Did you ever have one of those books that sits on your to-read shelf forever until you're finally so sick of wondering what it's about that you break down and get it from the library?
The Senator's Other Daughter by Stephen Bly was one of those books.
Summary:
Within the locket hanging near her heart is the secret that's broken it.
A life of peace and seclusion as the unknown Miss Denison. It's what Grace longed for even before her father banished her from Washington, D.C.
She just may have found it in Lordsburg, New Mexico--the small railroad town where people hide until the world stops looking. A place to send black sheep, skeletons in the closet, rebellious sons ... and wayward daughters whose secrets could ruin a father's precious political career.
Yet Grace's cherished anonymity is soon lost when she gets caught in the middle of a huge ruckus. And her life is anything but peaceful thanks to an ornery pet at her boarding house, a precocious young Mexican boy, and a cowboy who makes her want to run to him and from him at the same time.
When he learns the secret within her locket, will he break her heart too? (Back cover summary from Amazon)
Plot: There were two things I noticed about this book:
1. It's written by a man
2. It's part of a series called "The Belles of Lordsburg"
(and [this isn't really legitimately something I noticed right off but] 3. the last half of the back cover synopsis is really corny)
For me, two conclusions can be drawn from these rather obvious facts:
1. Male authors tend to create heroines who act a little more sensibly when the hero is involved
2. The word 'Belles' usually makes me drop a book like a red-hot coal, since we all know that belles can always use a little help in the get-a-backbone-for-pete's-sake area.
These two observations canceled each other out, so I got the book and started reading.
At first, it wasn't bad. Aside from a few moments where Mr. Bly must have panicked and thought "This'll never sell to a female audience; I'd better put in a few stray details about the hero that'll keep their hearts racing!" Unfortunately, it didn't work. But then, I'm picky about my heroes.
Really, though, after a snappy beginning, the book soon degenerated into one of those uncomplicated hate/irritation/confusion/stiffness and jealousy/enormous emotional meltdown/longing/more confusion (which comes off as incredibly insincere by this time)/heroine helps hero/divulging of life stories/heroine decides that yes, she is helplessly in love with this gallant man/awkward time of Great-Jehoshaphat-ought-we-risk-getting-hurt-by-telling-each-other-that-we're-both-madly-in-love-with-each-other-and-one-of-us-turns-out-not-to-be?/and then trotting on down to the inconceivably perfect, eye-roll inducing ending, stories.
Unfortunately, the only thing on the back cover that made me want to read this book (and no, it was not the whole thing about the cowboy *gag*), the whole mystery-hoopla about a locket and a broken heart, was buried rather insignificantly in these romantically adventurous pages.
I would argue that Grace's heart seemed quite whole except when a certain someone was unexpectedly brought up almost halfway through the book. Then suddenly she was wailing and moaning and there was an enormous mess in which the reader remained quite untouched because they really had no idea who this heartbreak producing personage was.
Besides that, the secret wasn't even really hers. And if it ruined her father's political career, it was not because of anything she had done. So that part of the back cover fizzled out too. And Grace's "cherished anonymity" is lost practically the moment she steps off the train on the first page, so I guess that's really nothing to worry about.
And I have no idea, really, why the pet is described as ornery or why it plays much of a part on the back cover. It seemed to me that it just hung around for the most part and got in people's ways.
And the cowboy... But we'll get to him a little later.
All in all, the beginning was climatic, the middle was anticlimactic and the ending was extremely anticlimactic.
There was, however, one saving grace (no pun intended) in this book, which we shall get to in a moment.
Characters: Grace Burnette Denison - Role: broken-hearted heroine and main character of the story.
So, I rather liked Grace from time to time. She was sensible sometimes, had a nice temper, and could keep up a clever repartee.
And, since this wasn't written by a female author, we didn't get much description on how drop-dead gorgeous she was. Mr. Bly did, however, get in a few cents worth on several details that we needed to be constantly reminded of. *coughlongtwanyhaircough*
Grace did indulge in some rather insincere emotion and had a horrid habit of kissing men to get them to do what she wanted. Also, her conversations with herself (conveniently laid out on almost every other page with sweeping italic script) got rather long and repetitive and (not to mention it or anything) contradictory. (Though I suppose we all contradict our decisions constantly as well...)
Colton Anthony Parnell - Role: Blond hero who is greatly admired for being a...hero.
Eesh yikes, where to I start? I did not like this man. Apart from being ambiguous, with an annoying habit of dropping the 'g's' in almost every 'ing'-ending word, he was also pushy, overly-heroic, and just plain annoying. I also wouldn't call him much of a cowboy, since he spends most of his life running from CS cowboys, wandering around town and bothering Grace.
Paco - Role: the "precocious young Mexican boy".
Not too bad, really, but endowed with an ill-fated tendency to be "too cute".
And then the other characters. There was a multitude of them so large that, in scenes where they were all together, you basically lost track of who was who and just pushed on through the scene with the hope that there wouldn't be a pop quiz at the end.
Likes: THE DIALOGUE! Oh my word, you don't often run across dialogue like this in books like this. There were, of course, cliche pitfalls, but for the most part, the dialogue was excellent - clever and enjoyable - and the characters were able to pull it off. And Grace herself had quite a collection of amusing mental observations as well.
The lack of over-dramatic, stomach-turning description of every physical feature of the hero and heroine. Aside from an occasional mentioning of a certain aspect of the other's features, we were treated to blissful ignorance on the particulars of our character's charms.
There was a nice little plot twist (I suppose you could probably figure it out if you watched for it and put everything together instead of just waltzing through the book) that created a moment of drama. But it was a brief moment - before you realized that the fact had been staring you in the face for quite a while.
Dislikes:
The lack of true emotion. If you just tell me someone's heart is broken, I won't much care. Show me that their heart is broken, and then we might have something going.
The fact that the whole book was so anticlimactic. I like drama (well-played drama, that is), but it just kept getting weaker and weaker.
The modern slips. Ok, so we all know that we don't talk the same as they did in the old days anymore. But that does not give an author free rein to use words that were coined years after the book. Some of it is fine because if we wrote everything like they did, it would sound like Shakespeare. But please, if your book is set in the era of telegraphs (1884 to be exact), please do not use the word "jerk" in reference to a disreputable young man! That word meant nothing but a good, hard tug at the time, and I'm sure that was not at all what was being implied. Also, don't use "totally" in the sense of "I totally didn't expect him to like me!". It sounds like you don't know what you're talking about.
The fact that Grace usually wore her hair loose and down her back. This may be incredibly nit-picky, but anyone who knows anything about the old days knows that a young woman of twenty-nine would never, EVER even consider walking out of her house (or boarding house room, in this case) with her hair down. Especially in a rough town of most nothing but men. She would have religiously worn it up since her sixteenth or eighteenth birthday. Such mistakes do not lend a well-researched air to a book.
Some of the Christian message was well presented and sound, but some of it stuck out like a sore thumb. You can't just bring Jesus in out of nowhere (admit it: people don't) and when you do that in a book, it just sounds laughably out-of-place.
Colton Parnell. Enough said.
Conclusion: If I could just have the dialogue from this book, I would have few complaints. But, since a book must have a plot and characters, well, thus march in the criticisms. Such is life, I suppose.
In strict conclusion, though, I didn't get much out of this book except a rather firm resolve that I never need to pick up another book by Stephen Bly again.
'Till next time!
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