Dark Update!

I forgot I finished two books by Deanna Raybourne (or I am going to post this and realize I already wrote about them, and feel like an idiot) in her Lady Julia Grey mystery series a while ago. I read Dark Road to Darjeeling on my way down to D.C. (whoops, and, yep, suddenly this feels familiar - I seem to recall writing something like "D.C.!!! Whoo!!!" It bears repeating though, so: "DC! Whoo!!!), and started Dark Enquiry (the next in the series) in the airport on the way back. Both were fine, and passed the time, and while Lady Julia is a rather annoying character, the secondary characters have a lot of personality - especially her family - and her husband, Nicholas Bisbane, may be a super cheesy character (half gentleman, half Roma, tormented by his dark past and the gift of Sight he eschews - PUH-lease), but he does come across the page as pretty smokin' hot.

However, it wasn't until I was almost finished with the second book that I realized the reason that I was confused by the characters' chronology was that I was getting them, or at least Lady Julia, mixed up with the characters from another series!

So, in the Dark series, set in the Victorian age, Lady Julia's husband is murdered, Nicholas Brisbane is the hot guy from the wrong(ish) side of the tracks who helps her solve the mystery and then they fall in love, as and before they solve more crimes. She's young, smart, has a free mind and a great fortune. He's tall, dark, handsome and dangerous.

In Tasha Alexander's series, the Victorian Lady Emily's husband, who she doesn't know that well as it turns out, dies and she is left a young widow with a keen mind, independent spirit, and independent means. And along the way, of course, she and the "dashing" Colin Hargreaves (smart, respects smart women, not an aristocrat, kind of dangerous and wholly smokin' hot) do some crime (solving).

You can understand my confusion...

But, as I say, they're fun enough books (the Darks, I mean, but both too), and they're very good for things like airport / airplane reading. I would think if I were sick or hung over, too. Familiar but okay characters. Predictable but entertaining plots. Lots of discrete references to sex, but mainly TOTAL clothing porn.

Random trend?

So, now in 2 books I was reading at the same time I've come across the plot device of old-timey English woman is being blackmailed over, or worried about being blackmailed over, her youthful indiscretions and the resulting nude "postcards" getting out after she's married a socially prominent man. Really? Was this that common? Or just tired?

Anyhow, in the one I finished over the weekend, Lady Emily sets things right in the end in A Crimson Warning by Tasha Alexander. I think I am over this series. I checked it out of the library knowing it would just be light fluff, but also knowing this was a weekend where I was going to be in serious need of some light fluff. But...meh. I was just bored a lot, and the writing isn't anything to write home about, so to speak, and the characters are flat and the plot developments predictable. The dashing husband isn't even that exciting. I think it didn't help that I read this shortly after the Sebastian St. Cyr books, and those are actually much better, I think, although still not exactly great literature. They're similar, though, in featuring ahead-of-their-time women who are intellectually curious and strong-willed, but the whole "yes I wear a corset but I am an independent woman hear me roar!" thing can be so overdone so easily. It just felt old here. Wealthy woman who defies expectations of her society alongside a dashing, slightly dangerous man. Smoldering glances and carriages. YAWN.

More books, Pt. 2

Can NOT say the same (see Kate Morton entry, below) for the latest Tasha Alexander "Lady Emily" mystery, Dangerous to Know.  I think I picked up the first book in the series, And Only to Deceive) used or something, cheap paperback for sure, maybe before a trip?  And I enjoyed it; not the most original or brilliant book, but I liked it, and it was fun, in that "independent before her (Victorian) time" genre.  I know I read the second and third ones, but I don't really remember them; I guess they were fine enough, though, because as I recall (and as I could check in this blog, I think - go, online record keeping!) I was kind of itching to get the fourth in the series, Tears of Pearl, when it came out.  Also don't remember much about what I thought of it, except that I knew the next book would be demoted to a lower-anticipation-level.  And now I'm done.  This most recent book was a fine, if workman-like affair, but I'm over it.  Neither the characters nor the plot really held me at all, and while I wouldn't say I will never read another book starring Lady Emily and Colin,  I have no desire to seek the next one out.


The other book I got at the same time, and another entry in a series I've enjoyed in the past, fared better - A Stranger in Mayfair, by Charles Finch.   I liked the other three books in the series; again, nothing super new here, I am sure there is a massive library of Victorian gentleman / amateur detective books, but there are several nicely delineated characters, in addition to the hero, and I appreciated that they were all developed over the course of the series.  My issue with this book is that it was just so f***ing obvious from very early on who the killer was, so it was a little boring as far as the mystery.  And while there were some momentous (and gratifying) events in the main characters' lives, no significant character development.  But it was a fun read - I started it a little before 5:00 a.m. this moring, before going to bed, and then read it on and off (mostly on) throughout the rest of the day, finishing around 4:00 p.m. (it's a slim volume, obviously).  Good for a not hungover, but sleepy, kinda cold, under the covers sort of day.  And no gratuitous sex, thank God, so I may recommend it to my dad - I gave him the first two books to read when I finished them (I had bought them; this one and the last I got from the library.)
And....that's it.  That's what I've been reading the last week and a half or so.  I think - can't think of anything else I might have missed, anyhow.  I've been super busy with work, both jobs, so I imagine that's all of them.