cities, because I couldn’t believe she was saying that. So, loveless marriage to strange old coot is fine, but loveless marriage to hot sexy guy who is making your dreams come true is not? Bitch, please.

Not only did it seem very unlike the heroine, but it also seemed very unlike the kind of powerful feminist characters that Squires is wont to write. As soon as those pages were over, she promptly drops those worries and instead brings up her more pragmatic concerns like — what happens when she gets old and he stays young? And can her turn her into a vamp? And will he want to drink her blood? And will her kids be vamps? Now, those questions make sense to me, and they fit in perfectly with her character, to want them answered before she enters into any kind of arrangement with him. The love crap? Not so much.

I finally decided that those ten pages were an aberration, some sort of random romance trope that her editor forced her to stick in the book, and continued on my merry way with the novel, the other 390 pages of which were pure genius and I love them and they were brilliant and romantic and compelling and fabulous.

However, this book that I’m reading now? Same frickin’ thing! You’ve got this heroine who is willing to do all manner of truly scandalous, truly terrifying, and truly dangerous things — some of which may destroy her life or end it — in order to achieve her goal, but when the guy she has the hots for (and this one doesn’t even has as many red flags as Mr. Hotty McHotVamp) offers to make all of her wishes come true is she just agrees to marry him and let him make her happy forevermore — well, then she starts throwing around the L word like she cares, or like being trapped in a loveless marriage with a rich, nice, hot guy determined to make you happy, give you multiple orgasms, and otherwise make sure your life rocks is in any way, shape, or form the worst fate imaginable. Worse than selling yourself at some deranged Victorian bachelor auction or wedding yourself to the sniveling lordling who has raped every scullery maid in the keep or locked yourself away in a shack on the moors and subsisted on turnips while sewing lovely little scarlett A’s on all of your frocks…

I. Don’t. Get. It. Are we romance readers forced to put up with this illogical crap just because it’s romantic for the heroine to only want to marry the hero for love? Like, she can marry anyone else for whatever reason, but if it’s a guy she can actually fall for, she has to love him first?

I loved The Companion despite those ten odd pages, because they happened pretty late in the book, and I was already more than in love with it enough by then to overlook its one blemish. I don’t love this book as much, and I’m not far enough into it to overlook this crap, especially since it doesn’t appear to be some ten page offhand comment, but rather a major driving force in the book. Look, princess, you’re steering awfully close to the TSTL Island, and I’m beginning to wonder what your hero sees in you. Marry the damn guy, achieve your goal, and count your lucky stars that you caught a man with wealth, good looks, power, all of his teeth, good grooming habits, and the desire to give you multiple orgasms and whatever else your foolish little lovelorn heart desires. Most people in your time period were not that lucky. Shit, most people in ANY time period are not that lucky.

So, should I ditch this book or keep reading? And does anyone want to recommend to me a good historical to wash the taste of this one out of my mouth?