The Lord Next Door

Author: Gayle Callen
Published: December 2005
Letter Grade: C

I'm rather reluctant to give this book either a lower or a higher grade. I picked it up because I had read two other books by Callen, and I'd enjoyed them a lot, and I liked the epistolery nature of the prologue. I'm a sucker for letters in books.

Basically, the hero and heroine, David and Victoria, get together because David's having serious trouble finding a wife due to his father's old mistress having wild orgy-like parties at their house, and because Victoria's father's death left her family totally destitute. This being Victorian England, what is the solution? Marriage!

I'm not trying to say anything bad about the plotline mind you--it's a well-loved plot devise employed by a lot romance authors. I've used it myself in my story ideas. "Marriage of Convenience" is almost as widely used as the "Reformed Rake" cliche. Almost. Nothing is quite as widely used as that.

So, really, what I'm trying to say is this: once you've read a couple hundred romance novels, you've read almost every plot devise known to man (well, woman. Except Leigh Greenwood. But we won't get into that) and a few only known to the animal kingdom. (See While You Slept by Wendy Burge. Ugh.)

But yeah. The book was all right. It entertained me. I enjoyed it. I'm getting a bit tired of how authors use "not having sex right away, even when characters are married" as a way to build sexual tension. It's really truly annoying. There are other ways to do it, without beating the poor, dead horse.

I liked the prologue, about how David and Victoria wrote to each other as children, though she thought he was a servant named Tom, or whatever. That was kind of weird. And I didn't like how it was resolved. Actually, it didn't feel resolved at all. She kept wanting him to read their childhood journal, but he doesn't until the very end, and only the part that's supposed to tie up the last of the conflicts.

That part bugged me, too. What could have been a really sweet, caring moment just came out... mediocre. Like "Oh. That's pretty shitty. Can we have sex now, please?" Well, maybe not THAT bad. But it felt like after all this build up to this moment, and it just felt flat. Like how I wrote my most hated chapter of "Lost": like Callen was just trying to get it over and done with.

I liked the characters themselves. They were fairly believable. I wasn't too fond of how their relationship issues got tied up so neatly, especially David and his father. It seemed like there should be a lot more emotion in it, considering their interactions to this point.

I should really review before I give a grade, because this book just got knocked down two grades. Was a B- when I started...

I bought the second book in this series, too, when I bought The Lord Next Door. Hopefully this one will prove better. The other two books I read by Callen were wonderful, I loved them. But this one... meh.

Ah, yes. The Blog

Hmm. I'm not quite sure what it is with me and my fascination with blogs, and journals in general.

For instance. I have been keeping a diary since Cecile gave me "Toby" in the 5th grade. I think it's rather telling of my Animorphs obsession that I named my diary after the Hork-Bajir seer. And that I named my cat after Tobias.

Which reminds me, I should stop by Mom's this weekend during my attempts to (1) take yiyia Vicky to the grocery store, (2) see Komal while she's in town, (3) hopefully bring Kyra down to TIU so she can see it and (4) go to VCG on Sunday.

To see Mom and Don, of course, because I haven't seen them in awhile. Since Labor Day, actually. Which is weird, because I keep seeing Dad and Cecile. And of course, I see yiyia Vicky at least twice a month, because I can hardly let Dad take her to the grocery store. I hardly ever deviate from my normal routine--if I pick yiyia up after noon, it's hideously late for me.

I've also discovered that being away from home sort of reminds me of those early days after the divorce, when I only saw Dad on Thursdays and every other weekend. When I was busy doing other things (getting settled into a new place, and a new school and what not) it was easy not to think too much about it all, but when he'd come over on Thursday nights when Mom had to work late, I realized how bloody much I missed him. Now, I'm pretty much in the same position as I was back then ('cept I have two more parents to miss when I'm away) and now it's sort of like that when I see any of them.

I don't get homesick. At least, I'm not aware of it. 'Course, that first weekend after orientation/classes, when I was all alone in the dorm 'cause Chendre had gone home and I was having one of my depressed moods, I went out to my car to get my CDs, and just sat in there for a few minutes. Didn't think my car could make feel/relieve my homesickness. Granted, it WAS Dad's car. I can pretty much imagine him in the passenger's seat whenever I do something stupid while driving, after all the times I had to drive with him, especially that last summer before getting my license. That, and Mom has the same exact car. The license plate number even starts with the same letter.

I'm not like Komal. I don't need to call home every day. I'm okay with not talking to my family every day. Hell, I don't talk to Rachel at all. Whether that's a product of our knock-down-drag-out fight in Pittsburgh or just because we never have very much to say to each other, I'm not sure. My phone conversations with her usually only ever happened when she'd call Mom's and I would pick up, or when I'd call her on her birthday.

But yeah. 'Course, it helps that I'm used to seeing them all sporadically. It's not like I saw them everyday when I was at home, thanks to our back-and-forth set-up. And I didn't talk to them everyday, depending on where I was. And, of course, whenever the shit hit the fan at Mom's, to Dad's I would go.

Back to my original topic: I've been writing in diaries and on blogs for seven, almost eight years, come January 31. Gah, I feel old. Almost as old as Kat made me feel when she told me she was engaged. I've known Kat almost as long as I've been writing in these things. There's a four and half month difference between when Steve first IMed me and when I started Toby.

It's odd how much of my life can be traced back to 1999. The IFs. Steve. All the people I met through Steve. There isn't a single person I know online that I can't trace back to Steve. Or Chris. But even Chris is linked to Steve, 'cause I introduced them. And Steve called him a gaywad. Which was oddly more fitting than we knew at the time.

Sort of glad Steve grew out of his homophobia. But can't entirely discount certain remarks he made when he was 13, anyway. ;) Even if he called Chris that at the time because he (Chris) was asking me out before he'd broken up with his girlfriend.

Ah, the early years of my love life. They were... embarrassing, to say the least.

Now that I've gone off on my... what? third tangent? I really need to finish my journals.

One of these days, I'm going to finish them BEFORE the morning that they're due.