Book Review

Guest Review: Heroes are My Weakness by Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Reviewed by Pam G

C+

Title: Heroes are My Weakness
Author: Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Publication Info: William Morrow 2014
ISBN: 978-0062106070
Genre: Contemporary Romance

Book heroes are my weakness By the time I got my hands on Susan Elizabeth Phillips's Heros Are My Weakness, I had already heard that it was a tribute to the Gothic romances of my youth. Since I am a devotee of several mistresses (and masters) of the genre, I really looked forward to this 21st century take on the style. Sure enough, the dedication made the author's inspiration clear, and Stewart, Bronte, du Maurier, et al, are surely names to conjure with. I dove into the book with gusto. Sadly, when I emerged a couple of chapters later, I found myself dog paddling around, looking for my missing gusto or maybe just a beer to tide me over.

The story opens with the requisite hapless heroine struggling through the blizzard, sick and broke, determined to reach Moonraker Cottage, her last hope of refuge and the supposed hiding place of her deceased mother's final legacy.  I will not even begin to enumerate the plethora of gothic conventions that are dragged into the circumstances of Annie's flight to her Mom's cottage.  Annie's puppets are probably the most intriguing feature of the opening chapters, in spite of the fact that she chats with them constantly, leading the reader to wonder about her sanity a bit.  Of course, that too is one of those aforementioned conventions.  Another is the convoluted and completely bogus legal requirement that forces Annie to stay on Peregrine Island for two full months in order to retain ownership of the cottage.

However, I digress. I did not hate this book, but if I start listing the stuff that bothered me about the first few chapters, I'm afraid that I'll skew this review way too far to the negative.  I'm glad I read it and I might even read it again someday, so I'll treat this like a good news/bad news joke, giving the good news first and then tackling the elements that didn't work for me.  At length.  

First of all, SEP is one hell of a writer.  She has a gift for weaving an array of disparate elements into a marvelous and beautifully integrated tapestry. The result is excellent–well crafted, consistent, funny, and tender–and I don't ever take these qualities for granted.  Characterization and dialog are well structured, thoroughly entertaining, and reveal a profound understanding of human nature.  Also, the specifics of setting and action demonstrate the solid research and attention to detail that made the best of the gothic writers so engrossing.  Whether the subject is puppetry, life on a remote Maine island in winter, or the construction of fairy houses, Ms. Phillips is an engaging guide to new worlds. Style, setting and structure more than live up to her predecessors' work.

Happily, the quality of the writing was strong enough to keep me reading past the first chapters, and by the end of the novel, I was thoroughly smitten with both hero and heroine.  When I was in my twenties, I'd say heroes were definitely my weakness.   Nowadays, I'm all about the heroine, and I adored Annie.  Once her damned puppets simmered down and she had actual people to talk to, she emerged as woman of complexity and kindness.  When the hero eventually praises her strength, the reader doesn't wonder where that came from, because despite the wimpy beginning, Annie repeatedly demonstrates her courage and intelligence.   However, her very best quality is her sense of mischief.  One convention is neatly turned on its head when Annie uses her mad ventriloquist skillz to pull a gaslight on the hero, Theo, with whom she shares a troubled past.  Theo's first scenes–careering madly through a blizzard on horseback or stalking down from his turret in 18th century dress–set up the whole brooding, possibly psycho lord of the manor trope. Annie and Theo's first conversation is punctuated by a “ghastly  moan.”  Her eventual response:  “Crazy wife in the attic?”  A few pages later,  Annie is walking through the wintry landscape.

By the time she'd reached the frozen marsh, her legs were rebelling.  She distracted herself by practicing variations on her eerie moans.  Something almost like a laugh squeezed out of her.  She might be a failure as an actress, but not as a ventriloquist.

And Theo Harp hadn't suspected a thing.

The fact that Annie's reaction to Theo's drama is a prank haunting totally endeared her to me.  Theo improves as his broodiness is gradually explained, although his cruelty as a teen continues to be a problem for the reader as well as Annie.  I really enjoyed watching Theo and Annie relearn each other and, in the process, relearn themselves.  This type of relationship is one of my favorite varieties of catnip.  I figured out the disconnect between past and present fairly early in the story, though I cannot say whether the solution was truly obvious or simply due to my familiarity with the genre.  In fact most of the mysteries were less than mysterious and depended on information withheld from the reader until the later chapters.

