Title: Have Glass Slippers, Will Travel
Author: Lisa Cach
Publication Info:
Genre: Contemporary Romance/chick lit
Rating: <3 <3 <3

Cinderella is every little girl’s fantasy. The fairytale is not about marrying money and being rich, however, it’s about finding true love in a man who sees the real, compassionate, strong, beautiful woman beneath the facade of dirt and servitude. Eloisa James wrote a lovely article on the use of the Cinderella story in romance novels, most of which focus on the transformative nature of the story. Personally I’ve read a few that leave me with a “he likes her for her looks” icky feeling, but since I can’t remember any of the names of these we’ll just fugettaboutit. (Needless to say, I have a high bar for judging Cinderella stories – they need to be about self empowerment.) Have Glass Slippers, Will Travel happily satisfies this ideal and is humorous to boot.

Kati Orville is an out-of-work tech writer from Seattle (whoot!). She adopts Oprah as her personal mentor and has a series of very funny dreams in which Oprah, actor Ian Richardson, and an iguana show her the path to true happiness. (A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you’re fast asleep…) Kati decides what she wants is the fairytale: to marry royalty and live in a palace. She flies to London to find her dream, crashing a society wedding, meeting the queen at the Ascot, and gracing the tabloids in full glory in the process. Unfortunately she finds herself not attracted to the polished but unctuous Viscount Stanley, but to his sloppy organic farmer cousin Will Eland. Can money buy happiness? Is love enough to survive a life of poverty? She must discover for herself if what she really wants is the castle or the true love of finding the prince of her heart. (Guess which one she picks?)

The book is not subtle in addressing the questions of true happiness and the value of money and the secondary characters of Trevor and Helena are one-dimensional, but it’s delightfully charming non-the-less. Kati and Will are both quirky and endearing. I recommend this book to anyone looking for a light hearted read and certainly anyone who likes Cinderella.

Title: Seducing the Spy
Author: Celeste Bradley
Series: The Royal Four Series, Book #4
Publication Info: St. Martin’s Press, August 2006
Genre: Regency Romance
Rating: <3 <3 <3

Five years ago Lady Alicia Lawrence falls from grace and is abandoned by family and friends in a scandal, earning her the reputation of a liar and the moniker “Lady Al-three-cia”. She overhears a plot to kidnap the Prince Regent and seeks out Lord Stanton Wyndham. As a member of the secret Royal Four spies who run the country, Wyndham is honor-bound to investigate, even though his magic power of lie-detection doesn’t work on Alicia. She poses as his mistress to go to a scandalous orgy house party in the country where the kidnapping is supposed to take place so that she can identify the man whom she overheard plotting. Wyndham suspects her claims are just a ploy to regain entrance into society after five years of poverty. Even after Alicia saves the day and the hero’s life, proving her truthfulness, he still doesn’t reform. But of course, at the very end they get married and live Happily Ever After, as all good Romance Novel protagonists should.

Let me start off by saying that the heroine, Alicia, is my absolute favorite character in recent memory. I adore her. She is everything I wish I could be: smart, funny, sexy, and confident. Ms. Bradley’s writing is fabulous. The dialog is sharp. I was fully prepared to give the book five hearts, an almost unheard of score, but for the hero. He is an Ass. The bright, spunky, freedom-loving heroine deserves so much better. I liked him at first, but he never grovels at the heroine’s feet begging forgiveness for his crappy behavior.

What I desire in a work of fiction is for the protagonist to be challenged and ultimately reborn as a new, better, stronger character because of his journey through the book. He must take the Hero’s Journey as Joseph Campbell so succinctly puts it. In a Romance Novel the transformative power that acts on, challenges, and remakes the hero and heroine is love. Both should realize and embrace new Truths during the book. This transformative process of love is expressed beautifully in Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet (1923):

“For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth…. All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart. But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing floor, Into a seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.”

In my humble opinion, Wyndham needs to be thrashed more by the transformative process of love and exhibit a greater reformation afterwards. Instead, he writes a simple letter to the Heroine admitting his love, and she easily forgives him. He needs to GROVEL. Still, the book earns three hearts for the fabulous heroine and the great writing style. I look forward to feasting on Ms. Bradley’s other books!