A
Genre: Historical: European, Regency, Romance
There’s been quite a few people asking for non-noble, non-titled heroes, and then Romain gives us a “non-titled, poorish Anglo-Indian” hero who is a little bit snarky and long suffering.
This was delightful. Augusta Meredith is the heiress to a beauty products company, and she’s got more than two braincells to rub together, and she uses them to get her company board to do what she wants them to do, all while making them think it’s their idea. She is frustrated by this, as anyone would be. Her parents died two years before, and she’s just emotionally dead.
She’s hanging out in Bath after raising up some scandal in London (of the “being overly flirty just to prove that I’m alive” variety) and decides to pretend to be a widow. Since she’s not of the peerage and just allowed on the fringes of the ton, no one in Bath knows who she is. And she’s looking for a lover.
Except for Joss, of course. Joss is ¼ Indian, the grandson of a baron, and the man of business for the poor idiot cousin who holds the title now. Joss has been sent to Bath to try to sell land for the current Baron Sutcliffe, because someone is blackmailing him, threatening to tell his (Sutcliffe’s ) wife about a pregnant maid. Joss sees Augusta pretending to be Mrs. Flowers, and she strikes a bargain with him that she’ll help him with the land sale – she knows who to talk to about that – if he’ll keep her secret. She offers him the position of her lover, and in quite flowery language, too:
“I would do? …Because I am convenient? Or because I am entirely unworthy of marriage?”
His tone froze her fingers, and she withdrew her hand to her lap. “Because” –she raised her own chin- “You bathe regularly and are not bad looking. As I mentioned previously.”
“I may swoon.”
They dance around and toward each other, and while Augusta is a fine heroine, I found Joss to be fascinating. His mother died when he was very young, and he has no connection to his Indian heritage, save for a few plants in his cousin’s conservatory planted by his grandmother, and a book of plants, also written by his grandmother. The book is mostly in Hindu Hindi, and he doesn’t read Hindu Hindi. He knows he’s different, and so does everyone else, but he has no idea what it means to be Indian.
(I feel a lot of sympathy for this as I’ve been doing my own genealogical and cultural research, and I have a LOT of resources at my disposal. I can’t imagine not having anything to go on, and there’s a whole level of not white but not Indian either. Augusta at one point goes “Oh, but I totally couldn’t tell you were Indian and no one would guess if you just didn’t tell them!” and it’s treated as the cringe-worthy statement it is.)
One of his motivations for getting through with this land sale is that he’ll get a percentage of the proceeds, and he can leave his cousin’s employ and strike out somewhere else. Sutcliffe is the closest thing this book has to a villain, and while he’s not against our heroes, he does have a habit of seducing maids and beyond that, he’s vapid and silly. He and Joss were brought up together, and got into the habit of Joss having the brain while Sutcliffe wandered around being lucky his head was attached to the rest of him.
These patterns are hard to break. Especially in family.
There were a few other supporting characters that are well-drawn. Augusta is in Bath with a friend who had just suffered a miscarriage and needs time and quiet to recover, and Lord Chatfield, who, in the words of Augusta, “knows things.”
Then there’s the exploration of why Augusta is pretending to be Mrs. Flowers, who is not burdened by a large inheritance and is a young widow, so she’s fair game to flirt with and is acting as non-threatening as she can manage. Augusta talks about how Mrs. Flowers is different and what she likes about being Flowers and what she doesn’t. Joss gets stuck on “But Augusta and Mrs. Flowers are BOTH YOU there’s no difference” and both Augusta and Chatfield are like “That’s not how it works.”
I think this is something that got we got kind of bogged down with in our Never Judge a Lady discussion– Georgiana is Chase is Anna, but they’re all different facets of the person. And when you’re performing as one incarnation, there are facets that are more pronounced. Example: I’m in the SCA, which is a historical re-enactment group. I have a persona within that group, Aurelia, and she is, primarily, me, but there are certain parts of her that come out more when I’m being her. Aurelia has a slightly different walk and confidence to her. Or, even RedHeadedGirl is a slightly different version of myself than I am in meatspace. Are we all me? Yes, but we’re all different versions of me, as context defines.
Maybe that makes no fucking sense, but here we are.
ANYWAY.