At any rate, past or no past, Theo and Annie haz got them some chemistry.  In fact, recollections of their teen fumblings serve as a catalyst in the present day.  For both of them the memories are intense.

He kicked back in his chair.  “We used to make out for hours.  Do you remember that?”

How could she forget?  Their kisses had gone on and on–cheeks, neck, mouth, and tongue.  Seconds … minutes … hours.  Then they'd start all over again.  Adults were too fixed on the final goal to take that kind of time.  Only teenagers afraid of the next step exchanged kisses that lasted forever. 

Unlike the gothics of yesteryear, that chemistry is permitted to fully… react. Sexual tension builds alongside the spooky suspense, and is consummated in some very tasty love scenes.  Never merely cookie cutter, the sexytimes are like good barbecue– spicy, sweet, smokin'.   And always slightly surprising.

There is much to love about Heroes Are My Weakness, but, for me, the fundamental premise didn't work.  There are definitely formulas and conventions associated with the gothic romance genre, but the authors that are honored in the dedication were, first and foremost, superb writers.  Their books weren't bound by a formula; they were rooted in excellent storytelling, and the authors busted conventions as often as they employed them.  Furthermore, the best of the gothic authors were very diverse in style and subject matter.  Trying to pack so many disparate elements into a single novel makes it more pastiche than homage.  There was way too much nudge-nudge, wink-wink going on for me to completely immerse myself in this story.  I felt like a tourist in the Disney version of gothic romance for most of the first half of the book.  Trying to spot references and recognize tropes was intrusive and kept pulling me out of the story.  The coy and frequently annoying references continued throughout the novel, but somewhere in the middle, the characters (much like Annie's puppets) took over the story–much to my grateful relief.

While Annie and Theo quickly developed nuanced personalities, many of the other characters never got very far past their roles as stock gothic figures.  The gruff but kindly islanders who, nevertheless, revel in creepy advice and dire warnings, the pretty but fragile housekeeper with a crush on the lord of the manor, the absent father and stepmother, even the dead women from the hero and heroine's past cannot be multidimensional, believable human beings because of the conventions that they fulfill.  Livia, the damaged child that only the puppet-wielding heroine understands, is one of the few characters who rises above her predetermined role. The fact that she is mute overcomes the stigma of cliché, because in all other ways she is portrayed as a normal and very engaging four year old.

On the other hand, the child is central to one of the most common conventions of the gothic romance: the heroine who enters a strange household yet is somehow the ONLY adult who can even begin to help the traumatized child.   AAARRRGGGHHHH!  So Annie, with her background in theater arts, waiting tables and dog walking, assisted by her puppet alter ego, Scamp, becomes Livia's therapist. 

Can I say it again? AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!! 

Of all the elements that bothered me about this book, I think this is perhaps the most serious.  I kept wanting to jump up and yell, “Don't try this at home, folks.” Usually, I'm cool with the suspension of disbelief. I mean, Theo's an EMT and I managed to swallow that, but the miracle-working amateur shrink thing? No. Just no. A lot of effort and explanation goes into portraying Annie's interaction with Livia as natural and understandable, but the event that robs Livia of speech is truly terrible and should have given Annie pause once she heard about it. But no, Annie is determined to give Livia back her words, and no childish PTSD is gonna stop her. At twenty, I might well have accepted Annie's efforts to coax Livia into speech, but now, having survived parenthood myself and spent a couple of decades working in a school, I find it wholly unacceptable. Raising kids is hard under the most benevolent circumstances, and the concept of some amateur just zipping in and fixing something serious is as ridiculous as the notion that the mere presence of kids can somehow fix damaged adults. 

