Blah Books

I am reading a much buzzed about romance book from an author everyone seems to be creaming their pants over. By everyone I mean a couple of bloggers whom I visit regularily (when did they become my "everyone" and what does that say about me and how my reading tastes have changed been molded etc., is a topic for another day). Lyrical writing, rhapsodzies one! Fascinating conflict, moans another. Great villian, sighs someone else. A not-Regency setting (it seems to be very important these days to have a non-Regency setting)-so unusual gushes another.

Blah, says I. To everything.

Lyrical writing -seriously, I read romance for lyrical writing?! Noooooo, lyrical writing is something MFA's in Creative Writing take very seriously. So seriously, they produce volumes and volumes of poetry no one, except their mother will ever buy and who knows if she'll ever read it? The problem with lyrical writing is, well, the lyrical writing. I notice the writing and not the characters, or the romance, or the relationship. Turns me off. And in this author's case, I think the reviewer meant abstract, not lyrical. Because I found the writing in this one full of big abstract words and not adding to my picture of the characters at all.

I didn't hate the book. That would take too much energy. I just felt blah about it. Its the kind of book that makes me sooooo glad to not have made a committment to reviewing books on my blog. Because its easy to write about something you love or hate, the emotion makes my fingers fly across my keyboard. But a book which arouses no strong feelings one way or the other -what can I say? Really what can I say? If I was reviewing it, I'd have to be fair. There are good points about it. The villian is really a villian. I've been told this is good, it creates real conflict for the characters. I just felt like going "dum da dum dum" everytime he enters a room. I mean, its a romance people!

How "real" can a villian be in romance? We all know he's going to get his in the end (and I looooove it when the hero kills the villian or has him locked up at Bedlam) because its a romance, so quite honestly, this knowledge on my part neuters the villian's ability to create conflict. I tend to skip over the really villianous parts because I don't read romance to get creeped out or to shiver unpleasantly. So it just seems to me like an awdul lot of work on the part of the author to create a character that everyone knows will never, ever triumph in Romance Land.

So yeah, the villian character is really really bad. So that's good. The writing style didn't appeal to me. The love scenes were tepid and there was a boring little sub plot romance about two uninspiring characters. I skipped those parts. I felt the male character had more potential to be sexy than he was. As did the female charactr. But still, the conflict between those two kept me reading. So as I said, I didn't hate it.

But I didn't love it.

It was Blah.


Read a blah book lately? Care to discuss it or am I asking too much?