Once a Spy by Mary Jo Putney is more of an adventure story than a Regency romance - but it's a really good adventure story

 

I don't really know how to review Once a Spy by Mary Jo Putney.  It's clearly supposed to be a Regency romance, and it has romance elements, but the romance itself has very little plot or tension.  Heroine Suzanne is the widow of a mean French nobleman.  She was captured and lived as a slave in a harem until she escaped, a story apparently told in a different Putney book.  At the opening of Once a Spy she is living as an impoverished seamstress in England.  

Hero Simon has had his own adventures and misadventures working as a spy for the British army during the Napoleonic wars.  Those wars are now in a lull with Napoleon in his first exile.  Simon is a distant relative of Suzanne's late husband, and Simon and Suzanne had known and liked each other years ago.  He tracks her down and impetuously asks her to marry him.

The plot of the romance is that Suzanne and Simon are both so traumatized that neither of them think that they will ever want to be physically intimate ever again.  This makes them well-matched, so Suzanne accepts Simon's proposal.  Simon quickly realizes that he is attracted to Suzanne; it takes several backrubs before Suzanne realizes that she also wants to have sex with Simon.  

Simon and Suzanne are a good couple.  They are nice to each other.  They are honest with each other.  They don't have any stupid miscommunications.  They fall in love.  

The real plot of the book begins when Napoleon escapes his first exile and become emperor of France again.  With war afoot, Simon and Suzanne happen to bump into the head of the English army at a park.  He knows that Simon is one of England's best spies, so he recruits him to go back to spying -- an event that would not have happened if they hadn't been at the same park at the same time.  I call that a lucky coincidence!

Suzanne insists that she accompany Simon behind enemy lines. They sneak around the countryside gathering information.  They steal horses, and a kitten.  

Simon and Suzanne then go on solo missions.  Suzanne happens to meet Napoleon when she is captured and pretending to be a prostitute, and is able to feed him misinformation about English troop movements, which plays a big role in England defeating him at Waterloo. Another lucky coincidence!

Much of this book is overwhelmingly silly.  But it's also fun and charming.  With significantly less romance and significantly enlarged details of the adventure story, it could be great.

 Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Regency romance Project Duchess by Sabrina Jeffries is not the best project

 

Project Duchess by Sabrina Jeffries started as a perfectly adequate Regency romance -- easy to pick up for a few minutes at a time but not hard to put down.  

The main characters, hero Grey and heroine Beatrice, are fine.  Grey is a curmudgeonly duke.  Beatrice is a poor relation who likes to speak her mind, but usually doesn't.  Sparks, plot plot plot.  

But: Grey's back story made no sense whatsoever.  After his father the duke died when Grey was a child, his uncle became his guardian and the trustee of his estate.  When Grey was twelve, the uncle tried to get Grey to sign over to him ownership of unentailed properties.  Grey spent a couple of days teaching himself how to read and understand legal documents, and then refused to sign the documents.  The uncle would lock him in a basement and starve him in an attempt to coerce him, then try to be nice to him in an attempt to convince him, but Grey still refused to sign.

This plot seems bafflingly stupid.  I can't believe that even in Regency England a twelve year old could sign a binding contract.  But if the uncle was trustee, he could sign on Grey's behalf. Sure, he could be sued later for breach of trust (or whatever), but Grey noted in retrospect that if he, Grey, had signed the documents when he was twelve without researching them, as an adult he probably would never have realized that the properties had ever belonged to him.  So if the uncle had signed them over to himself, the result would be the same.

The second worst thing about this book:  It ends on a cliffhanger.  The plot centers on a murder mystery -- which is unresolved at the end of the book.  Even in the epilogue new twists are introduced.  Yes, the first third of the book spends way too much time discussing the extended families of Grey and Beatrice, meaning that this is the beginning of a series, but come on.  Regency romances should not end this way.  Ever.   

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Modern romance Celebrity Crush by Christy Swift did not crush it -- and a detour into my thoughts on Marvel movies

 

When I started reading modern romance Celebrity Crush by Christy Swift I thought I might love it.  It was so over-the-top and silly.  Heroine Emmy had written a romance novel called Celebrity Crush about a romance writer who meets and falls in love with her celebrity crush.  Then, Emmy  meets and falls in love with her celebrity crush who was the inspiration for the celebrity crush in her novel!  Also, Emmy is a romance novel writer who can afford a personal stylist and designer clothes (even though she's a single mom who lives in a trailer park)!  Also, Emmy swims with dolphins all the time, like maybe every day!  (The closest I could find to this is here, at $70.00 per swim.)  (I am not endorsing this.) (Emmy implies that she is swimming with dolphins who have been released into the wild and miss performing tricks.  Yeah, no.)

But eventually I realized that Swift is not in control of the over-the-topness and silliness.  Emmy has a book sitting for weeks in the top ten of the New York Times bestseller list, but can't sell her next book?  She's not sure when her royalties will come in and doesn't call her agent to ask? (I was pretty sure a plot twist was going to be that her agent had stolen her money, but that didn't happen.  So why keep mentioning this dead end?)  She's a writer working on her next book, except she never works on it or writes at all and never mentions any passion for writing.  In fact, she states that she makes her living as a social media consultant.  Towards the end she is accused by someone of purposefully writing a bad book and figuring out how to ride its wave to Hollywood.  It's not clear whether or not that's true; she certainly doesn't seem to be attached to her book.  (For contrast, here's a poem I wrote to a character in my smutty naked sex slave novel, Mindgames.) 

Most unforgivable to me, Emmy and hero Jason are terrible, terrible parents.  

Jason has custody of his toddler son two weekends a month and wants more time with him.  Yet, without a qualm, he hires a babysitter to take care of his son during the weekend he has.  Also without a qualm he brings a stranger (Emmy) into his house when his son is there, someone he has a romantic interest in, hooks up with her with his son (hopefully) sleeping in the next bedroom, and allows her to interact with him, when they've known each other for like five minutes.

Emmy is almost as bad.  She leaves her tween daughter with a friend for weeks at a time, allows the daughter to  be seen extensively on Emmy's social media (I don't want to sound like an old coot here, but, yuck), agrees to take her on a cross-country road-trip with someone she's been dating for fifteen minutes even though his drinking is problematic (also re: drinking, at one event there's a three drink maximum -- enough to have me doing bedspins), introduces her daughter to the daughter's father with no warning that she had been lying to the kid her whole life when she said she did not know who the father is . . . 

The problems with the plot started to make sense when I read Swift's acknowledgments, in which she thanks everyone involved in Marvel movies because they helped get her through Covid -- fair enough -- because "good storytelling matters!"  I also watched the Marvel movies during Covid and enjoyed them, but I'm pretty sure that nobody has accused them of good storytelling.  (Well, maybe Endgame.)  Joss Whedon famously whined that he was not allowed to tell good stories in the Marvel movies he directed.  When I watched the movies I came to think of their basic storyline as:  Opening quips!  Funny and interesting!  Five minutes or so.  Then for the next two thirds, too many characters, plot plot plot, which may involve bad guys so evil that the Nazis fight them, or, best case (but also the same movie) hints that in an alternate timeline Captain America becomes a showgirl.  Then action that I doze off for.  Wake up for five minutes of resolution and post-credit scenes.  

When I was in college I took a poetry-writing class in which I referenced John Cougar Mellencamp's Jack and Diane in a poem I wrote.  My professor told me flat out that I needed deeper inspiration than rock music.   He was right. (No hate to Mellencamp -- Jack and Diane is still on my favorite playlist.) Likewise, Swift needs better inspiration than Marvel movies.  

 

 

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.