Bound by desire...

I love my husband. He buys me books!
I told him I really was enjoying the Pink Carnation series by Lauren Willig. He told me to send him the website with her books (naturally I sent him to her homepage) and this past Saturday, three more of her novels arrived in the mail! He’s such a sweetheart!

I started The Deception of the Emerald Ring on Saturday and finished it yesterday (Sunday). While I still enjoyed the story, for the first time I found myself much more interested in the researcher’s present-day story than in the account of the protagonist and her erstwhile love interest. I’m afraid there are some writing techniques that are becoming repetitive in those plot lines.

No, what started out as a clever device to hook the reader into the main story has now become a full-fledged story in an of its own right. I’m glad I’m reading the books in order so I can see the development of the framing storyteller because I’m getting quite interested in her. I like Eloise's saucy insouciance, her self-doubt, her over-analyzing of all things Colin.

Usually the protagonist’s story and the framer’s story intertwine quite nicely. In this novel, however, there is very little to tie either the storys’ events or characters to one another. It almost seems as if Ms. Willig put the two stories on playing cards divided into two piles, and then shuffled them together. Wherever the framing story fell, is where it fit into the larger novel. Definitely disconcerting to go back and forth without any thread of similarity to lead the way.

Of course, none of this will stop me from reading the rest of the books!

Play safe :)
Diana