Quick Review – Stranger – Megan Hart
Do you ever get the sense that a book has been published because the writer has a contract, and the publisher has a gap in their list? I’m getting that feeling a lot lately. Megan Hart’s Stranger, was neither that interesting, that sexy, nor that romantic. The quirky heroine is an undertaker. It was very cute when Six Feet Under first came out, not so much now. The hero is a Jew. Novel, but his six-five, big handed, huge penis self – not so much. Think I read that just yesterday in another book, or was it last week. And what in the heck is up with the hero/heroine having the exact same classic muscle car – his in better shape of course. Is this the new ‘trope’ of the moment? Read it in Sarah Mayberry’s All Over You, and again here. There it was a Corvette, I think, and here it was a Camaro. So if I meet a guy with a Lexus IS 250, does that mean we’re destined? Also not thrilled with the anti-intellectual bent of romance/erotica these days. In this book, I was quite turned off by the following:
I peered out the window at the neatly trimmed grass and hedges. The house was small, but this neighborhood was on of the nicest in the city, with well-kept homes and nice vehicles parked in front of them. Sam’s car, as well as it had been refurbished, looked out of place at the curb between the Mercedes and the Jaguar.
“My brother’s a lawyer and his lady’s some sort of fancy number cruncher,” Sam explained. He leaned over me to look out my window. ”Pretty soon they’ll start pumping out little nerdling. Ain’t that cute?”
Do people with nice cars, well-paying jobs, and nice homes deserve our scorn? And yes I know Sam is a character and those are his feelings, but this kind of thing is starting to bleed into romance far too often for me to assume a happy coincidence. Are characters with blue-collar jobs the only ‘real’ people. There can only be so many heirs and dukes. Heroines may have to step down off their high horse and agree that men with jobs that require some education and training can be heroes as well. I stopped reading another book the minute the scorn of the educated started. I think it’s going to be my new deal breaker.
