It’s amazing how so many great things came out of the mid-nineties – movies, TV, books. When I learned this title was first published in 1994 I wasn’t especially surprised. It was a more innocent time, though I would hardly describe the worldly gaming hell owner Derek Craven as innocent. Many historic romance novels attempt to depict the supposed biggest rake in London. But when New York Times BestSelling Author Lisa Kleypas refers to her hero this way, she is not exaggerating. Fighting to overcome the most unimaginable of pasts, Derek is gruff, vile, and hands down the sexiest hero I’ve encountered when reading another author’s romance novel in as long as I can remember, maybe ever.
Dreaming of You has its rough points. The heroine, Sara, is an author, and though I came to have great respect for her and liked her very much, as an author myself, I generally dislike stories where one of the main characters is an author as I tend to find these stories unrealistic, telling only of one type of author, and not of the broad spectrum that make up our bunch. While this technically held true in Dreaming of You, I did find Sara easier to relate to than I initially expected to and, certainly, I was rooting for her. The opening premise, however is a lot to swallow, the idea that this innocent author would be so naive about the ways of the world as to risk being alone in a dangerous part of the city late at night for the supposed sake of doing research for her novel. I can assure you I would never do any such thing but as the reader, we must accept that Sara is willing to do this (and not hold it against her) in order to get into the story. (It’s worth it, though…)
From there, the first half of the book got so good I couldn’t bare to put it down. I have a thing for dangerous heroes / alpha heroes / former villains / heroes who may as well have been the villain in a previous story for all the bad they’ve done. Derek Craven is the epitome of this type of hero and Ms. Kleypas holds nothing back in her description of his colorful past from his dangerous adventures as an orphan child to his sea of married lovers, some of whom cannot take “We’re done,” for an answer. Spoiler Alert: I would have called this story the greatest romance novel of all time had Derek and Sara made love when she disguises herself to attend his masquerade ball. The fact that they stopped just about killed me. I’m not sure I’ll ever get over it!
From there, shockingly, we hit a bit of a sagging middle. Though Derek and Sara are making great strides as we near the middle of the book, learning things about themselves they’d never realized and becoming aware of their feelings for one another, the pacing slows way down and we wait a long time for them to even see each other again. By the time they do, the spark is still there but the mood has cooled, and the exciting story that was keeping me on the edge of my seat when Sara was doing research in Derek’s gaming club has basically ended. Still, what I loved about the characters remains. So I kept reading, eager to see what would ultimately bring this most unlikely pairing, so obviously in love, together forever.
Dreaming of You takes its time playing itself out. But when it reaches its conclusion it is beautifully done and it is infinitely satisfying. There are elements of the story I would have liked to see played out differently but I can’t deny that in nearly 20 years of reading romance novels, this one jumped to the top of my favorites list. I liked this hero so much I can basically ignore everything else. Highly recommend his story – go see if he can do the same for you!
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