Hard Day's Knight

Author: Katie MacAlister
Published: January 4, 2005 (Signet)
Category: Contemporary Romance
Quote of choice: "God's teeth, the Wenches have plentiful breasticles!"

I love Katie MacAlister's books. I've read her Aisling Grey paranormal romance series (only two books so far), and they are my favorites of all her books. Of her stand-alone novels, I've read Men in Kilts and The Corset Diaries. If I had to rank how much I liked her books, I think Hard Day's Knight would come in last.

Knight is about Pepper (yes, a sadly ridiculous name), an out-of-work software programmer looking for love outside the programmer-geek pool. She accompanies her cousin, CJ, to the biggest renaissance fair in the world. CJ insists that she can find Pepper's "knight in shining armor" amongst the participants at the fair, but CJ turned out to be kind of selfish and bitchy, disagreeing with Pepper's choice of knight-in-shining-armor. To disagree with CJ, I found Walker to be a perfectly acceptable, dishy knight (he's got an English accent to boot!).

MacAlister's books have the common theme of super-sexy alpha male meets confident, argumentative woman with less-than-perfect body. I mean, in Corset Diaries, the heroine was a size 12, and in Knight, Pepper was described as "sturdy." This male-female dynamic produces lots of great, witty reparté and that was far from lacking in Knight.

Really, there were only a couple problems in Knight. First, the writing/storyline wasn't as smooth as MacAlister's other books. It's not awful, but I guess my expectations were rather high. Second, CJ was awful! She sided with her boyfriend and turned on her cousin right away and that bugged me. Obviously, she cared more about her knight more and had less loyalty than she ought to towards her cousin. Well ha! Pepper winds up with Walker in the end anyways!

Awesome parts of this book: real life knights in shining armor, a humongous cat named Behemoth (Moth for short), and an official Wench organization!