August 26, 2005

Review: Wait Until Midnight by Amanda Quick

Some Romance readers - especially my fellow women of color - dislike Trash from the Past, but not me. It's not that I have a particular yen to read about rich, virginal European girls who - in a time of plague, war, and poor dental hygiene - improbably manage to keep both their skin and their teeth alabaster white. I just find something comforting about the utter mindless formula of it all.

Mae West once said, "too much of a good thing can be wonderful!" And yet, when I sit down with a derivative chunk of pulp like Amanda Quick's Wait Until Midnight, I find myself bludgeoned into apathy by an overdose of the very formula I claim to adore. It's no secret that Amanda Quick (a.k.a. Jayne Anne Krentz, Jayne Castle, etc.) basically writes the same book ad nauseum . Maybe it's not her, it's me. Maybe I've finally had my fill of formula?

To her credit, Quick did attempt to liven things up a little by decamping the heavily-mined Regency era in favor of the somewhat less picked over Victorian era. Quick paints the historical backdrop in broad, impressionistic strokes that capture something of the spirit of the times - the Victorian fascination with death, and widows; the hang-ups about the appearance of virtue in women; the appetite for (what at the time passed for) lurid novels. But upon close inspection, the setting seems as flimsy and one-dimensional as a set piece for a three-penny opera.

In addition, she adds some deliberately sensational elements like murder, mediums and tabloid reporters. Given my usual trashy tastes, I should have loved it. But those elements are just props to a plot that has, by now, grown so familiar as to inspire contempt.

The romance between outspoken author with a secret, Carolyn Fordyce, and serious, determined business man Adam Hardesty hits its marks and barks its lines like a seasoned, but weary pro. Initial Heroine/Hero dislike? Check. Transparent murder mystery? Check? Weird hang-up about virginity? Check. Misunderstanding and/or refusal to say "I Love You" that keeps H&H apart until the very end? Check.

Wait Until Midnight passed a few hours that I might otherwise have spent watching soap operas in languages I don't speak, or arranging my sock drawer. If you have more substantive pastimes, Wait Until Midnight might prove to be a waste of your time.
Posted by sk :: 8/26/2005 :: 0 comments

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