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The Lass Wore Black (2013)

by Karen Ranney(Favorite Author)

3.67 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0062027808 (ISBN13: 9780062027801)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Avon

review 1: There were several nice things about this historical romance that sets it apart from what people expect from "standard fare" romance. (Sorry if anything seems like a spoiler.)1. The heroine is not only not beautiful (she was) but disfigured from an accident: she has a bad leg that makes it difficult to walk, a hand that isn't fully functional, and heavy facial scarring. There is no "it's all in her head" about this or "magical surgery makes it all better". 2. The heroine has had previous sexual partners and there is no need for her to justify it with anyone or somehow apologize to the hero. It's not "well I was married to an older man who was awful and died" or "I was raped or sold into a brothel" or anything similar. The hero doesn't show any signs of jealousy or les... moresening of her value/virtue in his eyes. She's also not punished for her previous encounters. She has three former partners and only one of them turns on her.3. There is no one pressuring her to get married or find her one true love. No father/uncle pushing for a match. No "I found my happiness in a previous volume, so be just like me" characters running around telling her about how she needs to settle down. No one is trying to play matchmaker.4. The hero doesn't do anything particularly asshatty. He doesn't try to force himself on her, trick her into bed, punish her for previous sexual experience, force her to see his love/value, kidnap her because she disagrees with him, or do any of the silliness that is sometimes portrayed as "alpha male true love".5. In fact a lot of the book is just as focused on helping her heal and see there is more to life then her injuries (and that there are a lot of people way worse off) as the two of them falling in love. There is a good sense that falling in love isn't the only important thing that happens to her and that if he died or if they hadn't ended up together, she still would be okay because she got some perspective and personal growth.
review 2: There is much about this book that I really, really liked:1. The gender-flip of the "scarred hero" trope. Catriona has been scarred/disfigured in a terrible carriage accident and now must learn how to get along without beauty, which had been her defining feature. Physical allure is more important to women then men, beauty more critical to women's identity and social value, so it was a thought-provoking reversal of a fairly standard plot device.2. Catriona was not a virgin. More than the loss of her beauty, she mourned the loss of passion and feared no man would ever want to be intimate with her. I found it refreshing that she recognized that she'd been bad by society's standards, but knew that if she'd followed the rules, she would never have known sexual fulfillment. A sexually-liberated heroine is a rare treat in historical romance.3. A really, chillingly evil villain. I'm not usually a fan of murder-mystery subplots in romance novels, but this wasn't a mystery: the reader knows from the start who the bad guy is, and the scenes written from his perspective are gut-churningly dark. 4. Secondary characters, like Mark's grandfather and his housekeeper, were really unique and interesting. Often characters like these fade into the background; I appreciate that here, even minor characters were vividly drawn. Other things about this book I didn't enjoy so much:1. The pacing of the plot and flow of the dialogue was choppy/uneven. Parts of this book dragged, and parts went so fast they were hard to follow. A few times I had to re-read a few pages because I lost the flow of the narrative. Sometimes dialogue didn't make sense. This story is unique enough that I think if someone else had written it, I'd give it five stars, but I found Ms. Ranney's narrative style clunky and unwieldy.2. Neither hero nor heroine were very likeable. Mark is busy, self-righteous, judgmental, and kind of self-absorbed. At the start of the novel, he is betrothed to another young woman, Anne. Though he has not formally declared his intention to marry her, he knows his behavior, public and private, has given the impression that they have an understanding. When he begins to fall for Catriona, he blows off the blameless Anne with a brutal lack of delicacy, tact, or remorse.3. Catriona is selfish and vain, though given her injuries and physical and emotional pain, her self-pity is understandable, if tedious to read. More than Mark, she exhibits substantial character growth over the course of the novel. less

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