Reading First Lady by S.E. Phillips tonight, I suddenly realized what separates a good romance novel from a frustrating one in my mind. I love the characters in this book, the dialogue is absolutely hilarious. But the characters have been immersed in a situation that is bound to end. And that just sucks. So I think I discovered one of my biggest requirements for a good romance novel. Well, maybe two.
First, the situation (on the run or in a single place) has to be maintained throughout the novel. The sense of lost magic is really hard to overcome when the initial setting is traded in for something distant, usually after a fight between the two main characters. And that's just something I can't stand. A constant on-the-run novel is hard to do, but K. Robards does an absolutely fantastic job with Walking After Midnight. Realizing this, I reviewed Sapphire Mage, and was relieved to find out that while there are breaks in Felix and Ana's on the run lifestyle, it is dependably maintained. Thus the magic of that solitude isn't lost, even with other people around. When the reader grows used to that camraderie, they get really pissed and bored when you remove it in favor of tension. You can still have tension, but not at the expense of the close quarters. Then it veers into star-crossed lovers prideful bullshit. And the process to get the magic back is EXCRUTIATING!!
Second, I'm as big of a fan of a gigantor book as the next guy, but geez, could you pick up the pace a LITTLE!? And in this corridor, N. Roberts reigns supreme. She has beautiful description, great dialogue, but the one thing she never loses sight of it the PACE. Her's are the only books I don't flip to the last page and read some of the last lines, just to get a sense of where everything's going. It's a bad habit, but one I sink into when things become a little monotonous. Again, using First Lady as an example, the girl get's out, crazy stuff happens, then she meets the guy, and off they go, a teenager and her infant sister in tow. Great story line. I'm about two hundred pages in, and they're still riding in Mabel the Winnebago. I know things between the main two are going to go crazy downhill, and she'll end up back where she ran from, and he's going to be all pissed and broody because he made such a mistake and on and on. Some details may surprise me, but the magic of the Winnebago will be gone, and the initial appeal of the book with it.
Thus my epiphany at two... sorry, make that three in the morning. And with it, a huge warning for any career I might have with writing in the future. And something to weed the wheat from the chaff when it comes to romance novels. I need a sieve the size of Texas.