Trust-Worthy Romance

Trust is an interesting phenomenon. In love or friendship, it's what lets people relax, let down their guards and just enjoy each other for who they are without worrying about being judged, hurt or ridiculed (except in good fun, of course). In romance novels, one or both characters' lack of it is often the main obstacle to a couple's happiness. A lack of trust creates such significant conflict between people that it carries practically the entire genre.

This week has been an interesting one in terms of my reading. I started and finished a book I had no expectation of liking, I finally slogged my way through the remainder of a book I despised (you can see my review here) and I took refuge in a book I knew I would almost certainly enjoy. The first was Nurse Janice Calling, "A Candlelight Romance" from Dell that was published in 1964. I'll have a full review of that for you on Monday since I really enjoyed it, but going in, my trust level of this particular book was low. I've not had a wealth of great experiences with older romances, from the cultural misogyny and sexism displayed in older works and downright rapey sex scenes to unsatisfying resolutions of the primary love story. I was pleased to discover a book that in some ways was more enlightened than even a lot of contemporary romances I've read.

Speaking of unenlightened contemporary romances, the one linked above is a good example of that. I don't want to relive the hell of that book, which is why I've linked my Goodreads review above, but thanks to that book, I now feel the same way about Skye Jordan as I do about Kathleen Woodiwiss, who has been crossed off my list for all time, and Mary Jo Putney, who I put in the "trust but verify" category of authors whose books I have enjoyed, but whose occasional forays into rapey sex make me nervous (Silk and Shadows - h/t to @GrowlyCub for furnishing me with the title). I recall finishing that book, but I haven't picked up a Putney since. I have no problem with rape in romance novels. Men rape women every day. It's just one of those things that I can only forgive from the very rare hero and thereby the very rare writer. Feel free to argue with me about Woodiwiss and Putney, by the way. I'm happy to consider new points of view and information outside my experience.

And then there are the writers I trust implicitly: Laura Kinsale, Cara McKenna and Charlotte Stein. None of these women write "easy" books. There's always a character or a situation or some deep, dark angst in their novels that walks the edge of whatever limits I have as a reader. Midsummer Moon is a bad example of a Laura Kinsale book and one I would never give to a newbie, mostly because it's relatively angst-free, happy and amusing. But I didn't know that going in. Nevertheless, in a week of intense news from the outside world, Kinsale was the first writer I reached for. But when a scary character or borderline sex or profound intensity come up in any of these writers' novels, I don't feel any anxiety about it. I'm secure in the knowledge that I'm in good hands.

I think this is the reason many of us read romance in the first place: the happy ending is guaranteed. No matter if it's unconvincing or presented as "happy for now", we all know what's coming. There's a lack of anxiety in romance--not throughout the stories, which run the gamut of all sorts of emotions--but in the end. As Sonny says in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, "Everything will be all right in the end... if it's not all right then it's not yet the end." We trust that in romance, this will always be true.

Which writers do you trust? Who do you reach for when everything else is crazy?

The Most Broken of all the Broken

The other day, my proclivity for loving really, really broken characters and gleefully watching as an author puts them through the wringer came up in a conversation on Twitter. The context was Jackie Ashenden's Having Her, in which a hero with a schizophrenic mother and a heroine with a struggling business and virginity issues tumble into a fairly surprising relationship for a "best friend's older brother" trope book. Then everything falls apart in a bunch of really bad ways. And it doesn't get better until about 95% of the way through the novel. I adored it.

As much as I would like to say that it's fun for me when both the characters are a mess, what I love is screwed up heroes. My top three heroes ever are 1) the Duke of Jervaulx from Laura Kinsale's Flowers from the Storm, 2) S.T. Maitland from Laura Kinsale's Prince of Midnight and 3) Rob from Cara McKenna's Unbound. For those keeping score, that gives us a three out of three on "avoiding his life," a hero who keeps falling down, a hero who can't actually speak for a good part of the novel and a hero whose profound issues I won't reveal because I know someone who reads this blog hasn't read it yet. Self-possessed, omnipotent alphas these are not.

In romance, this works partly because no matter how much characters screw up, there is redemption and healing in the end. They eventually get their acts together with the help of the heroine and everyone gets their happily ever after. Even the worst put-together people who make the most horrible mistakes in the most fraught situations can still be dreamy objects of someone's affection.

