Winter Love by Norah HessMy rating: 1 of 5 stars
*This is a TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion.
A trapper/general store worker is blue collar, right?? No surprise I'm behind in reading and while I had a Nora Roberts picked out for this month's theme, Blue Collar, this Wednesday popped up quicker than I was ready for. So, how about a NoraH Hess instead?
A trapper/general store worker is blue collar, right?? No surprise I'm behind in reading and while I had a Nora Roberts picked out for this month's theme, Blue Collar, this Wednesday popped up quicker than I was ready for. So, how about a NoraH Hess instead?
I was about halfway through this before I decided that I was going to use it for TBRChallenge, so I didn't really take any notes. But don't be too disappointed because this, umm, wasn't great. Not quite have me wildly ranting like the one and only other Hess I have read (Wildfire, mtns in NE?? SERIOUSLY??) but Not Great.
The story is set in a small trading post town in the Upper Michigan in the late 1880s. As a little girl, Laura loses her parents to death (I warned you all I didn't take notes, lol) and gets adopted by the general store owner family, pa Taylor, ma Maria-ishsomething, and son Fletch the wretch (he's way worse than a wretch but I was feeling rhyme-y). Maria(?) is Taylor's second wife but in a romance book turn, she's great! But poor Maria(?) can't completely escape the time period and genre and dies, too. The little family of pa, wretch, and hey, she's no picnic either Laura grow to all love each other. You hear that dun, dun, DUN, don't you? Yes, Laura grows up beautiful and develops feelings for Fletch. I can't remember Fletch's age but he's older than Laura, mentions of gray started to show in his hair and Laura is 17/18ish at this time.
The small-town is full of gossipy gossips and of course a lot of the women hate Laura and a lot of the men want her. Laura's womanly vibes become too much for Fletch and he succumbs to her! They have a romantic night in the barn where Laura wakes up dreamily thinking of marriage but soon realizes Fletch has flown the coop. Fletch in all his wisdom decides to go off with some trappers to Canada for a year to give Laura time to decide if her feelings are real. Does Fletch tell or discuss this with Laura, letting her know that he has feelings for her too? No. Such a better idea to bang and bounce making Laura feel used. Guess what happens? Laura winds up preggos.
Pa Taylor is crushed and angry when sweet little Laura tells him she's pregnant and then won't say who the father is. Laura doesn't want Pa to be mad at Fletch. Guess what happens? Pa marries Laura. Now, don't fly off into pervy hell land like I started to, it's as above board as a situation can be when a pa marries his adopted daughter. The marriage is to protect Laura's good name and give legitimacy to, what turns out to be, her baby daughter.
Guess what happens? Fletch comes back after the year of trapping, all ready to kiss and marry Laura and instead discovers Pa married to Laura. He totally takes it calmly. LOL NO. Fletch flings “whore” and “slut” at Laura whenever he can. When it's obvious that pa and Laura have a marriage in name only, Fletch instead thinks Laura is sleeping around on pa and making him a laughingstock. Fletch is pretty much a dick while still lusting after Laura and then blaming her for his lusting.
Tied in with Laura and Fletch's drama is pa's relationship with Butterfly, a Native woman with a tribe that is nearby. Pa loves her and does eventually end up marrying her but just be aware that while this didn't have the worse depictions of Native Americans, it wasn't the best with some lazy stereotypes.
I called Laura no picnic either because she's that quintessential '90s heroine that is supposed to be feisty and strong but is instead don't cut off your nose to spite your face. She's a stubborn one ol' Laura and refuses to just admit that the baby is Fletch's. When Taylor figures it out, Laura decides to run away at around 75%. Guess what happens? Fletch finds her and loves his little daughter now. Fletch drags Laura back and Laura decides to run again but oh he's a wretch but a smart one! Fletch takes the baby with him stopping Laura from being able to run away. Laura is out of ideas so she decides to just stay and deal with the cheating she anticipates Fletch doing because of course he doesn't love her.
The last ten minutes of the story have Laura giving Fletch a bj and even though I was like “What's happening?” because I guess I'm not a good guesser??, it has been such a dry spell in newer contemporary romance that my pervy side was like, “Don't hate it.” Shrug. The ending was ridiculously abrupt with Fletch asking Laura to marry him and I think he said I love you and Laura doing a 180 deg. and saying Yes! and anticipating their obvious happily ever after.
If you took a drink, let alone a shot, every time the word “whore” was used in this you'd be dead. Fletch was the worst of the alphahole heroes, Laura was overly stubborn for no reason, the marriage of a pa and his adopted daughter was cringe, lazy Native American stereotypes, the sex scenes were more lascivious than emotional, and the ending with it's quick get them together in no way delivered a satisfactory or believable love story between these two. I'll end on a positive note, though. This line from pa was nice: "Laura," he said gently, "you can feel disappointed in yourself that you loved unwisely, but don't be ashamed that you loved."
That line from Pa is lovely, the pearl in the swine muck, as it were.
ReplyDeleteThe second novella in the anthology I read for this month's TBR challenge has a bit of that olk skool feel, with the awful 'hero' being an asshole literally until a couple of paragraphs from the end. There are many things I don't miss about olk skool genre romance--alphaholes being at the top--and one of them is this convention of leaving the resolution almost to the last page.
Ugh, they are so awful and don't even have to work to redeem themselves, give a grovel, or even mediocre apology! This one was so absurd with how quickly it wrapped up. How in the world was I screeching "That's it?!?" when I had been very close to being miserable while reading the previous 97%??
DeleteMaybe that is the true magic of old skool.
How would it be if we could have read them as soon as they came out? Would our experience be different? Sometimes I think this about books published in the 80s and 90s...
ReplyDeleteI mean, there are recent books that follow a very similar pattern/trope. I think a bigger factor for most books is where in their reading journey each reader is. (I say most books because there are some that are beyond redemption from the get)
DeleteWell, it would be different for me since I did read these books in the 90s and definitely didn't find as many problems with them as I do now. But I think it is mostly to do with what Azteclady talks about. I was in my teens then and now almost 40, so internal variables are widely different and with societal changes, external variables are different, too.
DeleteI hope I grow as a reader and person as the years go by. I think of some books I read where I think I was too young to appreciate them, a lot of the romances focused more on long-term marriages and those issues and emotions but I would definitely appreciate them now.
That was I meant. In the 80s I was being born and I was a child and teenager in the 90s. My life experience - almost none - would have been very different, as it was when I was starting to read romance novels in my early 20s.
DeleteBesides, now we can look at some tropes and see past them, whether the story is one we like or not. Were the ideals of readers then, as this was released, judging the tropes or the content or something else the same way we can do now, even putting aside contemporary issues (like less tolerance for certain situations being part of the story for instance). Just wondering about these things sometimes... after all, we can't NOT be who we are and what we have already read... (I should have been a philosopher! lol)
Just wondering about these things sometimes... after all, we can't NOT be who we are and what we have already read... (I should have been a philosopher! lol)
DeleteI think about this all the time!
And yes, you're second calling :)