Helpful Score: 9
As book reviews go, this one is actually one of the more difficult ones I've tried to write. I say that not because I have any reservations about whether or not I liked this book - no contest there, I totally loved it. The difficulty stems more from trying to describe a very intricate plot, explain exactly why I liked it, and trying to cram all of it into a readable & *marginally* concise review:P
Everyone, and most especially romance readers, has some sort of preconception - be it literary or cinematically based - regarding the Robin Hood legend and the familiar characters many of us have known and loved since childhood. For me, it was Erroll Flynn in those impossibly gay green tights, which didn't seem so impossibly gay when I was 10 years old and suffering from a major crush on a guy who I later found out (much to my annoyance) died about a year before I was even born:P What a bummer. Erroll was hawt. When Kevin Costner did Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves back in 1991, I was in near ecstasies. I certainly thought Kevin was hawt at the time, so this worked for me. Coincidentally, Marsha Canham released the first book in her Robin Hood trilogy: Through A Dark Mist, later that same year, and though I discovered them some years later, anything I have read since that deals with the Robin Hood legend has had that series to measure up to as well. Enter Carrie Lofty and What A Scoundrel Wants...
Lofty doesn't attempt anything so ambitious as rewriting her own version of the Robin Hood legend. A wise move for a new author, in my opinion. What she did instead was write something that could respectably dovetail with almost every other popular adaptation of Robin Hood - most especially with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. What A Scoundrel Wants could very nearly pick right up where the film leaves off.
Will Scarlet is the hero of this tale, and rest assured, flawed though he may well be, Lofty's Will is very much a hero. Beta male and rebellious as ever about building a life in the shadow of Robin Hood (his uncle in this case), he sets out to make a life of wine, women & song for himself, employed by the new sheriff of Nottingham. As sheriffs go, the new guy is actually quite a bit nastier than Alan Rickman was in Prince of Thieves, and not nearly as entertaining.
Unfortunately for Will, he is also set up to be the patsy in one of the sheriff's nefarious plots, and in the process of extricating himself from a very sticky and life-threatening situation, he comes to the aid of a lady in distress (another potential patsy), the heroine, Meg of Keyworth. Meg is a very brilliant and gifted alchemist, shunned by the local populace as being a mad witch. She's blind due to a childhood illness (meningitis), stubborn & prickly in a way that other romance heroines tend to merely flirt with being, and she was on her way to Nottingham to rescue her sister Ada from gaol, where she has been held since Will arrested her on the sheriff's behalf a few days previously. She has also discovered how to create counterfeit emeralds, which her sister was arrested attempting to sell.
Will rescues Meg and leads her off into the forest, thinking she can clear him from any wrongdoing in the murder of a local nobleman. Once he realizes she's blind, and then discovers her identity, he offers to lead her to Nottingham himself, thinking he can somehow barter her to clear himself. Upon discovering Will's identity, Meg realizes that he's the man who arrested her sister and that she can't trust him, and she sets out to lose him.
In the process of tending to Will's injuries, Meg finds herself very strongly attracted to Will, and they have a brief and very unexpected sexual encounter. She sedates him & slinks away, because she knows she can't trust him or herself around him. They are quickly reunited however, when Will is captured by a band of outlaw foresters, led by a thief & scoundrel named Hugo, who seems to have taken it upon himself to fill the vacant shoes of Robin Hood. In a nutshell, Hugo is a swine, and Meg stumbles across the outlaws in the process of hanging Will and the murdered local nobleman's son, who they captured in the forest. Meg persuades Hugo - who she has a "history" with - to release Will and the nobleman, and they set out once again to rescue Ada. Meg isn't pleased to be back with Will, but recognizing that he has saved her life more than once, she resolves to use him in her quest to free her sister, and then part company with him at the earliest opportunity. Will realizes by now that Meg is the one who made the counterfeit emeralds, and that he can use her to keep his neck out of the hangman's noose. And, of course, during all of this mutual plotting and planning Meg and Will are *still* very attracted to each other...
Sound complicated? It is. But it works well in terms of building suspense and a fair degree of sexual tension between the H&H. The external conflict keeps Meg & Will together and forced to depend on one another, and in the process allows their relationship a chance to develop. It's rocky and very mutually self-serving at first, but both characters develop well in the process, as their initial impressions of each other begin to change. Meg continues to be stubborn and more than a little annoying, but when Will comes through for her when it really counts, she realizes just exactly what sort of man he is - he's a hero.
I can't say that everyone is going to appreciate Meg as a heroine. I found her very difficult to warm to at first myself. Will is no saint either though, and in terms of what his brain tells him he should do in the interests of self-preservation, Meg isn't far off the mark when it comes to character assessment. From the moment that he encounters her however, he never actually does take the easy road and act in his own self-interest. It's not quite the complete journey to accepting himself as a noble and self-sacrificing hero; his illustrious uncle's equal in any way. But he's on the right track and he does get there eventually, once he's able to face Robin again and they can finally resolve past differences and misunderstandings.
