{"id":3473,"date":"2021-05-26T15:19:56","date_gmt":"2021-05-26T15:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/?p=3473"},"modified":"2021-05-26T15:19:56","modified_gmt":"2021-05-26T15:19:56","slug":"review-more-than-a-mistress-by-mary-balogh-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/2021\/05\/26\/review-more-than-a-mistress-by-mary-balogh-2006\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: More Than A Mistress by Mary Balogh (2006)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\"\"I honestly don\u2019t know what to make of this. It\u2019s Mary Balogh, so it\u2019s beautifully written, that goes without saying. In fact, I would describe it as compelling. Yet I had problems with it right from the off, and not just minor grumbles, but great big NO-NO-NO problems. So it was a weird read for me. I\u2019m still conflicted.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the premise: Jocelyn Dudley, the Duke of Tresham is engaged in a duel. The opponents are lined up, pistols poised, when out of nowhere a servant races towards them, shrieking at them to stop. Tresham, astonished, does so. His less honourable opponent carries right on and shoots him in the leg. Delayed by the consequences, Jane Inglesby, the servant, loses her menial job unless she can prove that she really was helping the Duke of Tresham. So she boldly marches up to his house and asks him to write in confirmation. Instead, he takes her on to nurse him while he\u2019s recovering from being shot. Which suits her because she\u2019s in hiding and she might as well hide in the comfort of the duke\u2019s town house. For three weeks, they bicker and banter and squabble (and begin to fall in love) and at the end of it, he offers to set her up as his mistress. And she agrees.<\/p>\n

Now, there are a million problems with this. First and foremost, what on earth is she doing intervening in a duel anyway? She might stop to gawk, but trying to stop it? WHY? She doesn\u2019t know any of them, has no stake in the outcome and her life depends on her keeping a low profile. It makes not a scrap of sense. Usually I can go with the flow of the opening premise, but this one is just too out there.<\/p>\n

Secondly, even when Jocelyn begins to realise that she\u2019s not the orphanage girl she pretends to be, he never questions her about all the secrecy or tries to find out who she really is, or why she hates to be seen by any of his friends.<\/p>\n

Thirdly, why why why when she\u2019s hiding from any number of grim possible outcomes, up to and including death, does she agree to sing for fifty guests? And no, the payment of fifty pounds doesn\u2019t convince me.<\/p>\n

Fourthly, given that she\u2019s led a perfectly respectable and sheltered life before this, why on earth does she agree to become the duke\u2019s mistress, and no, because she\u2019s got the hots for him isn\u2019t an answer.<\/p>\n

And fifthly (and finally, let\u2019s hope), why is she doing nothing at all to rescue herself from her predicament? She isn\u2019t friendless, as we discover later in the book, far too late, really. There were people she could have called upon to help her, even before she left home, when she was being pressurised to marry against her will. And even when things got really sticky and she panicked and ran away, she had a ton of time to think up better options, and (again) people who would have helped her, if only they\u2019d known of her predicament. And once she was ensconced in the duke\u2019s house, she must surely have realised that he would have helped her, if only she\u2019d asked, and he was powerful enough to protect her. As he proved, later in the book (which is the funniest part of it, actually, since he has only to crook his little finger and everyone is your-grace-ing and running around to do his bidding and the whole situation is resolved in three minutes flat and Jane is so irritated that, after all that she\u2019s been through, it\u2019s just so easy for him, being a man and a duke and rich and all that; and I totally got why she was so annoyed).<\/p>\n

And that scene kind of summarises one of the big problems I had with the book. Jane is intelligent and feisty and resourceful (and pretty stupid at times, too, but let\u2019s gloss over that for the moment), but she was also pretty helpless. She could do nothing to defend herself, she needed other, more powerful, friends. Whereas Jocelyn has all the power, in spades, but he rarely uses it for any sensible purpose. Instead, he\u2019s the typical Regency alpha-male hero – arrogant, rude, selfish, temperamental, reckless and all kinds of other unpleasantnesses. And he\u2019s also manly and courageous and honourable and loyal and superbly good at everything he does. Because of course he is. Oh yes, and he has a sensitive side, too, so he\u2019s a brilliant (self-taught) pianist and a brilliant (self-taught) painter. Because of course he is. I cannot tell you how much I disliked him.<\/p>\n

With a hero like that, there is really only one way for him to redeem himself, to my mind – he has to crawl. He has to be so deep in love with the heroine that he falls at her feet and abandons all dignity to humble himself before her and beg her to marry him. Nothing else will do. But Jocelyn didn\u2019t. Instead he decides (decides!) that she\u2019s going to marry him and even when she steadily and determinedly refuses him, he is still absolutely sure that she\u2019ll agree in the end. Not a single momentary doubt enters his arrogant aristocratic head. Ugh.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the good stuff? Well, it\u2019s Mary Balogh, so it\u2019s brilliantly written. The dialogue between our two main characters is scintillating, and the heroine usually has the last word, which is refreshing (and probably why he fell in love with her). Every scene between them shone. The hero does have shreds of redeemability in his character, he has a group of entertaining and totally loyal friends (and hooray for likable characters!) and his sister is delightfully silly. The villains are pretty silly, too, but that\u2019s par for the course with Regencies. Mainly, though, I have to confess that despite the deficiencies of the plot, I couldn\u2019t put the book down. So after some agonising, I\u2019m going to set this one down as a four star, and point out (as always) that although I sound pretty negative about this, it\u2019s only my excessively quirky opinion and I actually enjoyed the book quite a lot.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I honestly don\u2019t know what to make of this. It\u2019s Mary Balogh, so it\u2019s beautifully written, that goes without saying. In fact, I would describe it as compelling. Yet I had problems with it right from the off, and not just minor grumbles, but great big NO-NO-NO problems. So it was a weird read for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[63],"class_list":["post-3473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-balogh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3477,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473\/revisions\/3477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}