Perhaps most of my problems with Heroes Are My Weakness have to do with the gothic romance genre itself or my expectations of it.  For most of my life, when I said romance, it was gothic romance I thought of first. When I look back, I remember the sigh-worthy kisses and the passionate embraces, but I was just as enamored of the exotic locales and the thrilling adventures.  I think the genre required a certain innocence now lost–that touch of naiveté that the era demanded of popular culture and its consumers.  Since I am no longer the same reader, these are not the same books.  I know that Brontë's Jane Eyre still does it for me, and I'll always love certain novels of Mary Stewart, but I also know that I was done with Whitney and Holt long before they were done writing.  I grew up–as one does–and, in the case of Heroes, the simultaneous cataloging of conventions combined with the effort necessary to follow and enjoy a story on its own merit created a dissonance that the grown up me couldn't handle.  For better or worse, I will never be that young person again, and I have far different expectations of the landscapes and emotions I explore through books.  While Theo and Annie's love story might well have met those expectations, I have to conclude that the gothic trappings proved more of a hindrance than a help to my enjoyment.

I suspect that many readers who loved the gothic romance in its heyday might also be a little disappointed with Heroes, because it doesn't actually read like a gothic.  While it may be meant as a tribute to a fondly remembered sub-genre, the tongue-in-cheek tone, character-based humor, and somewhat bland resolutions of major plot points put it firmly in contemporary territory.  About the only gothic element that's missing from the trope parade is the upbeat, golden boy alternative hero candidate who cheerily casts aspersions both overt and implied on Mister Dark & Broody.  Sound familiar? Not surprising, really, since all those gothic elements we gently mock live on in today's romances.  Dark and broody hero, check. Desperate yet feisty heroine, check. Multiple childhood traumas screwing up hero and heroine's chances of twue happiness, check.  Exotic and/or spooky ambiance, yawn… check.  Mysterious and scary events that may or may not be paranormal in origin, ohhh, checkity-check.  And the list goes on.  Even many romances that actively foreswear these clichés are to some degree reacting to them. The lack of a secondary hero/villain simply points up the fact that in Heroes there are no real villains, supernatural or mundane, and that is not the cowboy gothic way.  All the most harrowing disasters are natural.  Curse you, Mother Nature, just doesn't push the appropriate drama button.  In the end, Heroes Are My Weakness was a kind of emotional bait and switch, which might have been forgivable if it hadn't switched back and forth with each introduction of a new old trope. Like an elderly D grade science fiction flick in which time travelers waver between past and present, Heroes fades in and out between old time gothic and contemporary romantic comedy and leaves the reader hanging between dimensions.

Heroes Are My Weakness was a bear to grade.  The writing quality, main characters, central love story and comic elements would have merited at least a solid B+ under most circumstances.  However, the constant self-conscious references to gothic romance tropes were more an unneccessary distraction than a welcome trip down memory lane at least for me, especially since so many elements of the gothic live on in the broader spectrum of romance novels anyway.  Because I found the gothic theme so off-putting and Annie's efforts as an amateur therapist just infuriating, I had to dock the book a full letter grade.  I suspect there may be strong disagreement among SEP fans, gothic romance lovers, and children's services professionals about the proper grade for this book, but I can only call 'em as I see 'em.  I'm not sorry I read Heroes, but I think I need to spend some time with Jane now.


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  1. camrom says:

    Pretty much my reaction to this book.  I haven’t finished the book yet, but agree that the puppets were really, really odd.  It went beyond quirky to the point that I thought, “If I knew this person in real life, I would think they had some sort of very serious mental illness.”  And, it drives me a bit batty that I am half way through the book, and all other characters in the book besides Theo and Annie are clearly just static props.  But, it’s SEP and it is still entertaining if you can get passed those things.  I’m just so grateful the puppets have calmed the hell down.

  2. TinForest says:

    Thank you for such a thoughtful review. I just finished this myself and was wondering at my ambivalence. The writing was very good and that was refreshing compared to some of what is out there, but I felt like I was taking some sort of spot-the-gothic reference quiz the whole time. Except that was never my favorite genre, so it really felt like work to read on when those moments arose. As a result, it took me way too long to start liking the main characters (seriously, the puppets were creepy) which, for me, is essential in liking a book. The relationship with the young child really, really bothered me too. As the extent of her trauma unfolded, I started to get angry with the conceit of the main character in thinking she could help and annoyed with her mother and the townspeople for seemingly not caring. Then again, maybe they did care about their island tragedies, but I only saw them as one-note figures in the background. This is the kind of book I’d still, cautiously, recommend based on the overall writing and some scenes that do lift it beyond average, but I am delighted that it was a free library borrow.