And Robin Hood, once he does arrive in the story, is the perfect compliment to Will as a brother-in-arms, rather than as a cardboard prop, or as a rival for Will's place as the hero of this story. Lofty manages to write him, his contribution to resolving the external conflict, and his oftentimes troubled relationship with Will in such a way as to lose nothing of his larger than life heroic character, nor does she allow him to upstage Will. In other words, Robin Hood has more than just a walk-on role in the story, but from beginning to end, Will Scarlet is the hero.
I very highly recommend this story, especially to historical lovers who enjoy highly visual action/adventure tales. Lofty can swashbuckle with the best of them, IMO. She has a very unique talent for taking something that should feel as familiar as an old shoe, and turning it into something original and unexpected. Her love scenes are at once steamy and so tender they'll curl your toes, her characters multi-faceted and interesting - even when they are less than perfect, sometimes downright despicable. I had a little difficulty with getting into their heads and fully understanding what exactly they thought they were doing at times, but always felt like I was in very capable hands with this author, and that everything would come together in the end. And it did, very well. Almost surprisingly well, from my point of view. I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did. The cover & title don't do it justice, in my opinion, but like the characters, it's what's inside that counts:)
Grade: A-
Sensuality Rating: R
Everyone, and most especially romance readers, has some sort of preconception - be it literary or cinematically based - regarding the Robin Hood legend and the familiar characters many of us have known and loved since childhood. For me, it was Erroll Flynn in those impossibly gay green tights, which didn't seem so impossibly gay when I was 10 years old and suffering from a major crush on a guy who I later found out (much to my annoyance) died about a year before I was even born:P What a bummer. Erroll was hawt. When Kevin Costner did Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves back in 1991, I was in near ecstasies. I certainly thought Kevin was hawt at the time, so this worked for me. Coincidentally, Marsha Canham released the first book in her Robin Hood trilogy: Through A Dark Mist, later that same year, and though I discovered them some years later, anything I have read since that deals with the Robin Hood legend has had that series to measure up to as well. Enter Carrie Lofty and What A Scoundrel Wants...
Lofty doesn't attempt anything so ambitious as rewriting her own version of the Robin Hood legend. A wise move for a new author, in my opinion. What she did instead was write something that could respectably dovetail with almost every other popular adaptation of Robin Hood - most especially with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. What A Scoundrel Wants could very nearly pick right up where the film leaves off.
Will Scarlet is the hero of this tale, and rest assured, flawed though he may well be, Lofty's Will is very much a hero. Beta male and rebellious as ever about building a life in the shadow of Robin Hood (his uncle in this case), he sets out to make a life of wine, women & song for himself, employed by the new sheriff of Nottingham. As sheriffs go, the new guy is actually quite a bit nastier than Alan Rickman was in Prince of Thieves, and not nearly as entertaining.
Unfortunately for Will, he is also set up to be the patsy in one of the sheriff's nefarious plots, and in the process of extricating himself from a very sticky and life-threatening situation, he comes to the aid of a lady in distress (another potential patsy), the heroine, Meg of Keyworth. Meg is a very brilliant and gifted alchemist, shunned by the local populace as being a mad witch. She's blind due to a childhood illness (meningitis), stubborn & prickly in a way that other romance heroines tend to merely flirt with being, and she was on her way to Nottingham to rescue her sister Ada from gaol, where she has been held since Will arrested her on the sheriff's behalf a few days previously. She has also discovered how to create counterfeit emeralds, which her sister was arrested attempting to sell.
Will rescues Meg and leads her off into the forest, thinking she can clear him from any wrongdoing in the murder of a local nobleman. Once he realizes she's blind, and then discovers her identity, he offers to lead her to Nottingham himself, thinking he can somehow barter her to clear himself. Upon discovering Will's identity, Meg realizes that he's the man who arrested her sister and that she can't trust him, and she sets out to lose him.
In the process of tending to Will's injuries, Meg finds herself very strongly attracted to Will, and they have a brief and very unexpected sexual encounter. She sedates him & slinks away, because she knows she can't trust him or herself around him. They are quickly reunited however, when Will is captured by a band of outlaw foresters, led by a thief & scoundrel named Hugo, who seems to have taken it upon himself to fill the vacant shoes of Robin Hood. In a nutshell, Hugo is a swine, and Meg stumbles across the outlaws in the process of hanging Will and the murdered local nobleman's son, who they captured in the forest. Meg persuades Hugo - who she has a "history" with - to release Will and the nobleman, and they set out once again to rescue Ada. Meg isn't pleased to be back with Will, but recognizing that he has saved her life more than once, she resolves to use him in her quest to free her sister, and then part company with him at the earliest opportunity. Will realizes by now that Meg is the one who made the counterfeit emeralds, and that he can use her to keep his neck out of the hangman's noose. And, of course, during all of this mutual plotting and planning Meg and Will are *still* very attracted to each other...
