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lightreads ([personal profile] lightreads) wrote2012-09-27 10:40 pm

Frederica by Georgette Heyer

FredericaFrederica by Georgette Heyer

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Oi. Heyer, I love her, but I swear sometimes explaining her books is like, “the dinner was fantastic, wonderful melon gazpacho to start, just a shame about the dead slug I found in my salad course.” The slug in this metaphor being, you know, sexism.

Like this one – really fun set up with the sister in charge of her colorful siblings and the selfish nobleman who becomes entangled in their mishaps and how she and they are the making of him into a better man. And it’s one of those good ones where the hero and heroine spend a lot of time making eye contact in the middle of ridiculous situations and laughing themselves sick on the inside while everyone else shrieks and runs in circles.

Except that part where he becomes a better man or whatever? Yeah, that’s because he needs to. To take care of her. Like a woman needs. Which doesn't even make any sense! I mean, the thing that's most attractive to him is her self-sufficiency! I don't understand!

I need to brush the taste of slug out of my mouth.



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metaphortunate: (Default)

[personal profile] metaphortunate 2012-09-29 05:34 am (UTC)(link)
I need to post about this author I recently found, name of Courtney Milan? She writes romance novels. NGL, she's not up to Heyer's level of awesomeness, but... she has a stunning amount of LACK OF SLUGS. I mean, almost all her characters are still rich white people, so if you wanted to read about anything else it's probably not on, but...the sexism is so refreshingly absent! I don't want to say 100% absent, but it's really, really low! That makes up for a lot, it turns out!