At some point I'll be finished with the Deveraux reviews and I'll be able to talk to you about other stuff I'm reading, but that time hasn't come yet.

So! Velvet Song, by Jude Deveraux. It's the third in the Velvet series, and it stars Raine Montgomery (yes, the man's name is Raine. This starts to seem normal after you've read enough Deveraux) and a singer, Alyx, who manages to convince us that she may be the most talented musician in history, despite the fact that it's a book and we can't hear her. (I wonder what the audio edition is like -- they probably don't do anything cool with it.) Deveraux, one gets the impression, is quite the opera buff, and you can tell how much she enjoyed doing the research for this one.

In terms of the overall plot, this one continues the feud with the Chatworths and the Montgomerys, but when you get right down to it, the story is about excessive pride (as in, not just justifiable pride from being awesome, but being too proud to accept help or talk to people you consider "beneath" you) and how it gets in the way of relationships. There's only one Deveraux-standard moment of Heroine Realizes She's Wrong And Hero Is Right, and it's not so much that kind of moment as Hero Is Frustrated And Gives Heroine A Spanking (which I think is much better done in Outlander, but hey).

I actually didn't like this one as much as I remembered, though I liked it a bit better than the first two. It frustrates me now to see how powerless and non-impressive most of the women are in these romance novels--even most chick lit is better--and I hope to find more interesting female characters as time goes on.

Tags: historical, jude deveraux, reading, romance