Skip to main content

Granny Reads: Embrace the Flame by Diana Haviland

At this point this is the winner by far for Granny Reads. Haviland's novel covers all the major tropes of a historical bodice ripper. Our heroine's name is Desire, and she was tragically orphaned during the latest plague. Despite her gentle upbringing, Desire finds herself at the mercy of a brothel owner who orders her to either become a whore or earn her keep as a thief. Obviously our virtuous heroine can't become a whore, so she tries to steal from a man who turns out to be a highwayman with a mysterious past, whom we eventually discover is the wrongly disinherited son of a late country gentleman. It all sounds so ridiculous, and yet the relationship between Desire and Morgan feels so real.

As far as any old school conventions of the genre, Desire is nearly raped about a billion times in this book, typifying the (hopefully) outdated notion that attempted rape should be seen as a compliment and confirmation of your good looks. There's also a homely spinster who is, of course, an evil shrew and causes all sorts of trouble for Desire, but her brother ends up disowning her for her misdeeds, so clearly being bitter about not having men attempt to rape you gets you nowhere.

When I was in library school and studied romance novel reading habits (seriously, read Reading the Romance if you care at all about this stuff), I was surprised to learn that some women really do read historical romances to learn about history. While specific historical details like this aren't usually my thing, in this case it wasn't too obtrusive and did help me understand the story a little better. The action takes place during the Restoration of the English monarchy, shortly after the Black Plague of 1665 and towards the end of the book is the The Great London Fire of 1666. King Charles II is even a minor character. Our characters spend time in Newgate and the details of the deplorable conditions there makes prison today look like a vacation. Such a specific historical setting also gave me a pretty good idea how the story was to be resolved.

Annoyingly, this is another romance novel where the cover has nothing to do with the story. Several times in the story Desire's raven hair is mentioned, yet our cover model is blond. With the typical cheesy pose, it's almost comical how little this picture has to do with the story.

If you like historical romances, then this one offers a lot to love, and you owe it to yourself to find a copy.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PLA - Day 1

Today was my first day at the Public Library Association conference, and I'm not sure how I'm going to do 2.5 more days and keep my head from exploding. There's just so much that's so relevant to my job, I can find something interesting everywhere I look. This morning I went to the Get Your Game On: Gaming in Libraries Preconference, and it was wonderful. I realized that I need to stop playing the role of wife of a gamer and own that I know a thing or two about video games, too, and what I don't know I can learn. Eli and Aaron spent the first half of the program talking about the benefits of gaming and why libraries should be doing gaming, which is something I'd always bought, but never been very good at articulating. Essentially it boils down to all the different types of literacies learned through video games and what are libraries for if not promoting literacy. It was also interesting they argued that the way libraries get the most value out of gaming is by...
Post a Comment
Read more

2016 Reading Resolutions

As has become the norm in recent years, I'm going to try to read 100 books total, but I'm not going to get picky about counting them, so how ever many books Goodreads said I read this year is my total. Progress: 100 of 100 I really hated reading from a specific list of titles last year, so this year I'm going to go back to an Alphabet Soup Challenge. This year, I'll try to read a book written by an author whose last name starts with each of the 26 letters of the alphabet. Progress: 23 of 26 A: Alire, Benjamin Saenz - Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe B: Bradley, Anna - A Wicked Way to Win an Earl C: Cline, Ernest - Ready Player One D: Dickens, Charles - Oliver Twist E: Ellison, Ralph -   Invisible Man F: Faulkner, William - Absalom, Absalom! G: Garcia, Kami and Margaret Stohl - Beautiful Darkness H: Holm, Jennifer L. - The Fourteenth Goldfish I: Ishiguro, Kazuo - The Remains of the Day J: Johnston, Aaron and Orson Scott Card - Ea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reflections of a New Community College Librarian

After months of searching I finally found found a job and I have to say that I'm really surprised with both where I landed and how much I'm loving it. After focusing primarily on the public library reference jobs that were similar to my most recent position, I stumbled onto a couple openings at nearby community colleges. When I'd first graduated from library school I heard somewhere that people who worked in community college libraries claimed they were this magical land where public meets academic, where you don't have to deal with spoiled rich kids and people are looking for things more stimulating than the latest James Patterson novel. But I went to library school so I could become a public librarian and I loved the public library job I eventually got, so I never really thought about that statement. While I loved my public library job, one of things I discovered I loved most about it was teaching public computer classes. Eventually it clicked with me that academi...
Post a Comment
Read more