Fantastic Love Scene Balances Flaws

I admire Romance authors who have to churn out books super fast, especially to fit the exact word and formula requirements of Category and contain themselves to be standard generic. There's little time for editing, but I feel this one could have greatly benefited by someone slashing out the relentless repetitions repetitions repetitions.

And also, my goodness, so much on-the-nose expository dialogue without subtext. It seemed like Roberts ran out of story and had to fill in the word count so just kept writing the characters explaining themselves like a psychologist might explain a case.

It's hard to read the old-fashioned way of writing that was once considered OK -- continual head hopping. I'm so glad that's changed, now.

However, there is a love scene in this book that is one of the best I've read, absolutely fantastic poetic passion, profundity, mystical bliss, feral ferocity. "For an instant, time stopped, and with it, his breath, his thoughts, his life. He saw only her, her hair streaming back like a wild red river. . ." It was like reading a symphony, truly inspired brilliance here. "His pulse thundered under her fingertips."

I liked the characters fine, and I was very glad to see the protagonist, Vanessa, prioritize her career and take her time in deciding what she wanted with love and not let herself be swayed. That seems like a good message to me.