Helpful Score: 8
Sherry Thomas has reinvented the old-school romance.
I don't know why I didn't see it before this. It should have been obvious in Private Arrangements. Damaged hero (ok, Camden is significantly less damaged than Vere) meets a ruthless heroine, willing to use whatever means are necessary to achieve her own ends. Maybe I didn't see it because Gigi from PA is much harder to sympathize with. Manipulating Camden into marriage might have been an act of desperation on her part, but it wasn't exactly a matter of life or death. Ellie may have been more ruthless in her methods, but it was, for her and her aunt, a matter of survival. She had one chance to save them and she instinctively grabbed it, knowing the consequences were certainly preferable to slow torture and eventual death at the hands of her uncle.
She's an *innocent* schemer.
I can't think of the last time I've seen that, but it may be something as old as Kathleen Woodiwiss' The Flame and the Flower. Where this bamboozled hero differs is that while he has very compelling reasons to feel resentful, he recognizes that he's completely incompetent at getting even, and he doesn't dig too deeply, or with any real gusto, into the old school hero's bag of dirty tricks to make the heroine suffer.
Another difference is that fairly early on, he starts to realize just how desperate Ellie's situation was, and he resolves to do the right thing by her, even though he isn't willing to give up his vision of wandering the earth lonely and alone, or perhaps in the company of an imaginary companion who never asks for or needs anything from him.
His conflict isn't just that of a man who resents being trapped into marriage. He's much more complex; honorable and innately good, even in the midst of his duplicity. Sleeping with Ellie is, in old school style, something that he gives into in moments of weakness, but his behavior the morning after never left me as disgusted as I have been with other heroes, past & present. I was more disappointed in him for not waking up with the realization that he was madly in love with Ellie and couldn't live without her.
I have to say though, that if this HAD happened, it would have been a much shorter book, and I would have been deeply disappointed with the author.
I highly recommend this story with the caveat that you shouldn't read it if you're looking for the customary level of angst in your average wallpaper romance.
Thomas makes you work & sweat for your HEA - which is something that I, as a reader, am pretty hungry for most of the time. Unfortunately, it's fare I rarely get these days, but that doesn't mean I ever stop hoping to find it.
If you have the chutzpah to long for every romance you read to be as emotionally grueling as a really angsty Laura Kinsale novel, this one has the stuff. Where it differs slightly, for me, is that where Kinsale sometimes makes me feel like my heart has been ripped out, ST leaves me more with the feeling that it was surgically removed by a mad scientist.
I don't think many romance writers nowadays have the confidence & sheer nerve to pull off this kind of internal conflict, much less write their way out of it credibly.
But Thomas has never shied away from writing angry, resentful heroes either. And at least she explained this one well in the final third.
I was truly upset & hurt (to the point of tears a couple of times) with him, the way that I used to get upset when reading old school romances. The difference here being that he didn't quite cross the line into unforgivable - to the point that an HEA lost all credibility for me.
I think he was angry, but I didn't think the sex was. Vere did asinine little things to punish Ellie, but he always realized afterward that they were stupid & had basically backfired on him, and hurt her in ways that he didn't intend. I never once believed that he really hated her or meant to do her any harm, so he lacked that old school hero obtuseness.
What I take away from all that, is that Thomas doesn't shy away from handing you that kind of angst & making you wallow in it a bit, but she has the insight & intelligence to not pull anything cheap.
And on the upside - His at Night has some unexpectedly hilarious moments, and the signature ST secondary romance is pretty darned sweet. *Hint*: Freddie, Gigi's erstwhile fiance from PA, finally gets his own (much deserved) HEA.
I give it an A+ (5 stars), and I will most definitely be reading it again - and soon.
I don't know why I didn't see it before this. It should have been obvious in Private Arrangements. Damaged hero (ok, Camden is significantly less damaged than Vere) meets a ruthless heroine, willing to use whatever means are necessary to achieve her own ends. Maybe I didn't see it because Gigi from PA is much harder to sympathize with. Manipulating Camden into marriage might have been an act of desperation on her part, but it wasn't exactly a matter of life or death. Ellie may have been more ruthless in her methods, but it was, for her and her aunt, a matter of survival. She had one chance to save them and she instinctively grabbed it, knowing the consequences were certainly preferable to slow torture and eventual death at the hands of her uncle.
She's an *innocent* schemer.
I can't think of the last time I've seen that, but it may be something as old as Kathleen Woodiwiss' The Flame and the Flower. Where this bamboozled hero differs is that while he has very compelling reasons to feel resentful, he recognizes that he's completely incompetent at getting even, and he doesn't dig too deeply, or with any real gusto, into the old school hero's bag of dirty tricks to make the heroine suffer.
Another difference is that fairly early on, he starts to realize just how desperate Ellie's situation was, and he resolves to do the right thing by her, even though he isn't willing to give up his vision of wandering the earth lonely and alone, or perhaps in the company of an imaginary companion who never asks for or needs anything from him.
His conflict isn't just that of a man who resents being trapped into marriage. He's much more complex; honorable and innately good, even in the midst of his duplicity. Sleeping with Ellie is, in old school style, something that he gives into in moments of weakness, but his behavior the morning after never left me as disgusted as I have been with other heroes, past & present. I was more disappointed in him for not waking up with the realization that he was madly in love with Ellie and couldn't live without her.
I have to say though, that if this HAD happened, it would have been a much shorter book, and I would have been deeply disappointed with the author.
I highly recommend this story with the caveat that you shouldn't read it if you're looking for the customary level of angst in your average wallpaper romance.
Thomas makes you work & sweat for your HEA - which is something that I, as a reader, am pretty hungry for most of the time. Unfortunately, it's fare I rarely get these days, but that doesn't mean I ever stop hoping to find it.
If you have the chutzpah to long for every romance you read to be as emotionally grueling as a really angsty Laura Kinsale novel, this one has the stuff. Where it differs slightly, for me, is that where Kinsale sometimes makes me feel like my heart has been ripped out, ST leaves me more with the feeling that it was surgically removed by a mad scientist.
I don't think many romance writers nowadays have the confidence & sheer nerve to pull off this kind of internal conflict, much less write their way out of it credibly.
But Thomas has never shied away from writing angry, resentful heroes either. And at least she explained this one well in the final third.
I was truly upset & hurt (to the point of tears a couple of times) with him, the way that I used to get upset when reading old school romances. The difference here being that he didn't quite cross the line into unforgivable - to the point that an HEA lost all credibility for me.
I think he was angry, but I didn't think the sex was. Vere did asinine little things to punish Ellie, but he always realized afterward that they were stupid & had basically backfired on him, and hurt her in ways that he didn't intend. I never once believed that he really hated her or meant to do her any harm, so he lacked that old school hero obtuseness.
What I take away from all that, is that Thomas doesn't shy away from handing you that kind of angst & making you wallow in it a bit, but she has the insight & intelligence to not pull anything cheap.
And on the upside - His at Night has some unexpectedly hilarious moments, and the signature ST secondary romance is pretty darned sweet. *Hint*: Freddie, Gigi's erstwhile fiance from PA, finally gets his own (much deserved) HEA.
I give it an A+ (5 stars), and I will most definitely be reading it again - and soon.
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