Sound complicated? It is. But it works well in terms of building suspense and a fair degree of sexual tension between the H&H. The external conflict keeps Meg & Will together and forced to depend on one another, and in the process allows their relationship a chance to develop. It's rocky and very mutually self-serving at first, but both characters develop well in the process, as their initial impressions of each other begin to change. Meg continues to be stubborn and more than a little annoying, but when Will comes through for her when it really counts, she realizes just exactly what sort of man he is - he's a hero.
I can't say that everyone is going to appreciate Meg as a heroine. I found her very difficult to warm to at first myself. Will is no saint either though, and in terms of what his brain tells him he should do in the interests of self-preservation, Meg isn't far off the mark when it comes to character assessment. From the moment that he encounters her however, he never actually does take the easy road and act in his own self-interest. It's not quite the complete journey to accepting himself as a noble and self-sacrificing hero; his illustrious uncle's equal in any way. But he's on the right track and he does get there eventually, once he's able to face Robin again and they can finally resolve past differences and misunderstandings.
And Robin Hood, once he does arrive in the story, is the perfect compliment to Will as a brother-in-arms, rather than as a cardboard prop, or as a rival for Will's place as the hero of this story. Lofty manages to write him, his contribution to resolving the external conflict, and his oftentimes troubled relationship with Will in such a way as to lose nothing of his larger than life heroic character, nor does she allow him to upstage Will. In other words, Robin Hood has more than just a walk-on role in the story, but from beginning to end, Will Scarlet is the hero.
I very highly recommend this story, especially to historical lovers who enjoy highly visual action/adventure tales. Lofty can swashbuckle with the best of them, IMO. She has a very unique talent for taking something that should feel as familiar as an old shoe, and turning it into something original and unexpected. Her love scenes are at once steamy and so tender they'll curl your toes, her characters multi-faceted and interesting - even when they are less than perfect, sometimes downright despicable. I had a little difficulty with getting into their heads and fully understanding what exactly they thought they were doing at times, but always felt like I was in very capable hands with this author, and that everything would come together in the end. And it did, very well. Almost surprisingly well, from my point of view. I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did. The cover & title don't do it justice, in my opinion, but like the characters, it's what's inside that counts:)
Grade: A-
Sensuality Rating: R
Helpful Score: 4
Story: 4 stars
Romance: 3 stars
Overall rating: 3.5 stars
If this is the debut for this author, I am surprised. You can usually tell the rookies; either the story is packed with every plotline ever devised and too complicated or it is far to simplistic and unimaginative.
In this book, Ms. Lofty took a minor character (Will Scarlet) from a well-known story (Robin Hood) to create an interesting plot with references and brief appearances by familiar names from those stories. In spite of their distrust of each other, the attraction between the H & H is immediate and engaging. Both characters are flawed--he is emotionally hardened and she has a significant physical defect--which make the reader more inclined to be sympathetic to their adventures/difficulties.
It was slightly surreal to encounter the Sheriff of Nottingham as the evil villain in a non-Robin Hood story, but I found the book to be charming, enjoyable and well-written. I'm looking forward to her next book.
Romance: 3 stars
Overall rating: 3.5 stars
If this is the debut for this author, I am surprised. You can usually tell the rookies; either the story is packed with every plotline ever devised and too complicated or it is far to simplistic and unimaginative.
In this book, Ms. Lofty took a minor character (Will Scarlet) from a well-known story (Robin Hood) to create an interesting plot with references and brief appearances by familiar names from those stories. In spite of their distrust of each other, the attraction between the H & H is immediate and engaging. Both characters are flawed--he is emotionally hardened and she has a significant physical defect--which make the reader more inclined to be sympathetic to their adventures/difficulties.
It was slightly surreal to encounter the Sheriff of Nottingham as the evil villain in a non-Robin Hood story, but I found the book to be charming, enjoyable and well-written. I'm looking forward to her next book.
an exciting read
Meg annoyed the hell out of me and the plot didn't grab me. Will seemed nice enough, but not that interesting. Couldn't get through more than the first few chapters before I put it down.
I should say though, in all fairness, I was coming to this book with very high expectations as it was glowingly recommended on the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books website and all the other "A" books on there that I had read were beyond excellent. If not for its being touted on there, the title alone would have had the equivalent effect to flashing neon letters saying "This is not your type of book".
I should say though, in all fairness, I was coming to this book with very high expectations as it was glowingly recommended on the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books website and all the other "A" books on there that I had read were beyond excellent. If not for its being touted on there, the title alone would have had the equivalent effect to flashing neon letters saying "This is not your type of book".
will scarlet. what a cutie.