  3. akl says:

    After reading Heroes are my Weakness (and enjoying it), I read the review of the book at Dear Author. In the review and the comments, people mentioned that Ain’t She Sweet was also a take on gothic romances. That’s one of my favorite SEP books, and I decided it was time for a re-read of that one. As I was reading it, I noticed an overwhelming number of similarities between the two books. Traditional gothic hero, cash-strapped heroine looking for some lost art piece to get money, and deceased wife with mental illness who kills herself to torture the hero. It really soured me on both books and possibly any future books by SEP.

  4. Laura says:

    I felt exactly the same reading this book! I’m a huge SEP fan, even some of her quirkier works I love, but this one was just too odd. Introducing Theo in that weird gothic getup and painting that unsavory image of him in his youth was just too much to overcome later when we are supposed to fall in love with him. And the puppets…the puppets were so off-putting I cringed every time one of them “talked.” The whole thing was strange. It won’t make me stop reading SEP, but I hope this was just an aberration.

  5. hapax says:

    SEP is an auto-buy for me, even when I end up hurling her books against the wall, but this one just … didn’t.  Whatever strange magic her writing holds for me was completely absent from this one. I found myself skimming, then skipped to the end:  Yawn.

    (Or it could have been the puppets.  Seriously creeped me out, they did.  Ventriloquist dummies = Do Not Want)

    I’ll give props for this, though; it is one of her few books that *almost* completely bypassed the Ritual Total Humiliation of the Heroine.  For that lack alone, I’d bump it up half a letter grade.

  6. Vee says:

    I hated this book.  I hated the puppets, I hated the faux art therapy.  I disliked Annie and if I saw her mumbling with her puppets on mass transit I would move to another subway car immediately.  I forced myself to get past the first chapter and the truly odd and disturbing puppet personalities.  I kept on thinking of the saying “you’re never alone with a scizophrenic” many times as I was reading.  What a disappointing book.  I was not thrilled with the last one from SEP so this was a library read and I resented I wasted a hold position on it.

  7. JaniceG says:

    Like other commentators, I’m a big SEP fan and also like them, I was very disappointed in this one: I found the changes in atmosphere jarring, the miracle therapy annoying, and the puppets creepy and annoying (no one mentioned the unlikelihood in one scene of her really being able to hold the attention of modern kids just using her hand without even a puppet). I also have a problem with dithering heroines. But my biggest problem was the turnaround of the hero: I can see where his past actions had a different basis than the heroine thought but even his loner behavior completely turned around and he suddenly became the traditional totally-in-love pursuer without a lot of supporting growth.

  8. Thanks for the great review. The best ones are those that point out the good as well as the bad.

    I’m still debating whether I should read this one or not.

  9. ystylist says:

    I am a big fan of SEP and own a lot of her books. One plus of this one is that I found the heroine Annie much more likeable than the last one, Lucy, who seemed to whine and make bitchy comments throughout The Great Escape until you couldn’t imagine what the bodyguard saw in her. At least there seemed to be a genuine reason for Theo to be attracted to Annie in Heroes are My Weakness, because she is spunky and bright. Then again, you can’t help wondering about the talking puppets in her head making her seem a bit wacko, and then he has a habit of falling for crazy women…..

    However, there were so many contradictions in the book. At first Annie is so ill recovering from pneumonia she can hardly walk but the next day she takes over scrubbing this huge mansion for an old friend without any ill effects??

    And then, Annie admits she has no experience in psychotherapy, so why not treat the little mute girl who has witnessed a murder???? Her little puppet song about seeing Daddy die really made me grind my teeth.

    I also found it really hard to get over all the supposedly horrible things Theo had done to Annie so their courtship was not really enjoyable. But I did find him a riveting character. For some reason, the past three of four of her books, I always find myself liking SEP’s heroes and finding them much more interesting and believable than her heroines. Has anyone else noticed that?

    However, it was hard to believe he swung from surly loner to would-be husband and father so quickly, as another reader mentioned. He had good reasons for not wanting children and it was unclear why that would change just because he was attracted to Annie.

    However, the book made excellent airplane reading. SEP always sucks you into the story with suspense and intriguing settings and characters. And I thought the difficult relationship between Annie and her mother was really believable and her tranformation as a person was enjoyable to witness.

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