Charles Morwellan offers for Sarah Connigham knowing they will be a good fit. He never dreams he will need to court her, win her or seduce her to get her to agree. Cynster novel number 14. Not the best. ( )

When it comes to reading I am a gourmand, devouring everything that comes my way with as little discrimination as a force of nature. But there is one genre I avoid like the plague: the Love Story. Even the great masters – with the exception of the ever-delightful Jane Austen – are a trial and a penance to read when the subject matter is love.

Recently I asked myself if so many people could be wrong: bookshops are full of popular paperbacks with lurid covers lurking in the Women’s Fiction section, bringing delight to millions. I decided it was time, perhaps, to revisit Romance.

Australian writer Stephanie Laurens is a professional scientist who has written a slew of well-regarded Regency romances, many of which have made the New York Times best-seller list. Her works are not literary fiction, but they are well-researched and well-written – in as far as grammar and punctuation is concerned.

Tastefully muted cover art indicated The Taste of Innocence was no bodice-ripper, and the tale begins in the time-honoured Georgette Heyer/Barbara Cartland format as we meet Lord Charles Morwellan, eighth Earl of Meredith – incredibly rich, handsome, brave, intelligent, attractive and strong – as he bows to the inevitable and prepares to take a wife.

Sarah, the lady of his choice, has the looks and figure of a Goddess, the heart of an angel, and is universally admired in the idyllic rural village in which the story is set.

But she is also idealistic and – although madly in love with Charles and thrilled at his marriage proposal – tells him she wants a marriage of passion, risk and excitement: she gives him two weeks to woo her, after which she will give him an answer.

Pretty standard so far [yawn] and the text soon tumbles into the breathless purple prose that is the stuff of which such tales are created.

“… his gaze traveled over her, lingering on her breasts, her hips, her legs as she stretched and shifted. That gaze felt strangely hard, possessive.”

Hard, possessive – geddit? Together with melting kisses, the ‘intangible caress of the sensual tendrils nascent desire sent weaving between them’, and the spinning of the senses, this is torpid stuff, torpid with sexuality, yet still PG rated.

But not for long… The genre has changed since my early teens when Heyer’s heroines were sassy, spunky [or possibly not, actually] and adventurous, while Cartland’s creatures were frail, frivolous and mentally retarded: sex never, ever reared its one-eyed head.

The Taste of Innocence might as well be titled The Taste of Ejaculate as the worldly Charles and the virginal [for the first few pages at any rate] Sarah meet every night in an Arcadian summer house to explore a route that leads rapidly through all the bases –
“Until with a rush, all heat and yearning, she found herself clinging to that final dizzying peak. Felt him thrust one last time and shatter her, felt the furnace within her that he’d stroked and fed rapture, felt glory pour forth and sear her veins.”

At which point she agrees to marry him. In older romances, the story was about the chase, the long, tedious and predictable dance of advance and retreat, culminating inevitably in the promise of a broken hymen: the dainty gentility of the process, although boring, was preferable to the pornographically charged – although no less boring – gallop of today.

Not that The Taste is just about sex: at least 15% of the book deals with serious stuff, like Sarah’s pet orphanage, Charles’s financial interests, the social mores of the rural gentry, and inter-personal relationships.

It is most definitely not a bodice ripper – Charles always carefully unbuttons and unties Sarah’s clothes like the gentleman he is – and there is even a red-flagged villain in the form of a land profiteer to add social relevance. Plus there is a morally edifying conclusion where the baddie repents and commits suicide.

Which leaves the lovers free “to the Paradise they now shared, to the glories of the oneness that together they’d embraced. Let love bloom unfettered, let passion rise and desire burn, and once again sweep them away.”

Having progressed from scorching kisses to an altogether more southerly form of oral gratification within the first week of courtship, who knows what these two will get up to once ‘unfettered’? Hold back the heaves and ring down the curtain. ( )

This is yet another story in the cynster line, following the relationship of Alathea's brother. He picks a woman that he has known his whole life to marry with no intent of loving her. Before she will agree to his suit, however, he has to convince her by letting her get to know him. She, of course, will marry for nothing but true love. After time together making out and making love in the summerhouse behind her home, she agrees to marry him and the marriage is not what she wants because he doesn't show affection or caring for her outside of the bedroom. He has a misguided notion that if he lets himself care, he will forget his other responsibilities. I liked the concept of the story, but I had problems believing that someone who really loved another person as he claimed to love the heroine would really be able to not show love and affection towards them and just wall themselves off. I also had trouble with the fact that everything resolved itself so quickly. I suppose I'm picky, but the story seemed slow at the beginning and hurried at the end instead of even paced with a little more time for reconciliation and understanding. he came to the realization that he has to care about her after dealing with problems with her property (an orphanage), and it just seemed odd that it would all fall together like that. ( )

awesome book ( )

Having been a long time Laurens fan I've rarely had anything bad to say about her novels. Even when she basically moved to the second generation Cynsters and quite honestly, I could barely remember what I had just read a day after completing the books. But, having admitted that I can still say that I have enjoyed all of her books because I like her style and I like the realtionships she builds for her hero and heroine. Even if things get a little repetitious.

So, it was a pleasant surprise to read The Taste Of Innocence and find that it was fresh. The angle was a little bit different and 2 weeks later I still remember what I had read. A good sign and I hope for a conintuing up swing from Ms Laurens. ( )