Review: The problem with Heros who are insensitive pigs
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 06 16, 2014
I appreciate that it takes a lot of effort to write a book and I admire the courage to publish that book.  The problem is that when you're writing a romance,  there needs to BE a romance.  This is a bit spoilery so please be warned.....Essentially the hero and heroine fall in love,  get married, get separated and four years later the heroine comes back from supposed death with a child but the hero has met someone else and is wanting to marry her.  Okay,  this is a workable trope and has been done to good effect before - just not in this case.  The Hero doesn't want the heroine back,  he is in love with the new woman.  The hero is a complete and utter jerk to the heroine including using the heroine as a substitute sex partner for the woman he really wants.Unfortunately,  neither the Hero nor the heroine conveniently dies or gets abducted by aliens.  Instead there is a suspense sub-plot about a crazy obsessed guy who wants the heroine and her treasure.  So with a half-hearted rescue scene and a half-hearted Hero speech about he REALLY loved the heroine all along and was just superficial with the new love we get a very, very half-hearted HEA after a ton of angst and heartbreak on the heroine's part, (the angst is well written though).Here is the thing about angst,  anybody can write good angst,  the world is full of heartbreak with lovers unfairly and unjustly parted.  Here is another thing about angst,  if the cause of angst is the rejection of the loving wedded heroine by the hero she is wedded to in a romance novel,  there had better be some massive redemption on the hero's part to win back said heroine.When a hero is a jerk,  you have to redeem him with a grand gesture in an on his knees, heart-blood on the floor type manner.  When this isn't done, all the glorious angst for the preceding 100 pages has been in vain, cause the HEA is just unbelievable.  Even if you're doing a bodice ripper,  you have to have a redemption - the heroine gets a lot more leeway with other men as well, but that is another story line for another time.This is supposed to be a romance,  a reader is supposed to finish the story with a renewed faith in the power of love conquering all and it just did not happen here.  If a hero calls out another woman's name when he is intimate with the heroine,  there needs to be massive apologies accompanied by equally massive gifts of the Harry Winston type -  or - if all else fails,  a sudden remembering of alien abduction with a hideous mind probe that temporarily erased the deep and true love the hero felt for the heroine due to the trauma of the situation.  This story had none of that.For primers on the redemption of a badly erring hero I recommendLady Gallantand the far darkerTo Have and to Hold: (Intermix) (A Wyckerley Novel)- both of which are tutorials on proper hero angst driven redemptions for all historical readers.What should have a been a re-wooing of the betrayed heroine turns into a dreary, duty bound acceptance of the hero's responsibilities because he DID marry her and that IS his son. The hero sorta explains his love for the new woman as ephemeral infatuation (rather unconvincingly), because hey--the heroine is the wife he is stuck with and he wants to sleep with her again a get a somewhat passionate response.  No one wants a potato in bed, so the hero made a kinda effort to alleviate that problem.The heroine, who never doubts her love, (just his and rightly so),  dutifully accepts that she will always be second best because essentially she has nowhere else to go.  This isn't a romance where love conquers all,  this is a fair attempt at historical suspense with two people who are stuck with each other cause they are married.  I would have felt better had she killed one them off or at least had an alien abduction with a brain transplant.