Sample-chapter showdown: Romance V

A Lady Would Know Better by Emma Theriault (Entangled: Amara)
Crash Course by Piper Lawson (Berkley XO)
Necessary Roughness by Danielle Allen (Bramble)

It's time for a sample-chapter showdown! Three romance samples enter...only one exits. Or maybe two. Or three. Who can say?

In A Lady Would Know Better, Jasper is the second son—he was supposed to have a life of idle pleasure, followed by some sort of career of his choosing. Instead he's the latest Earl of Belhaven, struggling to keep it together for his remaining family and for his peasants (erm, my word, not the book's) on his land. He's not prepared for a bloodied and unconscious stranger to land on his proverbial doorstep in the middle of winter...

...but now that she's here, she just might be the best thing that has happened to Jasper and his family in more than a year.

If, that is, she can remember who she is. Or what she was running from. Or whom...

I only read a sampler, but this is clearly going to be an entertaining and fast-paced romp. Jasper is a wee bit of a tool at times, but he's a gallant tool, and...well, he does have some reasons to be stressed. The characters display what I suspect is an unrealistic level of feminism and ideas about science for the time, but the sampler does an annoyingly good job of making me wonder about "Jane's" background", and I'm looking forward to seeing where the plot goes. I'm also quite enjoying the aunt

This looks like it will be a great deal of fun—pointed but not taking itself too seriously.

Meanwhile, in Crash Course, Shay is working to get to the top—studying at the top Formula One preparatory college so that she can become a mechanic and give herself and her father a more stable life. She didn't expect to attract the attention of the academy's local gods on her first day...

This one is for fans of:

- Normcore heroines
- Rich (and dare I say arrogant?) love interests
- Possible love triangles
- Possible Twilight vibes (minus the sparkly vampires)
- Formula One, of course

And here's why it didn't work for me:

I am extremely biased right now: I recently lost someone I love because of a reckless driver. I tried to set this aside when writing this, because that's not the author's fault, but frankly I couldn't make it through the sample. The book opens with one of the potential love interests hitting the heroine with his car, blaming her for it, and threatening her against telling anyone; later in the sample he threatens to run her over again. I had to stop reading.

Your mileage might vary—again, I am absolutely, 100% biased right now, and if I'd thought about the part where Formula One is all about fast cars and dangerous speeds, I probably would have had the sense to stay away. There's a whole wave of Formula One books these days, and I'm sure this will have popular appeal. But to me right now, drivers who speed without care for who gets hurt belong in prison, not masquerading as heroes.

And finally, in Necessary Roughness, she's a top athletic trainer. He's a top athlete...who really, really doesn't want her to know what's going on with his leg.

I read a short excerpt, just enough to breeze through and get a sense of who the characters are. I suspect I'd like Nova in the full version: She's fat and Black and very good at what she does and has had to work like hell to overcome people's assumptions about her. She's not taking prisoners, but she's also not taking her skills for granted. Channing I had a bit of a harder time with ("heroes" who threaten heroines with unemployment go straight to my shitlist and have to earn their way off it), but we can see right away that he's up against a lot: He has a multimillion-dollar contract, yes, but that contract is only as good as his success on the field...and an injury, especially depending on the circumstances of the injury, could change all that in an instant. His wife (soon, I assume, to be ex-wife) is a bit one-note in a way I don't love (romance has a tendency to make the exes real evil so that the reader can't possibly sympathize with them), but I'm intrigued by Channing's mention that his money has to cover not just him but other people; I'd be curious, going forward, to know whether there's more there than just his wife.

For all the brevity of the preview, it gave a solid idea of what to expect—this is definitely a good one for the sports romance fans.

The verdict: A Lady Would Know Better has a bit of an unfair advantage here: It was published earlier than the other two in this showdown...and so I've read it by now. I'll also keep an eye out at my library for Necessary Roughness (not least to see what the eventual cover will be!), because for whatever reason I do enjoy a heroine-as-athletic-trainer setup.

Thanks to the authors and publishers for providing these samples through NetGalley.