50books_poc | #27: Not Quite A Husband by Sherry Thomas

She’s a female doctor in the 1890s who’s also an extreme introvert. He’s a renown mathematician with an odd yet secret family background. Together, they utterly fail at life. Separately, they only really do much better due to being rather good at their individual callings.

And for a little over the first third of the book, I was madly in love. And then we learned a part of their shared past that doesn’t sit well with me.

Four years ago, Bryony Asquith proposed marriage out of the blue to her neighbor, Leo Marsden. Probably, she was in love with him at the time, but, due to her childhood, so closed off from her feelings and unfamiliar with anything resembling normal relationships that she had no idea. Leo accepted, due to having been in love with Bryony since about birth. Due to his own family life and his obsessive (but unnecessary) need to prove himself his father’s son, however, he never thought to actually mention that, or wonder if Bryony realized it. This leads to his making a mistake just before their marriage that Bryony (rather understandably) allowed to fester and used to shut herself off from him, until she finally asked for an annulment and left England to practice overseas.

Three years later, Leo tracks her down in India with a message from her sister that their father is dying, and persuades her to return to England with him, just in time for the two to get caught up in the siege of Malakand. I love stories about characters who are extreme introverts and find it difficult to function in society or interact well with people, much less form lasting attachments, but they’re rarely pulled off in a way that convinces me.* Here, it’s pulled off with both leads. Leo (who, IMO, is a more interesting and likable hero than Thomas’s previous heroes) interacts normally with most people, but these interactions seem to largely be form and manners, not any real connection and understanding, and while his relationships with his various family members are loving, they are also strained and conflicted, and formed of unconventional circumstances. Bryony, on the other hand, is almost completely cut of from humanity as a whole, despite seeming to have a near obsessive need to save people, and anything most of us would call normal human interactions and relationships are alien to her.

Initially, the book is written in a detached, almost terse style that I loved because I thought it fit Bryony’s view of the world and her relationship with Leo perfectly, but others might have problems with. Later, as their relationship begins to mature and we get to the “ZOMG! Uprisings! Danger!” part of the book, the writing gets more “traditional” as Bryony comes out of her shell.

What keeps me from loving the book, though, is the revelation that the reason Bryony locked Leo out of her bedroom is that he started having sex with her while she was asleep because she hated it while she was awake (but enjoyed it asleep) and that he kept doing it after she told him to stop. I mean, dude, yeah, you have sex with her while she’s asleep and keep it up after you’re told to stop? I’d be happy if I was just locked out! I don’t think Thomas was approving of it at that point so much as using it to show how messed up their relationship was, and that Leo was almost as messed up as Bryony, but I was never able to really get past it. I’m not thrilled that Bryony later does it to him, either, though at least she has the perspective of knowing he thinks that’s an OK thing to do. Later, when it becomes clear that it’s something they both enjoy, I’m not bothered by it and it falls into a more neutral “your kink is not mine” territory, but how it started really soured a lot of their relationship for me.

Still, despite the problematic parts, Thomas is consistently moving closer to an author I just plain really, really enjoy, and further from an author who has some parts I love, and some parts that make me want to rage.

*There are many reasons Claymore is my favorite shounen manga. (Except for when Fullmetal Alchemist is. I’m fickle that way.) That most of the cast is made up of people who have been trained their entire life to reject meaningful relationships and feelings and interactions and to not depend on anyone and are only really allowed one close friend so that they can have the security that someone will kill them if they ever turn into a murderous monster is but one of those reasons.