What do you suppose started this trend of romance heroines being so mean? I’m assuming its an effort to step back from the traditional damsel in distress, but when the heroine is pushy, hateful, and controlling, the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. Ecstasy Wears Emeralds is the third such book I’ve read in the last month.

Our hero, Dr. Rowan West, is a very nice guy. He’s kind to his patients, creative in their care, and he offers free medical care to the poor. His household staff adore him. He survived a year of cruel captivity in India and assumes guilt for circumstances beyond his control in order to spare others’ pain. One evening he returns home to find that a young woman has invaded and refuses to leave. Upon introduction he learns that she is the cousin of his former girlfriend, now deceased. The young woman, Gayle, has come to blackmail Rowan into teaching her medicine, threatening to spread gossip, learned while eavesdropping on her aunt, about his role in her cousin’s death. Gayle is very clear that she believes Rowan is a villain, that she’ll ruin his practice if he doesn’t comply, and that the ramifications of his taking on a female student do not concern her. Rowan is extremely concerned by Gayle’s threats and reluctantly allows her to move in and being studying.

Thinking that she’ll soon give up and go away, Rowan assigns Gayle to torturous studies. He begins to admire her when she thrives on the hard work, and they have long discussions about everything she’s learning. Gayle doesn’t trust Rowan, however, so she holds herself aloof for a long time, rejecting his overtures of friendship. When they finally become friends, and then lovers, a threat from Rowan’s past resurfaces. The Jaded Gentlemen, Rowan and his fellow captives who escaped the Indian prison with him, are attacked by someone who believes they took a priceless object with them when they left. Innocents are being hurt in the crossfire, so Rowan has to worry about protecting himself, his friends, his household, and now Gayle, too.

This book is typical Renee Bernard. The writing is excellent, with smooth dialogue, warm love scenes, and a fully-fleshed cast. Sharing Gayle’s lessons and learning about Rowan’s patient management was interesting. The backstory was well explained without a lot of blah-blah-blah. I would have enjoyed Rowan and his friends if I hadn’t spent so much time wondering when Rowan was going to tell Gayle to go jump in a lake.

I despised Gayle for much of the book. What I couldn’t get past was how Gayle threatened Rowan’s hard-won livelihood with just a snippet of gossip, from someone who was not an objective or reliable source. Even when she has evidence that he is not at all as her aunt described, she still clings to the opinion that he’s a liar and a cad, so she doesn’t have to feel guilty about how she’s complicating his life. When her presence in his household makes waves with the medical community, her only concern is how it will effect her. She eavesdrops on Rowan’s conversation with a disapproving superior and then takes extreme exception when Rowan’s explanations of her presence make her seem less significant. She offers friendship to everyone but Rowan, which hurts his feelings. In spite of his patience with her and the time he spends teaching her, she’s quick to call him names to his face.

The hard-to-like heroine trend is accompanied by hard-to-figure out heroes. Like the couples in the other two recent books of this nature, I questioned the whole time “what does he see in her?” Did Rowan have some kind of personality disorder? He’s kind to, and even admiring of, a woman who is playing him a dirty trick. Everyone loves Rowan and he has lots of friends, so why is he so attracted to Gayle? Its frustrating to watch such a nice guy absorbing all these blows to his ego.

I can’t stand this trend. I hope the next book I read has a weeping, fainting heroine, or one that is saccharine sweet. Even that would be better than a multiple books where “strong heroine” equals “spiteful” or “overbearing”.