Heart Of Stone Diana Palmer

This will be a quicky. I'm not sure how many people read Palmer besides me and the Sybs but I'll do a bit of an opinion piece.

Cindy Blurb: Simple.

18 yr old girl has been in love with man 11 years her senior since she laid eyes on him when she was 14.

Man 11 years her senior ignores her (yeah, he should!).

By the ripe old age of 19 she is never going to get married or be with a man because of something awful in the past and well, she is after all head over heels in love with hero.

Hero also had an awful event in his past complicated by one of 'those kind of women' (shallow, selfish, money grubbers).

Hero finally 'can't fight that feeling anymore' and since she's almost 20 they can now declare their love and live HEA.

Okay, so that's kind of the blurb that would go with any one of Diana Palmer's books EXCEPT -

It's missing the ginormous misunderstanding that drives a wedge through two people's hearts and make them angry and bitter towards each other until the Hero (and yes, it's usually the hero) discovers he had it all wrong, wrong, wrong and is the biggest butt in the world.

He seduces young woman who is bewildered by the affection (and erection) from the man she has always loved but who had hated her completely and utterly until about 10 minutes ago.

And if you really want to dive into Palmer's back list there are H/H who are related to each other (cousins) and then there is the famous Older Step Brother with his much younger and tortured Step Sister.

Yep.

If you want to find something sinister and awful to hate in a book you can probably find it in a Diana Palmer.

But I love it.

Okay, the step sibs were hard to take and I do get the 'ick' when cousins are mentioned but Diana Palmer could really bring it.

Soap Opera drama, skank whore who is hero's current fling and treats heroine like a little slut, a hero who makes assholes every where a better name because he is the King and I as the reader can't wait for the truth to knock him off his high horse.

So with this latest release I can say that she's not as PC as she was in around 2000 when I read one of her books and entered 'the complete opposite' world. Hell, the book had no zing, zip or passion. I was sad.

But lately I've been seeing 'Long Tall Texan's' on her books and I've been wondering if maybe she would write up another of her famous alpha jerk heroes.

Basically the hero wasn't a jerk in this book. He had some smarts about him. He did jump to a few bad conclusions but they were quickly fixed after the heroine almost dies. (Hey, I forgot that part!)

The heroine was meh.

The sex was very meh. I mean, seriously. Meh.

I'm not used to Palmer being so slight in the sheets but maybe I'm not remembering everything the way it really happened.

Will I read another Palmer.

Hell Yeah!!

I may even resort to re-reading some of her older, wilder and Un-PC books.

I should mention she has written historicals which fit more into this category. Like you would expect an 19 year old and an older man to get together but she mostly writes contemporary westerns.

God love her.

C+ (I'm suddenly on Sybil's side when she says C reviews don't mean the book was bad. They sure don't mean it's a great book either.)

AND

I picked up another book. I'm currently reading Jessica Bird's - crap, it's got millionaire or something like that in the title. I would have dropped this book at the first page but I was out and about with Bob and we were hitting stores I didn't need to go in so I stayed in the car reading.

It's amazing how you'll read something that makes your eyes roll when there is nothing else to do or read.

And that seems to be the solution to Slumpville (if I can't see it maybe it's not real!) right now. Cause all of a sudden, the weirdness of the whole first chapter has passed and maybe I can see past the 'he-man/she-woman' character traits that Ward is famous for.

Yeah, Bird is Ward.

But then I think everyone knows that.

If not, you're welcome.