Updating Beauty and the Beast

Reading Challenge: June 18 - Romance Classics (classic book, classic author, classic trope/theme etc.)

Running Scarred

by Jackie Williams
Stars: 2

I love variations on the Beauty and the Beast theme.  For that reason, I thought Jackie Williams' Running Scarred sounded like fun.

First of all, she's British, and I thought a British take on the universal fairytale would be interesting.  Secondly, her hero, Patrick Reeves--nicknamed Superman because of the film actor's last name--is an British soldier who was disfigured when a bomb blew up unexpectedly, which is a modern twist on the Beast idea. 

As can be imagined, Patrick is bitter, not just about the fact that his comrades died and that he lost a leg and has burn scars on his face and body, but also because his wife of ten years left him when she saw him in the hospital.

Patrick now lives in the gardener's cottage on the grounds of a decayed French chateau away from everyone but the nearby villagers.  His peace is disturbed one night when beautiful British Ellen tromps through the woods near his cottage as she stomps away from her fiancé.

Multi-millionaire Ellen has recently discovered that her fiancé doesn't love her and has been using her to get control of her fortune.  While this is disturbing, Ellen has more important things on her mind. 

She's searching for a building to buy in order to turn it into a luxury resort hotel where wounded British veterans, their families, and friends can come for vacation without outsiders staring at them.  She plans for her brother and his friends, all wounded veterans, to help her vet the place once she's made repairs and added upgrades.

It's a wonderful premise.  Unfortunately, questions abound.  These are just a very few I had while reading the book:

* Why does Ellen decide to buy this chateau which has almost no usable rooms in it and which is a crumbling shell?  Surely, there are secluded houses that are in better repair in both England and France.  Her attraction to Patrick can't be that strong after a few hours seeing him one night.

* After Patrick finds out that Ellen's brother is a double amputee and the brother's friends are also wounded veterans, why does Patrick still battle Ellen and her attraction to him?  At times he comes off as churlish rather than charming.  And the smell of a real man and the sight of Patrick's broad shoulders, reasons why Ellen begins to love him, don't seem enough to attract anyone.

* Why does it take Ellen so long to figure out her fiancé just wants her money?  She's already bought a Spanish resort that he talked her into and, against her wishes, let him put his name on the deeds.  She also bought her own engagement ring and just about everything else in their relationship.  How dense can one woman be?

Those are only three of the many questions running around in my head as I read the book.  I wanted so much to like it since I love the Beauty and the Beast premise, but this book didn't do it for me at all, despite having such a promising contemporary Beast.

Hopefully I'll find a more compelling and less troubling use of the old fairytale in the future.

More about Jed and Max

From my review of Awake and Alive by Garrett Leigh posted today at The Romance Reviews:

This very short sequel to Only Love cements the relationship between Jed Cooper and Max O'Dair and gives a tiny glimpse into their future life.

In the previous book, Jed returned home to live with his brother, sister-in-law, and nieces only to find that he needed much more peace and quiet than their chaotic household provided. Consequently, Jed moved to the countryside with his sister-in-law's brother Max, an epileptic whose service dog Flo rules the roost.

At the end of the book, Jed's stomach condition, a result of his military service, became critical and he underwent successful surgery to cure it.

This novella opens with Jed recuperating after the surgery and wondering what he is going to do with the rest of his life, the civilian years he hasn't planned. Fortunately, Jed has accumulated marketable skills during his military career, the most practical being his fluency in foreign languages.
Read the rest of the review at The Romance Reviews.

A Hard Look at a Conspiracy Romance

Hard as It Gets, the first of the Hard Ink series finds the adult daughter of a Special Forces colonel who led his men into an ambush pairing up with the men who survived the set-up in order to find her abducted brother in this repetitious thriller.

Baltimore nurse Becca Merritt is alarmed when her brother Charlie goes missing, and when she visits his apartment, she finds his place ransacked.

Charlie has told her to get in touch with someone at the Hard Ink tattoo parlor should anything happen to him. There she meets tattoo artist Nick Rixey, who recently served under her father, and asks Nick to help her locate her brother. Although wounded veteran Nick despises Frank Merritt - who betrayed him and the rest of the men under his command - Nick grudgingly agrees to help Becca.

Things go from bad to worse as Becca's house is also ransacked and they discover after she reports the break-ins to the police that all official record of her reports about her brother's disappearance and the destruction of both their places has been erased. Then Becca is attacked at the hospital where she works and afterward Charlie's little finger is sent to her. Knowing that he needs help in rescuing Charlie, Nick calls the other surviving members of her father's team, and they work to unravel what Charlie knows and how to get him back.

Becca is an interesting combination of scared and brave, not really wanting to trust Nick and his wounded crew and not knowing that her father set them up. She's the superwoman to Nick's classic superman, the soldier who plans and fights extra competently on little sleep and even less food. It definitely helps that Becca is a nurse, especially when she needs to bandage up Nick and his crew or when Charlie's finger is sent to her, which, while scaring her, also incites her. It's also fortunate that she knows how to defend herself and use a gun. Even with all these attributes, however, she still needs Nick's help because - just like Charlie hinted - there is a conspiracy surrounding them.

Read the rest of my review at All About Books.