Most Tortured Hero & Heroine EVER! ( )

I stopped reading after book one of the Tapestry, about half way through. The book is all telling no showing – an awful beauty and the beast story and such a disappointment after reading Lord of Scoundrels. There’s no character or depth to the hero or heroine. She loves him. That's it. End of story. He's her true love, has always been her true love since she was a child, and he will always be her true love no matter what happens. Such blind devotion is not only childish, but not remotely interesting. The hero is badly scarred from war wounds – and these are serious disfigurements on his face and body, not some pockmarks that gradually fade under the adoring eyes of the heroine. He’s locked himself away, is suicidal, and wears a mask. To “save” him, she sneaks into his estate disguised as a maid. He doesn’t recognize her. She loves him. He mistakes her for a loon/simpleton at first, and that estimation proves apt for the rest of the book - that I've read so far. She pesters him till he beds her. The hero has a stroke of conscious/honor. We find out he’s betrothed to another and has to give the poor besotted girl the boot. But he’s very grateful to her for breaking him out of his self-imposed prison of shame and despair. She runs away and is very sad.

At this point the book has been merely boring. It becomes ridiculously contrived once we find out that *gasp* he’s actually betrothed to the heroine. This ensures a bit of conflict, the overblown drama of betrayal and rage when he finds out the identity of his bride. But this doesn’t daunt our heroine. She keeps pestering him – it's basically her job, and smiling like an idiot the whole time. Seriously, if I had to read about her “simple smile” one more time, I was going to scream. They love each other now. Yay. My guess is that the seeds for some political intrigue and espionage sown in the first half will come to fruition in the second. She deceives him in the first half. He'll deceive her in the second. I can’t care enough, about either the characters or the plot, to find out if this hunch is right. The Tapestry was a big disappointment. I picked it up because I’m on the hunt for beauty and the beast type stories, and this might fit the formula, but it’s a very poor rendition of the theme. ( )

Supports SOPA. Fuck that noise.