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Sunday, December 7, 2008

A love hate relationship

I've been reading Rosemary Laurey's vampire books. I like them but she's starting to lose me. Too much mystery and suspense. The romance is just a part of the soup. It's like an Agatha Christie with a love story in it. And everyone has a POV from the MC's to the sub characters, the police detective, the villian's comrades and nephew, and the kids. Not just the main (supposedly romantic) characters. They've had very little screen time. Everyone has POV's in the story. *sigh* It's sadly convoluted. Not very tight on the romance at all.

Isn't this just what a lot of people have been complaining about? Companies pushing a book as a romance, when the romance isn't the driving force in the story? It's been marketed as ... Are you sitting down for this?.... A Contemporary! Yep, right on the spine. Zebra Contemporary. The story line itself is Vampires, but there's been an interesting interpretation of a ghoul, and now a shapeshifter. How on earth is that a contemporary?

I have been lost a couple times because of the reference points, thoughts made by the listener rather than the speaker, inside diaologue parts. I read it in spurts. The story is good, very good in fact, but I keep reading waiting for more about the romance and it's not there. Granted this is the fourth in a series (If they weren't good, I wouldn't read a whole series) and an older release - 2006, but not so old that some sense of the book would have been warranted in 2004 when it was purchased by Zebra.

So, I ask you, what happened to Romance? :( Love your British ways Rosemary, but I'm feeling bereft without the romantic weight of the story.

2 comments:

Rosemary Laurey said...

Sorry you were disappointed, Diana, but am glad you enjoyed the series enough to persist :-) Some of the series have 'Paranorrmal Romance' on the spine, some 'Contemporary'. Don't understand it myself :-)
'
My new series, out in 2009, they are marketing as Fantasy.
Rosemary

Diana Castilleja said...

No worries Rosemary. I've enjoyed the books quite a bit, so it's not a huge complaint.

It even caused quite a bit of a discussion with a fellow reader who had read it. I'm a very forgiving reader.

And I totally understand the marketing connundrum. It's not your choice where they shelve it, but I'd like to smack the people who do make that decision once or twice for those kinds of Marketing techniques. And not just on yours! It drives me nuts! LOL

I still have one or more of yours on the TBR shelf. I know one is an anthology. Immortal BB. I'm looking forward to that one.

What's the new series about? About when in '09?

Wishing you many successes.