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50books_poc2012-07-17 03:04 pm
dorothean) wrote in 50books_poc2012-07-17 03:04 pm
Sherry Thomas, Ravishing the Heiress
Sequel to Beguiling the Beauty, which I wrote about here. I liked this one a lot more!
Here is most of my review from Goodreads, minus some prefatory thoughts on sexual monogamy in romance novels. (Short version: Skip this book if the protagonist being in love with/sleeping with someone who's not the official love interest is a dealbreaker for you in romance novels.)
Ravishing the Heiress --- ugh, I wince every time I type that. Can I rename it just for this review? I promise to choose something relevant and interesting! Okay, thanks -- Dormice and Demolition starts off with your typical marriage of convenience. Heroine (age 17) is the only child of a wealthy manufacturer whose ambition is to unite his family with a title. Hero (age 19) has unexpectedly inherited an earldom, an almost irredeemably derelict estate, and overwhelming debts. Unable to escape any of these, he's forced to conclude that he must marry wealth, and has the heroine thrust upon him.
The problem is that the hero is desperately in love with someone else, whom he could have married if not for the money problem. This does not escape the notice of the heroine -- brought up passionless and dutiful -- who has quickly fallen in love with him, despite her best intentions. Since she cannot hope to win the kind of love he has already given to this other girl, she determines to save herself from heartbreak by insisting on a marriage in name only. They'll live together, appear in public together, and make financial decisions together, but nothing else. When she proposes this plan, the hero assumes that she strongly dislikes the idea of intimacy with him. They agree to wait eight years before trying to have children. Apart from this, they will behave as though they're not married: he can have discreet affairs and so (after the child-rearing period) can she.
I've read other romance novels that begin this way, and what happens next is that the other woman turns out to be horrible, the hero realizes that the heroine is whom he truly wants, and they live happily ever after. This either happens immediately, or after months or years of separation during which they do not interact at all. Dormice and Demolition doesn't work this way.
What happens is this: Hero is completely wrecked after wedding, but pulls himself back together again. The other girl (I'm saying girl because at this point all of them are still teenagers) gets married and goes off to live in India. Hero and heroine begin restoring the horrible derelict estate and realize they work well together; then they take over the heroine's father's business and work even better together. Over the years, they plant gardens, travel, host parties, write advertising copy, support each other through crises, get to know each other so very well. The heroine tries to make herself fall out of love with the hero, but that doesn't work because he's so damn good to her. The hero has come to value his relationship with his wife more than anything, but wishes he could get closer to her, since he knows there's some part of her she keeps locked away from him.
The main plot is happening in 1896, which is eight years after their wedding and also, it happens, when the hero's lost love has returned from India as a widow. Of course she and he will be together at last -- they've waited so long and now there's nothing to stop them, since the hero's relationship with his wife isn't like that; even the heroine agrees. Yes, it will be painful for her to know he's with someone he really loves, but she knows this is her problem -- she's spent the last eight years devoting a great deal of emotional energy to making sure he has no idea how she really feels. The hero and his erstwhile beloved do her the courtesy of believing her in this, and all three of them are trying hard to do right by one another. (The erstwhile beloved doesn't succeed very well, but this is because she's a bit emotionally immature, not because she's the Treacherous Evil Other Woman.)
Of course, since this is a mainstream romance novel, we all know that in the end the hero will discover that the erstwhile beloved isn't for him after all, and the heroine really is. Thank you, Sherry Thomas, for making it clear that this happens not because there is something wrong with the "other woman" or because she and the hero were somehow mistaken in falling in love as teenagers. Rather, the answer is simply that it's been eight years and everyone has changed. Someone points out that had the hero and his original love married, they would have grown together and most likely have been very happy. But they didn't -- she went to India and lived there, and he lived and worked with the woman he did marry, and now they are the people they have become as a result of all these different experiences. Shared memories from their youth and eight years of mutual longing prove unequal to what the hero now has in common with the woman he actually spent those eight years with.
I love this because that's how people actually work. We change and grow, largely in response to the people and situations present in our lives, and gulfs do appear between us and those with whom we are no longer intimate. I am happy to read about the romance of this sort of mundane development, rather than the romance of lovers tragically separated at an early age whose love endured through space and time (and mutated into something purely imaginary).
Dormice and Demolition also finds the romance of the mundane love of real people by showing how the hero and heroine's relationship develops. There are so many romance novels in which racing hearts plus one thing in common plus good sex plus friendly in-laws equal true love forever. Here, the hero and heroine's initial situation bars them from this easy equation. But instead of simply telling us that years passed and they grew to trust and rely on each other, thereby laying the foundation for romantic love, Thomas spends a great deal -- maybe even a third -- of the book showing all the many ways in which her protagonists shared their lives together for better and for worse, and how they built up these shared experiences in layers on layers. Their love is not magic; it is careful construction, and so the reader knows exactly why it's strong.
