Book Review: Shades of Adventures in Love
Shades of Adventures in Love. Anthology includes: G. T. Naya, Fannie Price, Annette Cyr, and Karen Brailsford, Write Volumes, 2024, ebook, 96 Pages.
Reviewed by Stephanie Wilson Medlock
Shades of Adventures in Love is an anthology of four short romance stories that combine feminist themes, adventure, romance, psychological trauma, and magic. Each piece presents a female protagonist on a quest, sometimes to accomplish a goal of her own device, and sometimes one suggested by the attractive man who arrives unexpectedly to disorient her but somehow pushes her onward. Difficult themes, such as suicide and rape, are woven into some of the tales.
Unfolding in the space of no more than twenty odd pages, the pieces leave little room for character development or time for the male and female protagonists to get to know each other. As a result, the rapid resolution of the conflicts presented can seem artificial and contrived. As with standard length romantic novels, the plot centers around the male/female attraction and, on the part of the woman, her resistance to it. This uncomfortable attraction is fueled by distrust that quickly gets resolved.
Often, there is a magical component. In “Fallen,” for example, Amina, a barista in a coffee shop, is a werewolf and her suitor is an angel. Both have visited hell for unexplained reasons, and now the angel seeks Amina’s help to recover his wings, which he lost in the underworld. The story is set in Ireland, which improbably is the home of a number of other magical creatures, most of them malevolent.
Vilhelm, the angel, has a number of angelic characteristics, such as being able to fly, teleport, and read minds. The werewolf human is actually a separate being from her wolf state, which is an interesting twist, since she is aware of the wolf as a different version of herself, often with opposing motivations.
The main problem with this story is that it never describes the reason for the two to have met in hell, where at least one of them was tortured, so their connection with each other, while intense, seems arbitrary. The werewolf character does not exhibit any of the standard werewolf behaviors – she can change into a wolf at will, not at the full moon, for example, and appears more cranky than dangerous.
In “I Shot Myself in the Bigfoot, the protagonist is a scientist hoping for funding to study Salish rabbits, which are apparently in danger of extinction. Her main competitor for funding is a man trying to prove the existence of Big Foot. The author demands a huge leap of faith from the reader to believe that these two study projects could possibly become the top candidates from a funding source, although, contrary to my own preconceived notions, various species of rabbit are in danger of extinction.
Still more unlikely, however, is the fact that the woman scientist, Belia Dessa, offers to help her competitor find Big Foot, as proof that she is a better researcher. The resulting quest is full of jungle adventures and, of course, romance.
The male love interests in these stories are all handsome and their features described in minute detail. In “Fallen,” for example, the angel Vilhelm is described: “His face is angular but heart shaped. High cheekbones sit above gaunt cheeks that slide into a narrow, but firm, jaw. I don’t remember him being this handsome, but I suppose neither of us looked our best back then.” In “It’s Time,” the mysterious stranger “brought his finger to his soft full lips. Given the dire circumstances, Nancy was surprised to find herself imagining him pressing them against hers. But she’d always been drawn to a good-looking man with a shock of dark hair.”
These stories will appeal to readers impatient with long prose, who want to see their heroines succeed in love, their talents recognized, and their traumas resolved.
