C-
Genre: Erotica/Erotic Romance, Paranormal, Romance
This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Kira L. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Short Contemporary Romance category.
The summary:
A fever dream of desires fulfilled.
Nestled in the shadow of the Appalachians is where Gwen Ashby stumbles upon the William Marshall Academy, and she’s given a trial position as a literature teacher. The gothic boarding school seems trapped in time yet it feels like home the moment Gwen arrives.
She’s charmed by the lovely buildings, bewitched by the eager students…and utterly seduced by the headmaster. Edwin Yorke is noble, handsome and infuriatingly proper. But his tweedy exterior and courtly manners conceal a raw sensual power that Gwen longs to unleash.
It’s strangely thrilling to be the only woman on campus—save one other. An eerie white-clad figure roams the grounds by night. She never speaks. She leaves no trace. But this ghostly blight on Gwen’s new dream life is the key to the Marshall Academy’s mysterious allure.
Here is Kira L.'s review:
She’d never make it to Chicago alive.
Not unless she got some coffee. Stat.
Friends, if I had read those first lines before I signed up for this, I never would have reviewed this book. Nothing screams twee-I’m-a-special-snowflake-reader-fill-in than coffee pandering. Maybe I’m grumpy because I’m not a coffee drinker.
I wanted to like this more than I did. I LOVE gothic novels and their melodramatic creepy goodness. But this read more like a contemporary with gothic trappings – at least until the final chapter – than an actual Gothic Romance.
A Gothic hinges not just on the presence of the supernatural, but on atmospheric description and building suspense. Reisz isn’t that great with description, and the majority of the book lacks any suspense. We get description like these:
The school was far more evocative of a medieval French fortress or an old Ivy League college than a Southern high school.
or
They looked like skeleton keys, a jailer’s keys from a Wild West sheriff’s office or keys to a castle gate.
A medieval French fortress and an Ivy League school are two very different things. A Wild West jail key and a castle gate key set two very different moods. This tells me absolutely nothing about what this place looks like or how I’m supposed to feel as the reader. This is word salad.
On the other hand, the characters have the subtlety of a monsoon. Gwen is so boring, she could be a cardboard cutout. She likes coffee and Shakespeare and wears a newsboy cap – like every other hipster English major. Both her parents died in tragic back story (of course) and her boyfriend dumped her to go be interesting. She just happens upon this magical school that was made with cupcakes and rainbows and is filled with matchmaking 17-year-old plot moppets intent on setting up their too-perfect-to-be-true headmaster. Edwin is basically the author shouting into a megaphone HE’S SO COMMANDING AND DOMNEERING AND COMMANDING AND AUTHORATATIVE AND COMMANDING AND IMPERIOUS WITH A HOT (COMMANDING) BRITISH ACCENT. The students are perfect little rascals who just looooooove reading and act less like April Ludgate and more like a bunch of Charlies heading to the Chocolate Factory. This isn’t a Gothic novel; this is teacher porn. My eyes rolled so far back in my head they got stuck there. I have no idea how I’m typing this right now.
There is a ghostly Bride running around but she isn’t a major part of the plot until 2/3rds of the way into the novel. At no point did I ever feel like Gwen was vulnerable or in danger. The only conflict is “Will Gwen and Edwin bone?” *SPOILERS* This is a romance novel. They will bone, repeatedly, forever and ever, amen.
The Gothic finally decided to show up at the end and it was a cool twist. Sadly, the twist was broadcasted by obvious clues throughout the story, meaning the heroine had to be a complete twit for most of the book. In the hands of a better, a more subtly descriptive writer, the clues would have led to a haunting and revelatory ending. Instead, it felt like being bludgeoned with a brick. Gothics aren’t exactly known for subtlety, but there has to be some mystery to keep the reader engaged (the crazier the answer, the better), and this book was really a chore to get through. I’m not sure the twist was worth the extended set-up.
I would recommend this to those who enjoy small town romances with a hint of the supernatural and Gothic. Maybe if I had gone in with those expectations, I would have enjoyed this more. But as a Gothic, there are much better books in the genre.
