Some Like It Wild by Teresa Medeiros

Teresa Medeiros is one of the romance authors I read fairly consistently. The libraries I have access to don’t carry many of her books, however, so I haven’t read everything. I picked up Some Like It Wild on a whim, having read and loved a few of Medeiros’ previous works, but I have to say, I was a bit disappointed.

When I read romance novels (and I do, frequently) I try to stay away from the ones that still use the tackier clichés. I tend to stick with authors I already know I like, branching out when they recommend another novelist on a website or in an acknowledgement or something*. Medeiros usually falls under this heading, but Some Like It Wild was lacking. Usually, she writes plots that are different enough from the basic “beautiful poor girl meets big, strong, rich alpha male and adventures ensue” to hold my interest, and her writing style is fresh enough that you don’t feel like you’re reading a standard, cookie-cutter romance. While her writing in this one is still above-par, the plot was rather ho-hum.

It was almost too easy for the protagonists to fall in love…and that’s saying something, coming from me. My chief complaint with the majority of romance novels is that the circumstances most authors use to keep their lovers apart are so ridiculously contrived that I have no patience to wade through them.

Anyway. Some Like It Wild tells the tale of Pamela Darby, the daughter of a famous actress who has fallen on hard times, and Connor Kincaid, the Scottish highwayman she chooses to assist her in a little inheritance fraud. I liked the characters quite a big…Pamela is smart and realistic without being annoyingly practical like a few of Amanda Quick’s heroines, and Connor is manly and hot without being annoyingly possessive, gruff, or arrogant like many writers’ male leads. It was the pacing of the novel that bothered me more than the actual plot points themselves. The beginning, when Connor holds up Pamela’s and her sister’s coach in the Scottish wilderness, is fine, but the “teaching Connor to act like a gentleman” bit in the middle felt way too short, and the climactic ending seemed drawn out of thin air.

So to sum up, I recommend Teresa Medeiros’ books, but this is one that you might want to borrow before you buy.

Some Like It Wild by Teresa Medeiros

Plot: **

Characters: ***

Vividness: **

Readability: ***

*If anyone’s keeping score, here are a few other romance novelists I recommend: Julia Quinn, Celeste Bradley, Victoria Alexander, Lisa Kleypas, Linda Howard, Karen Robards, Jayne Ann Krentz/Amanda Quick, Lori Foster, Katie McAlister and JR Ward.