When He Was Interesting

When He Was Wicked, by Julia Quinn

I don't have many standards for romance novels; I'll read just about anything, as long as it isn't too self-righteous and there's some semblance of actual feeling.

That said, Julia Quinn's creations are usually divine: well written, emotionally satisfying, and, more often than not, pretty damn amusing.

However ...

It was probably inevitable that she should feel compelled to write at least one fairly tortured romance. You really can't write in today's market unless you include in your repertoire at least one soul-wrenching couple whose happy ending comes at the expense of tears, humiliation, drunkenness, and at least one tragic death.

The sad part is that it's clearly not her forte. When He Was Wicked is admittedly fairly superior, as tortured romances go. The unrequited-love factor is worth more than a few lurches of the stomach (my personal, slightly weird marker of affective emotional character identification in romances). And the nice thing about killing off the first husband is that your heroine is now a widow, and you can skip the nervous-virgin sex and go straight to hot-widow-dominatrix sex -- nothing too terribly kinky, but still respectably scorching. Plus, the events of this novel overlap the events of Romancing Mr. Bridgerton in a rather delightful and innovative manner -- innovation in a romance novel being usually welcome and refreshing.

And then -- and then ... and then the ending happens. Our hero, sick and staggering, overhears our heroine's confession of love for him as she's relating it to the tombstone of her dead first husband. And all that hot-widow sex isn't enough to even begin to melt the overwhelming ton of saccharine that is dumped upon the reader. If there's a more honestly repellant scene in all of Julia Quinn's other work, I will happily erase every story languishing half-finished on the hard drive of this, my laptop. It's no idle threat, I assure you.

So much respectable plot and build-up, wasted. It's enough to make me consider not reading the next one.

Fortunately for Ms. Quinn, I -- as no doubt are other disappointed readers -- am loyal.