Tuesday Review on Wednesday: I'm Loving Loveswept, Part 2

The original Loveswept tagline was “Love stories you’ll never forget by authors you’ll always remember.” Random House is using the same tagline for the electronic reissues and original releases. In this case, I think the tagline is more than an advertising strategy; it’s an accurate description of the reading experience for many Loveswept books. I certainly found it true for my second Loveswept reread.

Remember the Time

By Annette Reynolds

Publisher: Random House/

A Loveswept Classic Romance Ebook

Release Date: August 8, 2011

(originally released 1997)

Four and a Half Stars

Paul Armstrong and Mike Fitzgerald have been best friends since third grade when Kate Moran walked into their high school English classroom one day and both of them fell for her.  At sixteen, Paul and Kate became a couple, and Mike had two best friends. But his love for Kate was a steady flame through their last two years of high school, through college, and through Kate and Paul’s thirteen years of marriage. Mike goes through a series of short term relationships, unable to commit because of his love for Kate. He even marries a woman who reminds him of Kate, but he can only regret the pain he causes his wife when she realizes that she has been a poor Kate substitute. Mike’s divorce is years behind him when Paul perishes in a flash flood and leaves Kate a grieving widow.

“Grieving widow” becomes Kate’s identity: “Paul Armstrong had died two and a half years ago, and the only thing Kate had shown any interest in since then was his grave.” She allows her home to deteriorate, bills to go unpaid, dishes to go unwashed. She drinks too much, eats too little, and keeps human contacts to a minimum. Through it all, Mike has been there—supporting her, loving her, enabling her to continue in her grief. One day he responds to a request help her avoid one more thing with a firm no: “Saying no to Kate was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. He’d watched as she’d gone from vital Kate Moran to needy Kate Armstrong to ‘Paul’s wife’ with nothing left that resembled the girl he’d grown up with. He didn’t want to watch anymore.”

That moment marks a turning point as Kate slowly and painfully returns to life and begins to discover and return Mike’s love. There are real obstacles to overcome, more than either of them suspects. They must come to terms with the past, accepting the flawed, spoiled golden boy who was Paul Armstrong, major league baseball player, adulterous husband, selfish friend and acknowledging his strengths as well as his failures. Kate has to see Mike as he is, Mike has to forgive Kate, and they both have to forgive other betrayals. Every once in a great while, I read a romance novel that makes me doubt the HEA is possible. Even as a reread, this is one of those books.

Remember the Time is a powerful story. Reynolds uses flashbacks and multiple points of view to allow the reader to understand not only Kate and Mike but also Paul and a couple of important secondary characters as well. There are no perfect characters in this story, only imperfect, broken people—some of whom learn, to borrow words from Hemingway, to be “strong in the broken places.” Mike is a historical preservationist architect, and the story’s structure borrows from the vocabulary and activity of his profession in its main divisions: Abandonment and Ruin, Preservation, Renovation, Reconstruction, Restoration. Anyone who has battled through profound grief will sympathize with Kate’s experience, and if some of us think that grief was unduly prolonged, we might do well to remember that grief is also a peculiarly individual experience. Regardless, that’s a minor quibble in an emotionally intense, unforgettable book.

In addition to the two Loveswept novels I have reviewed, the August reissues include Talk, Dark and Lonesome by Debra Dixon, The Vow by Julianna Garnett, The Baron by Sally Goldenbaum, This Fierce Splendor by Iris Johansen, Legends by Deb Smith, and Dream Lover by Adrienne Staff.

This novel has some of my favorite romance tropes? What are your favorites?

Tuesday Review: I'm Loving Loveswept, Part One

For more than fifteen years at the end of the last century, Bantam published category romances under the Loveswept imprint. According to the RomanceWiki, 917 books were published between May 1983 and January 1999, beginning with Sandra Brown’s Heaven’s Price and ending with Fayrene Preston’s The Prize. Among the authors of the remaining 915 novels were some who became VIP romance authors (Jennifer Crusie, Suzanne Brockmann) and others who became bestsellers in other genres (Janet Evanovich,Tami Hoag).  Some of the writers on my auto-buy list now are writers I first read as Loveswept authors (Deborah Smith, Jill Shalvis). Helen Mittermeyer and Billie Green were two of my favorite Loveswept authors, and I remember how much I loved Kay Hooper’s revamped fairy tales.

I was among those cheering Random House’s announcement in late June that Loveswept was being revived as an ebook only line with the first titles being released in August 2011.  In addition to reissues, the new Loveswept line will include new romances. Jessica Scott, already a familiar name within the online romance community, will debut in November 2011 with Because of You, followed by Back to You (February 2012) and Until There Was You (April 2012). Prices for Loveswept ebooks will range from $2.99-$4.99.

When ARCs of the first reissues became available to reviewers through NetGalley, I requested two I remembered fondly.

Lightning That Lingers

By Sharon and Tom Curtis

Publisher: Random House/

A Loveswept Classic Romance Ebook

Release Date: August 8, 2011

(originally released in 1983)

Five Stars

Philip Brooks is an environmental biologist who lives alone on the summer estate, Lily Hill, all that remains of his family’s great wealth. To pay taxes so that the land can be preserved for wildlife, Philip works as the star attraction at the Cougar Club, a male strip club.

Jennifer Hamilton, very young and very shy, is the newest addition to the library staff of Emerald Lake, Wisconsin. On a night out with her co-workers, Jennifer reluctantly agrees to visit the Cougar Club.  Halfway through the first act, she retreats to the restroom. She’s even more embarrassed by the second act, and in trying to avoid looking at the stage, she exchanges a fraught look with “the most handsome man in the world.” She’s shocked but attracted when he turns out to be the third act, “the number one male dancer in the Midwest.”

Philip is equally attracted to Jennifer, and he pursues her, driving her home, going to the library, sharing with her his passion for the wildlife he protects. Determined to resist him at first, Jennifer eventually yields.  She wrecks her car on her way to him and almost freezes to death. Philip saves her from hypothermia, introduces her to his pets (a screech owl named Chaucer and a brown hen named Henrietta), and dances with her to music from an old gramophone before they make love. There’s still the problem of his profession, and it leads to the black moment when Jennifer’s mother writes that she’s planning to visit the Cougar Club. But this is a romance, and the dark night leads to a golden morning and a satisfying HEA.

I worried that I might find a twenty-eight-year-old contemporary romance dated. But aside from a reference to Jennifer’s Dorothy Hamil hairdo and the wounds inflicted by her illegitimacy, the story has worn very well. Twenty-first century readers may find Jennifer’s innocence unrealistic; even in 1983, she would have been extraordinary. But the authors present her as a woman not of her time, as unfledged as the baby owls Philip rescues. She thinks of herself as “Jennifer Hamilton, who’d spent a lifetime of twenty-three years misplaced in an era of sexual liberation.” Others may find the lush prose not to their liking, but I loved it. Phrases like “the lace-work caress of his hands” and sentences like “memories collected in her mind like intimate postcards” still sing in my head.

I’ll post my review for the second Loveswept reissue I read tomorrow.

Have you read any Loveswept romances in the originals or as reissues? What do you think about a stripper hero and a librarian heroine?