![\"\"](\"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/devilyouknow.jpg\")
Such a frustrating book – beautifully written in every way, and near perfect up to roughly the 75% mark, and then things went a bit pear-shaped. It didn\u2019t ruin the book for me, and I\u2019ll certainly look out for more by this author, but it was disappointing.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the premise: Kitty Elford\u2019s half-brother is about to marry, and his bride wants Kitty out of the family home at once if not sooner. Kitty is given an ultimatum – leave penniless to make her own way in the world, or marry the notorious rake the Earl of Ledbury. Kitty\u2019s not unwilling – the earl is handsome, after all, and she sighed over him as a debutante, but she knows his reputation all too well having seen him about his seductive business one evening. But it\u2019s better than being penniless, and the earl is happy to have Kitty\u2019s generous dowry to fund his race horses (the sister-in-law really, really wants her out of the way), so married they are.<\/p>\n
The wedding night is a disaster, but we see nothing of it because this is a traditional Regency. Despite the fact that a large part of the book is about sex, whether the hero\u2019s pre-marital shenanigans, the wedding night fiasco or the long wait for hero and heroine to reach an accommodation in that direction, there\u2019s nothing graphic about it at all. There\u2019s no reason why this should feel odd, and I\u2019ve written marriage of convenience stories myself that keep all the sex offstage, but the abrupt transition felt uncomfortable. One minute, the hero is fortifying himself to do his duty by his bride with brandy, and the next she\u2019s waking alone in bed, and for a moment I wondered if perhaps he hadn\u2019t come to her room at all. I don\u2019t know how else it could have been done but somehow it all seemed understated. The jump deserved something more – a new chapter, perhaps?<\/p>\n
The interesting question is why a rake, who presumably knows everything there is to know about pleasuring women, should make such a hash of things with his own wife, but perhaps the proffered explanation – that\u2019s he\u2019s never bedded a virgin before – will suffice. Anyway, he decides that he doesn\u2019t like being married, and would rather pretend it\u2019s never happened, especially as his bride sets to with workmen and wallpaper samples to set right the neglected house, and upend his whole existence. So he invites a group of his friends to stay to distract himself with jocular masculine company, which works about as well as you would expect.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, one of the friends is Lord Inglesham, a widower and by far the more promising character to play the role of hero. He\u2019s quite wasted as a sidekick, frankly. He offers Lord Ledbury some sound advice, which would have been blindingly obvious to any half-sensible man, and some of it does sink in, for Ledbury and Kitty do start to get onto better terms. He discovers that she\u2019s an accomplished rider, for one thing, which is the one thing guaranteed to soften him towards her, and she\u2019s starting to soften towards him, too.<\/p>\n
Now, you\u2019d expect that this would result in a return to the heir-producing efforts so unceremoniously abandoned after that disastrous, but unseen, wedding night, but no. One thing after another conspires to prevent it, and the author has to stretch credulity to snapping point to keep them apart. I confess to getting impatient with the artificiality of it all, and wondering why on earth they didn\u2019t just sit down and discuss it openly, like sensible adults. But no, they have to wait and wait and wait some more, because reasons.<\/p>\n
At this point, I was very much comparing the book with Mary Balogh\u2019s The Obedient Bride, a book which takes the same basic premise of a marriage of convenience to a man of casual morals, and follows it with uncompromising honesty. Balogh doesn\u2019t shy away from the sex, but she also creates a very believable transformation in both main characters. Holloway, by contrast, has to resort to some fairly tired old tropes to create the drama at the end which will finally bring the principals together.<\/p>\n
And this is where the book veered off the rails for me. It wasn\u2019t the melodrama that sank the final section of the book, but the hero\u2019s response to it. He starts the book as a deeply selfish individual who\u2019s gradually come to see his wife as not merely the funder of his racehorses, or a housewifely nuisance, but someone he values and appreciates in her own right. He even begins to realise that he loves her. But when the crisis comes, he simply runs away – there\u2019s no other way to describe it. And I wanted to slap him upside the head, and tell him not to be so stupid, to go to Kitty and TALK to her, for heaven\u2019s sake. You know, like a grown up. But no, he has to be rescued by his long-suffering friend, the heroic Lord Inglesham, once more. I can\u2019t tell you how deeply disappointing I found this, but on the other side of the coin, if I\u2019d cared less about Ledbury, I\u2019d have been less disappointed. I suppose it\u2019s a testament to the author\u2019s skill that I so badly wanted him to come good at the end.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s some more fairly over-the-top melodrama before matters are resolved, but I can\u2019t honestly say I was convinced by Ledbury\u2019s transformation from perpetual rake to faithful husband. Reforming a rake believably is arguably the most difficult challenge a Regency author can undertake, and to be fair, few are truly convincing. The reader wants to believe, though, and maybe that\u2019s enough.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t want this to sound too negative, because for the first three quarters of the book I was breathless with admiration. The language is perfectly of the Regency, I didn\u2019t detect a single anachronism or infelicitous phrase, the main characters have believable depth, and the dialogue is electrifying. The back and forth between Kitty and Ledbury, and particularly Ledbury\u2019s volatile moods are brilliantly realised. I loved every moment of it. It was only that saggy ending that spoilt things for me and kept it to four stars, but I thoroughly recommend it all the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Such a frustrating book – beautifully written in every way, and near perfect up to roughly the 75% mark, and then things went a bit pear-shaped. It didn\u2019t ruin the book for me, and I\u2019ll certainly look out for more by this author, but it was disappointing. Here\u2019s the premise: Kitty Elford\u2019s half-brother is about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[223],"class_list":["post-4235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-holloway"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4235","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=4235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4239,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4235\/revisions\/4239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}