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Elizabeth Hoyt is blogging over on Romance Vagabonds today, and if you haven’t read The Serpent Prince yet – go do so. Yeah, now. I’ll wait.
Seriously, it’s that good. Simon, the hero, is just to die for. And when I try to understand why this book affected me the most viscerally of the trilogy – apart from the copious amounts of actual viscera spilled (it’s a tad violent) – I have to conclude that it’s because I’m just a sucker for a tortured hero.
What is it about this theme that is so lasting, from Beauty and the Beast to modern romance? That the love of a good woman can negate all manner of pain, suffering, inhumanity (figurative or literal) and heal a broken man? Rationally, I know it’s never so simple, but the fantasy is so powerful.
Like in high school, I knew this guy who cut himself. He was a nice, smart, funny guy, and his arms were a crosshatch of razorblade scars. Aside from government class, we had almost nothing in common. But oh how I loved to imagine that if I was his girlfriend, I would love him so good that all his problems would go away and all his wounds would be healed. Of course that wouldn’t have been the case. He had a girlfriend, a perfectly sweet one, and obviously she wasn’t the answer. He probably needed therapy and medication and who-knows-what. I hope he eventually got it.
I knew all this then, … Read More »