I’ve read more romance novels in the past couple years than I had since middle school (thank you, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books). Some of them have become favorites, but a large number of them, even though well-written, don’t do anything for me. This book is helping me articulate why.

There are a lot of really good things in this book. Angel and Hawk are interesting characters, as are the secondary characters. The descriptions of fishing and of stained glass work are fascinating. The storyline is generally plausible; the characters’ interactions make sense based on their histories. I kept reading because I wanted to see how the couple would overcome their differences and get together.

So what don’t I like about it? I don’t like reading characters when they’re thinking excessively about their emotions. I don’t like the author’s telling me what the character feels instead of showing me. I especially get annoyed by passages to the effect of “she instinctively knew that he felt more for her than he was showing”. It drives me up the wall when the author says, “See? Here’s what this character’s feeling. You in any doubt? Okay, I’ll reiterate!”. And in the romance genre, these things are acceptable parts of the style, so I run into a lot of books that annoy me.

The romance authors I enjoy the most seem to be the ones who do the least of this, who are writing a story about a relationship but showing me the growing love between the leads rather than insisting that the love is there. And when the characters think about their feelings at all, they do it in unique voices; they sound like themselves, not like any of a hundred other characters. Lowell has a few passages where Angel thinks of her feelings in terms of stained glass or Hawk in hunting metaphors, and that works for me, but when they think in more generic terms, I start skimming. That’s probably the biggest thing right there, actually. If your characters must spend paragraphs being introspective, at least make them think in their own voices, not thoughts that could be cut and pasted into another novel without editing. ( )

Angel will do anything for Derry, even set aside her art to stand in for him, showing off their home to its best advantage for a real estate tycoon. Smashed, heart, body and soul by a tragic accident, she's put the pieces of her life back together and learned to focus on the sunshine - for her, life is means both beauty and risk.

Real estate magnate Miles Hawkins is a hard man whose ingrained distrust of women makes him suspect Angel's motives immediately. Convinced she's nothing but a soft, clever, but wholly attractive bundle of sex and lies, he sets out to capture her attention, never realizing Angel's giving her heart.

Can a man with no trust learn quickly enough that a woman with no lies is easily broken? Or will what they could have had be lost forever in his failure to beauty before it's gone...

I reread this from time to time - it's a bit dated now, but Lowell's characters are captivating. ( )

I have a hard time reviewing romances because I really don't read them that often. One thing I noticed about this book is that it started exactly how the other Elizabeth Lowell book I've read started: The main man and woman meet each other right off the bat and hate each other but have instant chemistry. This was alright I guess, as far as romances go. I got a little tired of the constant references to one being an angel and the other a hawk. ( )

The story and situation had promise, but it needed a different literary approach (and therefore a different intended reader). The transformation of Hawk was too facile. The illustration of the transformation needed more than euphemistic sex writing. ( )

Stained glass art
Fishing

PACING: fast paced; quickly revealed; strong dialogue; CHARACTERIZATION: most important element; immediately recognized; central couple; emotional involvement -- yo-yo; predictable; STORYLINE: character-centered; predictable; resolved ending; fairly sexually explicit; FRAME: hard-edged; melodramatic; romanticized reality; contemporary; dated; poetic/lyrical language about colour and art ( )