While I appreciate the romance heroes who make everything okay by virtue of their very presence, they're not the ones that get my heart pumping. Mary Balogh does this with Wulfric Bedwyn. Any time he shows up, the reader just knows everything is going to be okay, often with just the lifting of his quizzing glass. And in Grace Burrowes books, I've started referring to certain endings as "Deus ex Moreland" because the Duke, the Duke's heir and their primary investigator/spy all seem to have the power to put to rights any situation a character finds him or herself in, no matter how perilous or scandalous. And to be clear: I'm actually charmed by this. These books make up my favorites for when I just want a little light reading. But charmed is not the same as head over heels in deep obsession.

Oh, and let's make another distinction. I'm not talking about heroes who had a bit of a sad childhood because they were orphans, got bullied in school or had murderous relatives. Or they're afraid of ruining a friendship or because duty calls them elsewhere. Those are pretty standard romance reasons for having trust issues, confidence problems and not flinging themselves headlong into the arms of their heroine. It's the bare minimum for the standard of conflict in a romance novel. There are a lot of great books where these set-ups worked wonderfully, but the fact is, they'll never make my top five.

In the case of Having Her, Vincent Fox actually has his life pretty much together. He has a thriving business, a best friend, a good relationship with his sister (if not his parents) and he's building a home. But he's hit a wall that seems precipitated by his mother's latest  mental health crisis, his sister's move and a business expansion. I think a psychologist would call this an adjustment reaction. And what he uses to bring himself through it is very wrong indeed. His destructive impulses are impressive. I was angry with him for most of the book, which paradoxically is why I liked him so much when he got it together again.

So give me your felonious heroes. Heroes with PTSD. Heroes missing limbs. Suicidal heroes. Heroes with addictions, scars and blindness. Any time you can find a new way to break a hero and then fill the broken place with love, I'm all in.

Speaking of broken heroes, tune in Monday for my review of Patricia Gaffney's Wild at Heart, a story of a "lost man" found in the woods without the ability to speak and the manners of a wolf. See? Broken. I thought it was great.

Is old school synonymous with rapey?

In the seminal modern romance novel The Flame and the Flower, Kathleen Woodiwiss provided the blueprint for the future of the historical romance, at least the Regency ones. But it really wasn’t my kind of book. In fact, I never made it past the first sex scene. Why? Well, let’s just say that it doesn’t conform to contemporary standards of consensual sex. To be blunt, it’s kind of rapey. There are a lot of older historical romances like this and collectively they seem to have acquired the term “old school”. So what do people mean when they say old school? Is it synonymous with rapey?

I’m not using the diminutive here to be be cutesy. Rape is not cute. Ever. I’m using the term “rapey” to signify a particular brand of dubious consent hero-heroine sex that typically takes place early in a novel. I’m sure you’ve read the kind of scene I’m referring to here. The hero and heroine are alone together and the heroine wants a bit of convincing. In the worst ones, the hero takes what he wants without any positive signal from the heroine, and in fact, the hero steamrolls over some definitively negative ones. In the best ones, some form of generally non-verbal agreement from the heroine occurs before penetration.

Now, these scenes don’t bother everyone. Women with normal sexual experiences, histories and appetites have rape fantasies. And these scenes are usually written in such a way that the heroine ultimately receives some sort of reward for allowing the hero’s bad behavior. For the context of the period and the context of the romance genre, there’s an argument for including these books in a romance canon. Before the current raft of interest in and mainstream acceptance of BDSM ethics and norms, the forced seduction concept probably serves the same fantasy role. They still bother me. It’s what has turned me off to significant numbers of historical romances so it’s in my own interest that I ask this question. Because if I see “old school” I want to know if I’m getting into a book I might not enjoy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a little BDSM between consenting adults. Cuffs + flogger + some rough oral + a clever safeword = WIN in my book. Some of my favorite erotic romances have a pretty sharp edge: Willing Victim by Cara McKenna and The Theory of Attraction by Delphine Dryden. They get a little snarly, but at no point is the heroine’s consent ever in doubt.

There does seem to be a certain segment of the romance reviewer population that regards the term “old school” as being synonymous with those 1980s historicals that feature rapey sex. So what do you think? Should we be using these terms synonymously? If not, what are the features of an old school romance?