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I’m getting the impression that the Rita pool this year isn’t too deep. I’ve seen several of the books reviewed here for sale, and was never tempted to splurge on them.
Sad.
I drink copious amounts of coffee, and readily admit to having a problem. However, when it comes to characters, such a focus gets old really quick. The whole “I’m a special snowflake!” type of personality isn’t relatable, and is just plain annoying.
I really enjoyed your honest, detailed review.
Re the RITA pool… It seems reflective of romance books across the board lately. I thought it was me being in a reading slump, but I can happily read older books and get all those wonderful feelings that a great love story can inspire. The self-publishing movement has left me so unsatisfied. So many self-published books are like eating off the dollar menu. Cheap books, low quality, and low expectations when we only pay .99 or 2.99.
I have read a lot of self-published stuff, some it really damned good (and I hope that my own self-published stuff does not, at least, cause a reader’s eyeballs to get stuck from too much rolling!). Serious question: how can a self-published writer give potential readers a good sense of what they will be getting? Other than by posting an excerpt – which I’ve considered.
I think the first two lines would have turned me off of this one, too.
Funny review. 🙂 Makes me want to re-read some Lois Duncan. I think her “Down a Dark Hall” is what we all want in a Gothic school story.
“Word Salad Teacher Porn” is definitely a novel I would read.
I mean, this novel isn’t. But one that would call itself WSTP – yeah, I’d read that.
I wouldn’t say I was in love with the story, but I didn’t have nearly as many problems with it as you did. It’s not a deep, atmospheric gothic in any way, so if that’s what you’re after it would be pretty disappointing. I thought the students were interesting–you can’t compare them to April Ludgate because they aren’t her…*trying to avoid spoilers*…crowd, if ya know what I mean. (Not that I assume all real life students throughout the history of time have been perfect little models of intellectual vigor, but I do think the attitude towards education has shifted.) Everyone in the book is too perfect, which was a little one note, but I liked Gwen, because she’s got an opinion and isn’t afraid to go after what she wants. All in all, I thought this was a light, enjoyable read, though I can certainly see why the issues you mention would bother some people.
Reviews like this are a nice compensation for less than perfect novels. I know I did some serious chortling. Excellent review.
Regarding the poor showing of RITA finalists, I am less troubled by the unenthusiastic reviews of mediocre offerings than I am by some of the deserving authors who didn’t get a nomination. I can think of at least one novel published this past year that I was totally expecting to see on this list. So disappointing.
I find chocolate pandering even more irritating (and pervasive) than coffee pandering. It just makes me picture cathy going “Ack!” and that is NOT romantic.
There is good self-pub out there but sel-pub has also made it so there is a lot more not good stuff to wade through. You would think that awards like the RITA would help with that, but it does feel like this year that is not the case.
Well written review, thank you.
I’m completely agnostic about where my fiction comes from (self- vs traditionally-published) – if I don’t know anything about the author, I basically rely on description+sample. For me it is all about the prose. I am very cautious about first-person books because they are so chancy for me – so many have this quality of twee vanity in the main character, her delight in how fascinating her coffee obsession is or whatever. So I rely on the sample to let me know if this is something I can hang with.
I really liked this review, because I think that probably Tiffany Reisz’ prose is something that readers either really enjoy or really dislike. Not “good” or “bad”, just – you know, it must have a very defined fan base, and I am not in it. I tried “The Siren” and felt like I was losing my mind. Did people really like this? How could people like it? I hated it by the bottom of the first page! But I’ve come to think that there is a certain type of very stylized prose that is specifically not something I can handle – the review’s note of “coffee pandering” is exactly what I mean. Some people clearly like that, “Aha, yes, the heroine can’t function unless she has coffee! How charming.”
But like you, I find that really… I don’t really even have words. It just confuses my brain. Am I supposed to take this as real, or even “real”? Because I too get that instant “so I am supposed to find this super cute, just totally adorable, and also not notice that this is the kind of thing author-stand-in Mary Sue fantasies do, yeah?” feeling. “The Siren” opens with a sequence involving the heroine wearing men’s pajamas with little ducks on them but being found extremely beautiful and sexy, which is a thing that I think literally only happens in a specific type of book?