What I read on the plane

After six plane flights in the past week, I have these to report.

Married by Morning, Lisa Kleypas.  If you've been reading the Hathaways series, it's a decent addition.  But like the last two or three, these are definitely not up to her previous standards.  One suspects her attention has moved on to her contemporary novels.  It felt phoned in, as they say, so I'm giving it a phoned-in review.  It did get better as it went along.  B-

The Duke and I, Julia Quinn.  As plane entertainment, this one was nearly perfect.  I didn't skim, which is something.  Usually I get bored and start flipping pages.  But there was a duel scene, which I think is tricky to do well, and then the ending felt sort of flat.  This is the first one of the Bridgerton series (I've read several of the others, but for some reason had never read this one). There are seven Bridgerton children, and Daphne is the oldest daughter.  The widowed mama, Violet, is determined to marry them all off, especially Daphne.  When Daphne's brother's best friend, the Duke of Hastings, returns from several years on the Continent, he and Daphne decide to evade the pressures of the marriage mart by pretending to be devoted to each other so everyone will leave them alone.  Of course they fall in love, but there are some things that need to be worked out, and (minus the duel) it's a really good story.  I do hate it when eighteenth century characters start talking to each other like they're in psychotherapy, but there's only a little of that toward the end.  I really enjoyed this one.  B+

Not Another Bad Date, Rachel Gibson.  Similar.  Great plane read.  Not exactly laugh out loud funny, but amusing.  Kept me interested, although I did skim some.  But Gibson fell into a trap that I think many contemporary romance authors do:  she brings up some really serious, deep emotional issues, and then -- because the tone is lighthearted and amusing-- either doesn't deal with them at all or deals with them in a way that feels inadequate.  For example:  the hero is a widower with a 13-year-old daughter.  The daughter is very resentful of his new girl friend.  There's a scene where he completely ignores her (in public) to kiss the heroine.  But then the daughter is just suddenly over it and everything is fine.  Right.  One suspects Gibson hasn't spent much time with 13-year-old girls.  I finished this one with about twenty minutes left of a flight, and rather than starting a new one, I skimmed back through it.  I think I would have like it a lot better if I hadn't done that, because on re-reading, you are just that much more aware of all the things that didn't get resolved.  It was disappointing because she wouldn't have needed to do anything huge-- just a few sentences added here and there to make it clear that she wasn't ignoring how difficult this would be.  But still it was fun, and I enjoyed it.   B

Rebecca, Daphne DuMaurier.  This is an old classic, I think originally published in the 1930s.  I read it and loved it when I was in high school.  but I have to say it doesn't really stand up to re-reading.  The heroine/narrator, who is never named, is so pathetically passive that it is difficult to understand her.  She is a shy young woman who marries a wealthy older man about ten months after the tragic death of his vibrant, dynamic first wife, Rebecca.  When I read it as a teenager, I was enormously sympathetic to the narrator.  But this time, her passivity and shyness seemed so overdone that you start wondering if duMaurier intended her to be an unreliable narrator-- and once you start looking at it from that perspective, it changes everything.  That theory doesn't really work-- I think duMaurier did intend that the reader would sympathize with the narrator.  (and yes I do understand the intentional fallacy but figuring out what the author might have intended often fascinates me, even if there's no way to really know.)  Anyway.  The unreliable narrator angle is an interesting twist to think about while you're reading.  It's beautifully written and beautifully plotted, but I found it melodramatic and overdone this time.  But it is a classic in a way that none of the other books in this post are, and I can't really grade it in the same way.  Can you grade a classic at all?