Somebody kidnappable

Somebody Wonderful by Kate Rothwell

It is true that I made Karen read this book first. Because, you know, my wife’s a chick, forty tarantulas notwithstanding, and chicks know romance. “Here, you read this,” I said, and Karen plowed through it in a day.

It’s also true I only picked up Somebody Wonderful to see if Kate knew how to write something other than a blog. By the third or fourth page, I was in a state approaching awe. I was reading a romance . . . and I liked it!

Finally, it is true that I would be reluctant to give a friend’s book anything but a glowing report. So you’re probably wondering if you can trust this review.

You’d do better to wonder about the worth of a review written by a guy who has only ever read two other romances, both of which had paranormal mishegas — Holly Lisle’s Last Girl Dancing, and Lilith Saintcrow’s The Society. Despite my shameless pandering to the romance crowd, I’m really a romance virgin.

Or, you know, whatever it is you call those girls who do it a few times and then wear white gowns at their weddings.

I’m trying, really trying, to figure out why I liked Somebody Wonderful. In my post What this boy wants from a romance novel, I wrote:

If I’m going to read a romance, I want it to be about romance. If I want a crime novel, I’ll read a crime novel. If I want something historically accurate, I’ll read Jane Austen. Give me a contemporary woman I can root for and I’m yours.

Yet, here I am enjoying a historical romance. Isn’t that what you call it? Somebody Wonderful is set in Tammany Hall-era New York City sometime around the turn of the 20th Century. Mick McCann is an Irish cop who tries to be as honest as he can be despite the rampant corruption of the police department. Timona Calverson is the daughter of a wealthy British eccentric, a somewhat senile coot who travels the globe trying to dig up dinosaur bones but finding gems and primo real estate instead. While photographing buildings in New York, Timona is mugged and taken to a brothel, from which she handily escapes, only to fall in among street thugs. That’s when Mick shows up to rescue her on page one.

At first, Mick thinks she’s a boy, since she’s dressed in boy’s clothing, but he rapidly discovers her curves. He takes her back to his shabby apartment, thinking to nurse her back to health and send her on her way. But when Timona lays eyes on Mick, she knows this is the man she will marry. Trouble is, she has to convince Mick.

Kate has a wry, humorous style, which Karen tells me is a great rarity for the traditional romance crowd. The story also impressed Karen because the two main characters are 100% good, and yet they are still interesting. They’re certainly well rounded, these two, and likable. The fact that one or the other of them always manages to come up with a roadblock to their happiness could have been ridiculous, but Kate turns it around and milks it for humor — Timona and Mick begin keeping track of each other’s abortive marriage proposals. It’s as if Kate knows it’s a silly ploy, but her characters know it, too, so we’re all in on the joke. The same goes for Timona’s unfortunate tendency to be kidnapped. It’s ridiculous, but the characters admit as much to one another.
Fine supporting characters include Timona’s brother Griffin and the Calverson clan’s cook, Araminta, who I gather show up in the sequel. Less successful is the villain, a two-dimensional upper class twit who, of course, turns out to be a brigand as well. Two dimensional or not, he was thoroughly loathesome, so I felt disappointed when Kate gave him his comeuppance off camera (Timona’s unconscious when it happens). Now, come on, Kate. We need to see Mick charging in and kicking some ass, okay?

While I’m busy finding fault, I’ll add that not enough bad stuff happens to Mick and Timona. Maybe I’m just thinking about Tamara Siler Jones’s recent post on conflict. While I wouldn’t want to see Timona and Mick showered with excrement as Tambo suggests, I did want to see more of a struggle for them to stay together.

On the other hand, I loathe artificial roadblocks that pull the protagonists apart. The conflicts which arise in Somebody Wonderful stem naturally from the story, at least up until the climax, when the villain’s villainy explodes with excessive villainousnessness. But Karen tells me that most romance novels have far more preposterous plot developments than this, and she was pleasantly surprised by the straightforward denouement.

I liked Somebody Wonderful. I really did. Timona is a fascinating character, reminiscent of Joanna Drayton (the love interest in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner), in that she is race-blind; but Timona is class-blind, too, usually whip-smart, and willful as can be, not an airhead like Joanna Drayton.

My verdict: I’d do her.
D.

Walnut, February 19, 2006. Category: Books 'n' Authors.

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