Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Book Review: Loving Evangeline

The absolute best part about reading really old romance novels is that they almost never stand the test of time. Surely you can get over fashions and such but the voice of characters is fantastically hilarious and I forgot how much I love it.

Loving Evangeline - Linda Howard

Evangeline Shaw is the key to the conspiracy that threatens Robert Cannon's company. Classified software developed by Cannon's group is being sold to a foreign government without his approval. It isn't just theft or a case of corporate espionage -- it's treason. And the trail leads straight to Shaw -- who by all accounts has both the means and the motives.
Determined to handle his own investigation, Cannon tracks her to a small town in Alabama. But as he tries to untangle the knot that surrounds her, he finds himself questioning he's believed. The facts still seem pretty black-and-but his heart tells him she's no Mata Hari...

I have to give this one a 5 star basically because it's as cheesy and ridiculous as it gets. I had so much fun reading this and I suppose it was probably racy and sexy back in the day but now, especially in the era of #metoo this is so wrong it's fabulous.

So in this gem we have unsuspecting Evie Shaw, owner/operator of a marina, widow of 12 years, pretty, and pretty clueless about men. Then we have Robert Cannon, CEO of everything in life, steely gray eyes, lean like a panther (seriously, the amount of times you read the panther comparison is TOO MUCH! HA!), mean as a fox but also pretty sure he's figured out which employee is selling compromised information for money on the side. Which leads him to where Evie is, a small rinky dink town in Alabama. He's sure that she's somehow in on it because she followed the rogue employee a few times so in order to find out and break the case, he's on it himself. Forget the FBI or other authorities, this guy will circumvent them all and do it himself. As he's sleeping with her (which was amazing ridiculous) he's slowly ruining her life and putting her in a financial tail spin to get her to confess or something, that was never really clear. Of course, she isn't in on it and that's obvious from the word go but he's pretty laser focused on her guilt. It all goes to shit pretty quickly, he breaks her heart, and he struggles to see where he went wrong. It's just nuts.

Anyways. He says incredibly condescending things to her, he assumes that he would just take over her life and she would practically trip on herself to marry him, and he assumes that she can't think on her own. It's really enough to make you put the book down except it was so entertainingly hilarious and eye roll worthy I couldn't stop.

I am SO glad I spent $10 on a ton of backlist Linda Howard books because I'm diving all in now!

   

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