Anthologies, trade descriptions and inconsistency

I've been very real-work-busy this week. Working every evening at home till late (remote access is a terrible thing) including the weekend. I'm now winding down. Writing a blog post helps get my mind off law - law in my head is not conducive to sleep. Romantic novels are more so.

In light of the work pressures, I've been reading an anthology this week. Each of the four novellas is just a hundred pages or so and all light reads. It's a Mills & Boon/ Harlequin anthology called Snowbound Together featuring stories by Lindsay McKenna, Cara Summers, Laura Marie Altom and Anne Stuart, all (yes, all) new-to-me authors. I'd heard of Anne Stuart of course, and she was the reason I bought the book, which was fifty pence in the Cancer Research charity shop. Bargain.

I've read three of the four so far. I started with Anne Stuart because I fancied trying her out. Her story was Star Light, Star Bright, the story of Angela and Brody. They had always carried secret torches for one another but hadn't seen one another for a decade and in the meantime had married other people, in the heroine's case, her childhood sweetheart (who had stood between them in the past). Both were now divorced - and in Brody's case, financially ruined - and back home to lick their wounds.

I really liked the story in a very uncomplicated way. It was just good. I liked the H/H and the set up and it all just worked. I sort of felt.... safe or comfortable or something in Stuart's hands. It was by no means a perfect story but I just came away from it feeling pleased. So now I've ordered a few of her old categories from Amazon, just to try them out.

Caught By Surprise by Laura Marie Altom was next. Another Brodie this time, albeit with an -ie. The heroine was Tabby. Again, the H/H had a past - teenage sweethearts until Tabby callously dumped Brodie leaving him to pin a "Success is the Best Revenge" poster on his wall and devote his life to his .....rural GP pratice? Tabby meanwhile had had a career in 'advertising', married a cardiologist and failed to find fulfilment in her six-bedroomed house and voluntary work.

I disliked this story. The characters were shallow and poorly drawn and in parts it was truly risible, like when totally unqualified Tabby acts as Brodie's nurse for an afternoon? Or attends a birth with him to hold the mother-to-be's hand and urge her to push?

"I can't!" [Kelly] cried, thrashing her head.

"Sure you can," Tabby crooned, holding Kelly's hand. "Just think how awsome it's going to be when you finally hold your baby in your arms."

If I was Kelly, I think I'd have said something rather blue in response to this strange unqualified woman in my house telling me in my moment of agony that of course I can push some more. But Kelly is evidently milder-mannered than me. Her response?

"O-okay. I- I think I can."

The ending made me roll my eyes.

I've not read the Cara Summers story yet and before I talk about A Healing Spirit by Lindsay McKenna, I'll pause here to say I'm disgruntled by the title of this anthology: Snowbound Together. What do you assume from such a title?

I'm thinking something like this. With the H/H inside.

Like in Simply Unforgettable by Mary Balogh for instance. Or that nice Sandra Marton category I once read where the H/H - an estranged couple - go up to their cabin for xmas, each believing the other won't be there. Or the fabulous Duel of Desire by Charlotte Lamb which has the H/H not being snowed-in, but being trapped in a house in France by a flood and having to live upstairs for a few days eating out of tins.

Well, maybe Ms Summers will come through for me, but so far, there have been NO SNOW-INS in this anthology. Not a one. Admittedly, in the Anne Stuart, Angela walks through a snowstorm to get to Brody but no actual being trapped together.

So, that was a disappointment.

But onto the Lindsay McKenna story, which was really the reason I'm writing this post.

I googled Ms McKenna just before I started this post and discovered she has published many books - I hadn't heard her name before but then she seems to write a lot of military romances which are very much not my thing, so that probably explains it. This story started with a description of an incident featuring the heroine in Afghanistan (she is a pilot involved in a crash in which all her comrades die) but all the rest of the story takes place on a native American reservation.

Tahcha has gone home to recover from her mental wounds. Her childhood sweetheart (yes, again!) is now a medicine man on the reservation, Storm Black Horse. Her grandmother sends her to Storm to be healed and the two rediscover their long-ago love. My experience of reading this story was strange.

I was attracted to a number of things about the story. I liked the fact that it was set on a reservation and that it depicted a culture that I'm not familiar with that is very unlike anything I've read before in a category. In particular, the lack of materialism was very notable. The hero isn't depicted as particularly financially successful and no attention at all is paid to material things. This almost made me notice by omission how prevalent these things are in other categories I've read.

SPOILER AHEAD. The hero turns out (though any detail is skated over) to have been in an abusive marriage where he has been the victim. We don't learn whether the abuse was emotional or physical or even really how it has affected him, but it was sufficiently surprising to get my attention.

Whilst the hero is large and handsome and physically imposing, his strongest appeal for the heroine seems to be his kindness and emotional strength (although, being picky, how she saw him and how I saw him didn't really match up).

There is a very strong emphasis on native American culture and religion in the story. Storm is a medicine man and his powers are depicted as both genuine and successful. The story of Tahcha's healing at Storm's hands is presented as something that happens in fact and there are numerous didactory passages extolling the rightness of their beliefs:

"I still don't feel right, Storm. There's so much energy moving around inside me. It's hard to explain." She cocked her head and studied him. "Is this normal?"

"Yes, it is."

"I'm glad. I didn't know a person could lose part of their spirit."

"When shocking events occur, it happens. The worse the shock, the more you lose."...

..."I can't imagine how people go around trying to survive after something like that.... How do they do without a medicine person like yourself helping them reclaim that lost part of themselves?".....

..... "They don't. Their lives are shortened because they are not whole....."

There's quite a lot of this sort of thing in a short novella of only 100 pages. As I was reading this, I wasn't massively troubled by it, although it did begin to grate more the nearer I got to the end. Even so, it was only once I'd finished the story that I reflected that if passages like the one above had been about Christian faith-healing, I'd have strongly objected to them.

Inconsistency? Or a different standard for a religion that is not so organised/ evangelical?

At a more general level, this story didn't really work for me for two reasons: there was a distinct lack of conflict and the author's style - at least in this story - tended towards the info-dump. For example, in an exhange between the heroine and her grandmother near the start of the story:

"What's [the medicine man's] name?"

.... "Keehonsheca."

Shock bolted through Tahcha and she reared back. "What?"

"You heard me. Keehonsheca. Storm Black Horse. He's no stranger to you. As young children you were playmates. And when you reached your teens you fell in love - remember? He left the reservation, too, but came home a few years ago after serving in the military. Home to study the ways of healing medicine, because he's descended from a line of well-respected medicine men and women...."

All of which information, Tahcha can be presumed to have already, I'd have thought.

And yet, despite all these gripes, I was compelled to finish this story - and quickly - and I was really drawn by the depiction of a culture that the characters hold as their dominant culture -and that is so different from what I normally read about. And I did like the kind, slightly reserved hero. Those aspects of the story felt different and refreshing. And made me long for more.

More and better.