Here is most of my review from Goodreads, minus some prefatory thoughts on sexual monogamy in romance novels. (Short version: Skip this book if the protagonist being in love with/sleeping with someone who's not the official love interest is a dealbreaker for you in romance novels.)
Ravishing the Heiress --- ugh, I wince every time I type that. Can I rename it just for this review? I promise to choose something relevant and interesting! Okay, thanks -- Dormice and Demolition starts off with your typical marriage of convenience. Heroine (age 17) is the only child of a wealthy manufacturer whose ambition is to unite his family with a title. Hero (age 19) has unexpectedly inherited an earldom, an almost irredeemably derelict estate, and overwhelming debts. Unable to escape any of these, he's forced to conclude that he must marry wealth, and has the heroine thrust upon him.
The problem is that the hero is desperately in love with someone else, whom he could have married if not for the money problem. This does not escape the notice of the heroine -- brought up passionless and dutiful -- who has quickly fallen in love with him, despite her best intentions. Since she cannot hope to win the kind of love he has already given to this other girl, she determines to save herself from heartbreak by insisting on a marriage in name only. They'll live together, appear in public together, and make financial decisions together, but nothing else. When she proposes this plan, the hero assumes that she strongly dislikes the idea of intimacy with him. They agree to wait eight years before trying to have children. Apart from this, they will behave as though they're not married: he can have discreet affairs and so (after the child-rearing period) can she.
I've read other romance novels that begin this way, and what happens next is that the other woman turns out to be horrible, the hero realizes that the heroine is whom he truly wants, and they live happily ever after. This either happens immediately, or after months or years of separation during which they do not interact at all. Dormice and Demolition doesn't work this way.
What happens is this: Hero is completely wrecked after wedding, but pulls himself back together again. The other girl (I'm saying girl because at this point all of them are still teenagers) gets married and goes off to live in India. Hero and heroine begin restoring the horrible derelict estate and realize they work well together; then they take over the heroine's father's business and work even better together. Over the years, they plant gardens, travel, host parties, write advertising copy, support each other through crises, get to know each other so very well. The heroine tries to make herself fall out of love with the hero, but that doesn't work because he's so damn good to her. The hero has come to value his relationship with his wife more than anything, but wishes he could get closer to her, since he knows there's some part of her she keeps locked away from him.
The main plot is happening in 1896, which is eight years after their wedding and also, it happens, when the hero's lost love has returned from India as a widow. Of course she and he will be together at last -- they've waited so long and now there's nothing to stop them, since the hero's relationship with his wife isn't like that; even the heroine agrees. Yes, it will be painful for her to know he's with someone he really loves, but she knows this is her problem -- she's spent the last eight years devoting a great deal of emotional energy to making sure he has no idea how she really feels. The hero and his erstwhile beloved do her the courtesy of believing her in this, and all three of them are trying hard to do right by one another. (The erstwhile beloved doesn't succeed very well, but this is because she's a bit emotionally immature, not because she's the Treacherous Evil Other Woman.)
Of course, since this is a mainstream romance novel, we all know that in the end the hero will discover that the erstwhile beloved isn't for him after all, and the heroine really is. Thank you, Sherry Thomas, for making it clear that this happens not because there is something wrong with the "other woman" or because she and the hero were somehow mistaken in falling in love as teenagers. Rather, the answer is simply that it's been eight years and everyone has changed. Someone points out that had the hero and his original love married, they would have grown together and most likely have been very happy. But they didn't -- she went to India and lived there, and he lived and worked with the woman he did marry, and now they are the people they have become as a result of all these different experiences. Shared memories from their youth and eight years of mutual longing prove unequal to what the hero now has in common with the woman he actually spent those eight years with.
I love this because that's how people actually work. We change and grow, largely in response to the people and situations present in our lives, and gulfs do appear between us and those with whom we are no longer intimate. I am happy to read about the romance of this sort of mundane development, rather than the romance of lovers tragically separated at an early age whose love endured through space and time (and mutated into something purely imaginary).
Dormice and Demolition also finds the romance of the mundane love of real people by showing how the hero and heroine's relationship develops. There are so many romance novels in which racing hearts plus one thing in common plus good sex plus friendly in-laws equal true love forever. Here, the hero and heroine's initial situation bars them from this easy equation. But instead of simply telling us that years passed and they grew to trust and rely on each other, thereby laying the foundation for romantic love, Thomas spends a great deal -- maybe even a third -- of the book showing all the many ways in which her protagonists shared their lives together for better and for worse, and how they built up these shared experiences in layers on layers. Their love is not magic; it is careful construction, and so the reader knows exactly why it's strong.
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So as not to disappoint, I will say that there is only one dormouse, really.
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I'm now trying to think of a similarly more suitable title for Beguiling the Beauty... perhaps, Repichnia of the Heart.