I gave up after Chapter 5 for the following reasons:
1) A book that starts out with action and throwing the hero & heroine immediately together is one of my peeves. I feel like the author is forcing me to care/identify with two people who I'm not even on the first name basis with. Lofty also dropped so many details about other characters and their relation to the H/h, that it was dizzying. So Meg has a sister named Ada, and Will knows Ada from some fair, and the sheriff is good, except he's not, and there was some betrayal going on, and Will kills men he was just in alliance with a few pages earlier. Sure, movies start out with a bang sometimes with great success (like Gladiator), but there was simply no groundwork at ALL in the first chapter here to give me any connection whatsoever to the people who were scrambling around with swords in the woods. The cryptic way Lofty shared these details seemed like she was writing about characters and their backstories which she knew quite well in her mind, but didn't bother to fill in the reader. It's sort of like a careless fanficcer in that way - writing within an established universe and leaving stuff out because knowledge is assumed. I think having a bang of a first scene was given higher priority than coherence. My impression of the first couple chapters was watching a soccer game played by 8 year olds with ADD. It was ALL over the place.
2) Meg, the "heroine." How ridiculously angry she was, and her emotions were utterly wasted because, apart from a cryptic comment that she hadn't seen anything in 5 years, I had absolutely no idea why she was being such a harridan. Maybe I was supposed to be intrigued by her behaviour and be impressed when it was slowly revealed that she had loads of baggage involving her sister, but I transferred the premise to real life and found it lacking. If someone comes at me like a raging b!tch, but then their twagic past is revealed afterwards, that first impression is still the one that will linger.
3) And what was up with the inexplicable male rape? So Meg needs to scratch an itch after clawing the dude and being thoroughly disagreeable, and we get treated to that in Chapter 5. Again, who are these people and why should I care? By the end of that chapter, Meg could have died and I wouldn't have cared. Likewise, I cared not a bit what she and Will would get up to in the rest of the book, so I threw it to the side. Why waste time?
The more I read some of these hot new titles, the more I prefer the older romances - obnoxious sexual politics and all. By the time the H/h embark on a shared path, the author usually established each of them on solid ground. Love 'em or hate 'em, I know who they are as people. This tendency for instant gratification to have the protagonists thrown together from the first chapter just isn't my cup of tea. What is the theory? That my love for the characters will come later? I'm sorry I fell for the hype surrounding this book. I'll get my Merry Men jollies elsewhere.
1) A book that starts out with action and throwing the hero & heroine immediately together is one of my peeves. I feel like the author is forcing me to care/identify with two people who I'm not even on the first name basis with. Lofty also dropped so many details about other characters and their relation to the H/h, that it was dizzying. So Meg has a sister named Ada, and Will knows Ada from some fair, and the sheriff is good, except he's not, and there was some betrayal going on, and Will kills men he was just in alliance with a few pages earlier. Sure, movies start out with a bang sometimes with great success (like Gladiator), but there was simply no groundwork at ALL in the first chapter here to give me any connection whatsoever to the people who were scrambling around with swords in the woods. The cryptic way Lofty shared these details seemed like she was writing about characters and their backstories which she knew quite well in her mind, but didn't bother to fill in the reader. It's sort of like a careless fanficcer in that way - writing within an established universe and leaving stuff out because knowledge is assumed. I think having a bang of a first scene was given higher priority than coherence. My impression of the first couple chapters was watching a soccer game played by 8 year olds with ADD. It was ALL over the place.
2) Meg, the "heroine." How ridiculously angry she was, and her emotions were utterly wasted because, apart from a cryptic comment that she hadn't seen anything in 5 years, I had absolutely no idea why she was being such a harridan. Maybe I was supposed to be intrigued by her behaviour and be impressed when it was slowly revealed that she had loads of baggage involving her sister, but I transferred the premise to real life and found it lacking. If someone comes at me like a raging b!tch, but then their twagic past is revealed afterwards, that first impression is still the one that will linger.
3) And what was up with the inexplicable male rape? So Meg needs to scratch an itch after clawing the dude and being thoroughly disagreeable, and we get treated to that in Chapter 5. Again, who are these people and why should I care? By the end of that chapter, Meg could have died and I wouldn't have cared. Likewise, I cared not a bit what she and Will would get up to in the rest of the book, so I threw it to the side. Why waste time?
The more I read some of these hot new titles, the more I prefer the older romances - obnoxious sexual politics and all. By the time the H/h embark on a shared path, the author usually established each of them on solid ground. Love 'em or hate 'em, I know who they are as people. This tendency for instant gratification to have the protagonists thrown together from the first chapter just isn't my cup of tea. What is the theory? That my love for the characters will come later? I'm sorry I fell for the hype surrounding this book. I'll get my Merry Men jollies elsewhere.
Visit http://www.carrielofty.com
