Tag Archives: Knight-In-Shining-Armor Hero
Mini-Review: Barbara Wallace's CHRISTMAS BABY FOR THE PRINCESS
One of Miss Bates's favourite films is Frank Capra's 1934 It Happened One Night. Barbara Wallace's gently romantic Christmas Baby For the Princess echoes it. Wallace's hero, Manhattan night club owner Max Brown, is a film noir buff. References to Miss Bates's beloved black-and-white films abound, enriching Wallace's romance narrative. Capra's film is not noir, but its themes of class, sex, love, and HEA are certainly of the romance variety. Like One Night's Ellie, Wallace's heroine, Princess Arianna Santoro, has run away from her father, King Carlos IV of the mythical kingdom of Corinthia. Arianna was near-affiancéd to Manolo Tutuola, a Corinthian businessman her father had urged her to date with the hope they would marry. Always conscious of duty, and wanting to make her still-grieving father (after her mother's loss) happy, she did her darndest to work out a relationship with Manolo. But Manolo turned out to be a cheating rat-bastard and now, Arianna is in Manhattan for the time and space to figure out what to do next. She's pregnant with rat-bastard's baby and her flea-bitten hotel doesn't afford her protection, or comfort. Out and about for some air, she finds that "her wallet was missing". "Out of all the gin-joints in all the world," she walks into Max Brown's for help (Miss Bates knows, wrong film, but since we're making vintage film references … ) where the charming maître d', Darius, Max's friend and right-hand man, mistakenly thinks she's answering their help-wanted ad for a waitress. Continue reading →
Barbara Wallace, Category Romance, Christmas Romance, Contemporary Romance, Cross-Class Romance, HEA-Seal-Of-Approval, It-Happened-One-Night Romance, Kisses-Only Romance, Knight-In-Shining-Armor Hero, Manhattan-Set, Mythical Kingdom Setting, Night-Club-Owner Hero, Princess-Heroine	6 Comments
REVIEW: Marion Lennox's SAVING MADDIE'S BABY
Marion Lennox sure knows how to put her heroes and heroines in a dangerous pickle. The last Lennox Miss Bates reviewed had a heroine dangling over a ravine. The hero rode in on an SUV to rescue her. In Lennox's latest, the puerile-ly-titled Saving Maddie's Baby, Dr. Maddie Haddon, eight months pregnant, is trapped in a mine shaft with an injured miner. She went harrying in to help, with no thought to mine collapses or massive baby belly. It would appear that Lennox, at least on the basis of her last two efforts, does love a TSTL heroine, except the heroine acknowledges she's TSTL:
Heroes and heroines don't choose to be brave, Maddie decided. Mostly they have bravery thrust upon them. In her particular case, a heroine was created when vast chunks of rock trapped one doctor in an underground mine, a mine she should never have been near in the first place. This heroine wasn't brave. This heroine was stupid.
And with that rueful opening, Miss Bates had to forgive the TSTL heroine because she was thoroughly engaged in Lennox's re-united-husband-and-wife medical romance.
Australian Setting, Category Romance, Contemporary Romance, Damsel-In-Distress Heroine, Doctor Hero, Doctor Heroine, HEA-Seal-Of-Approval, Kisses-Only Romance, Knight-In-Shining-Armor Hero, Marion Lennox, Medical Romance, Re-United Husband-and-Wife, Small-Town Setting	6 Comments
Review: Jodi Thomas's RUSTLER'S MOON
Jodi Thomas's Rustler's Moon is the third Ransom Canyon romance. Miss Bates liked the first one, Ransom Canyon, and reviewed it with much lauding. In Rustler's Moon, Thomas continues to weave several narrative threads set in the allegorically-named, fictional town of Crossroads, Texas. Thomas recounts four story-lines, some of which end in an HEA, while others are HEA-pending. The main story-line and HEA-concluded romance is the bantering, wooing story of Angie Harold, newly-arrived and sole curator of the Ransom Canyon Museum, and Wilkes Wagner, local rancher and historian. Thomas continues the story of Yancy Grey, ex-con and custodian and protector of the "old folks" living at the Evening Shadows Retirement Community. She also continues the story of Sheriff Dan Brigman's daughter, Lauren, experiencing her first year at Texas Tech and trying to negotiate a relationship with the driven Lucas Reyes. Thomas introduces the character of septuagenarian Carter Mayes, whose memories of cave paintings of stick figures haunt him still sixty years later and bring him to Ransom Canyon in search of them every spring. Alternating story-lines in third-person deep POV, Thomas captures something about small-town romance that many of its writers miss. She creates an authentic sense of community because she doesn't sacrifice her secondary characters to one-dimensionality. It may be she sacrifices all her characters to one-dimensionality – Miss Bates leaves that judgement up to Rustler's Moon's readers.
Category Romance, Closed-Bedroom-Door Romance, Contemporary Romance, Damsel-In-Distress Heroine, HEA-Seal-Of-Approval, Jodi Thomas, Knight-In-Shining-Armor Hero, Museum-Curator Heroine, Rancher Hero, Romantic Suspense, Small-Town Romance, Texas-Set, Women's Fiction	6 Comments