Sir Robert Maxwell is thirty and seems a bit bored with his life as a rogue. When is friend Nate tells him about the horrible Alyssa Cavendish and how her father has upped the money for someone to take her as a bride, Max sees a challenge. They wager on if Max can make Alyssa lose her heart to him, not for marriage just for the sport of it. He goes in not as a suitor but as Sir Hoodwink the Lord Misrule. Alyssa sees all these men who are after money not her. Being an identical twin, and the worst of the twin. She feels neglected and in the shadow of Gillian. She does not participate in the Christmas festivities but this year Sir Hoodwink keeps pushing until she does. When she starts receiving gifts from the mysterious Twelfth Knight she enjoys the attention that is focused on her and Gillian’s envy over the gifts.
Warnings: Sexism
Category: M/F
Merry Christmas to all of my readers! This is a little late because I have been sick in bed for the last week with a doozy of a cold, but here we go. We come now to the last historical Christmas romance story in the Tis the Season Harlequin collection I read this year, and unfortunately it was easily my least favourite of the bunch. But that’s alright! We can drink eggnog around the tree and laugh about how absurd holiday romance novels can sometimes be.
WRITING
So the story here is about a young woman named Alyssa who is brat of a woman constantly at odds with her sister and who has a reputation as un-wooable due to her bratty disposition. So, real Taming of the Shrew vibes going on here. It isn’t my favourite trope to begin with but it is a popular one in romance, the back and forth of bickering and power struggle certainly a mainstay staple. The book is pretty formula constrained- it follows the lead character Robert as he tries to not only romance but also reform Alyssa via an elaborate 12 days of Christmas game in which he awards her all of the gifts and then tries to prompt her to learn how to share and get along with her family, with mixed successes. It’s a pretty predictable plot without much else going on, and the reader will fairly quickly figure out how this is going to go.
EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT
This story might have been a more interesting one if it focused a little more on Alyssa and her sister’s relationship, which seems to be the crux of all of her personality issues. She feels slighted and ignored by her family which prompts her to act out and be disdainful of them which in turn makes them ignore her more, in a self feeding cycle. But how did this start, and why? What is the history here? And why, if her issue is mostly with her sister, has it driven her to be selfish in other aspects of her life, affecting how she treats servants and guests and suitors? None of the personality clashing really felt like it made a lot of sense because it just wasn’t explored, it was just told to us. Then there’s the relationship development between the two romantic leads which is… well, more or less non existent. For a romance it really does skimp on any actual interactions between the two of them of a romantic nature. I got zero chemistry from them, and couldn’t understand why they were suddenly in love, even when she does come around at the end.
WORLDBUILDING
One thing I will give this book is that it definitely does utilize the Christmas theme integrally in it’s plot. Since it follows a 12 days of Christmas tradition, it means this is a Christmas story through and through, which is one of the things I look for in an advertised “Christmas book”; could this story easily take place at any other time without changing anything? So on this score the book succeeds at my litmus test, it is definitely a Christmas book. It also succeeds at being a relatively immersive historical fiction- as with the previous two I cannot comment on how historically accurate its portrayal of its time period is, but it does feel immersive to read, and sweeps you away to another time and place.
STEAMINESS
No sex, of course. From what I have seen of Christmas romances the genre seems to be allergic to it. That’s fine, not all romances need to have a spice element, but what is less forgivable is the aforementioned lack of chemistry between the leads that even remotely hints at attraction or desire. There seems to be no real reason they end up together, and frankly for most of the book Alyssa comes off more like a bratty temper tantruming child than like a grown woman so why Robert would be interested in her remains a mystery. I couldn’t connect with either of them on a sensual or emotional level which just shot the ‘romance’ angle in the foot.
Harlequin romances are by nature formulaic. I can understand and even appreciate this. But this particular one felt like it wasn’t even trying- perhaps that’s something to do with the constraints of having to write such a short novella instead of something more fully fleshed out for this collection, but still. It felt sexist and, worse, entirely un-sexy. Hoping for better fare for next Christmas!
Have you read Twelfth Knight? Let me know what YOU thought by leaving me a comment!
Roses And Thorns 