Ashes in the Wind

I can think of a better name for it; The NEVER ending Story...! Honestly, folks, this novel by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss has everything you'd want in a book....Murder! Thievery! Ripped bodices! Sex! Crazy Evil Stepmothers! Disguises! Love! Kidnappings! History! Evil Relatives! But, but, just...not quite so much of it.

My husband gave me this book for Christmas one year, many years ago. I had always planned on reading it again, and then when I recently began reading some of the book blogs, I saw that quite a few of you adore this kind of romance story. I remembered about Ashes in the Wind, one of the very few historical romance/bodice rippers I have ever, or will ever read, and decided It was time to read it again. And read it I did. Uh, sorta.

I didn't remember it being so long and tedious to read. First there's the enmity between the Southern spitfire of a heroine and the handsome, cool Yankee doctor that I had to get through. Ok, sure, Alaina (heroine) has her righteous reasons for hating the Yankees; loss of family and ancestral home..etc. In addition, she has to dress and act like a boy after being mistakenly accused of being a spy, so she's not happy about that. Although Cole (hero)is very good to her/him (he thinks Alaina is 'Al' through about 1/2 of the book ) she never gives up her 'war' until about the last 3 chapters of the book. And of course by then they're madly in love with each other.

Then there are all the related stories going on (see above list.) Man, that book just plum wore me out, and since I'd already read it, I used that as the excuse to skim over long, involved paragraphs. The story was a good one, but it needed to be about 200 pages shorter, as well as sticking to a limited amount of sub-plots. They just seemed to get added on as the story neared the end; it was as if the author didn't want to quit writing this one.

A little bit about the author here. Kathleen E. Woodiwiss (1939-2007) was quite a pioneer in the historical romance genre; she pretty much started it with The Flame and the Flower, published in 1972. Although I am not fond of this particular genre of books, I have much admiration for the lady who believed in it enough to write books that so many do love.