I spent a day in Bath four years ago, and I loved it. I love reading about Bath, and looking at maps and going “OH I WALKED BY THERE” and yes, I took of the waters after the best breakfast of my life in The Pump Room, and yes, it does taste a little bit like feet. Romain does a great job of making it feel like a realized place, and I really want to go back there.
I really enjoyed everything about this book. The characters were fascinating and not the standard duke (I don’t have anything against the standard duke, mind, but I like reading about the 99%, too). I loved Joss’ identity issues, and the setting made me so happy. I also really liked that there wasn’t an evil villain in the background twirling his moustache and cackling. This was a delight.
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Am I a bad person if I lolled at the typo ” different version of myself than I am in meatspace”.
I mean, come on, meatspace! 🙂
Forgot to add: thanks for the review, I will definitely read this book. I’m getting tired of all the “ton” characters, and this sounds refreshing!
Great review which really makes me want to read the book. It’s not as well known as it should be that the Prime Minister during the Regency had an Anglo-Indian heritage.
Following up on Faellie — there were early-19th-c English novels with a lot more interracial romance than seemed imaginable by the end of the 19th c. (All incredibly class-bound instead, and the acceptable Indians are generally tall grey-eyed mountain people instead of Bengali litterateurs. Still.)
I can’t remember the names of any, I was trawling Project Gutenberg and none of the intercontinental romances were very good books. I did find a nonfiction travelogue that’s so old the author treats the word “employee” as a foreign French word. (_Eothen_, which is kind of a good-tempered dudebro tour of its day. Worth reading if you liked Lady Montagu’s travelogue.)
@Diana, I don’t believe meatspace is supposed to be a typo. 🙂 “Meatspace” is sometimes used to defined the real world as the opposite of cyberspace. I think it originally came up as a term in the tabletop game Shadowrun, or something like that, which is fantasy/cyberpunk.
The book definitely sounds interesting. I’m all for reversals of roles, where it’s the heroine who’s wealthy and privileged and aggressive and pursuing the hero.
@Leah Oh, really? Damn it, I’m not as geeky as I thought. I thought it was supposed to be metaspace. Meta is more… internet-ish?
In my mind, I imagined a meat-y universe, with bacon-fences, and ham-trees, window shades made of sausages…
Now I’m hungry 🙂
“I may swoon.”
Must. Read. This. Book.
“hindu” is the religion while “hindi” is the language, fyi!
@Anne:
Yikes – thank you for clarifying that! Will fix!
Oh this is all sorts of my thing. can’t wait
Thanks for the review, Redheadedgirl. Secrets of a Scandalous Heiress just moved up on the TBR list. This morning, I read a two-part chat between Theresa Romain and Rose Lerner on their blogs about their books with heiresses in search of a hero. I feel a historical reading binge coming on ….
No, meatspace was not a typo! I first came across the term in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.
And sorry about the Hindi/Hindu mistake- I should have double-checked that I got it right.
I was out of the loop on Ms. Romain’s books until this past year, when “It Takes Two to Tangle” worked its way to the top of my TBR pile. I’ve been buying up her other titles as the ebooks go on sale.
Now I’m off to find that Romain/Lerner chat…
I should have included the link for the chat. Here is the link to Part One:
http://theresaromain.com/2015/01/09/a-chat-with-rose-lerner/
Ooh, this sounds like fun.
Also, I’m loving that cover. It’s not the usual clench, it’s a heroine _who actually has a head_, and further, she looks like someone who just turned around as if to say wryly, “O RLY?”
This sounds right up my alley. On a side note, does anyone have other recommendations for historical romances that include interracial romances or otherwise deal with race issues? The only one I can think of is Courtney Milan’s Heiress Effect, but I’m just dipping my toes into the romance genre, and I know that’s something I’d like to read more of.
I love Romain – one of my fave authors. I fall in love with all of her heroes, and the heroines are always so admirable.
@Heather, it’s been a while since I read it, but IIRC, the hero of Meredith Duran’s Duke of Shadows is Anglo-Indian.
I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t buy any more books for a while, and then this one comes along and makes me change my mind! Damn you, SBTB! In a good way, of course.:)
For some startlingly relaxed views regarding cross-cultural romance, check out “The Master of Mysteries” by Gelett Burgess (yes, Purple Cow Burgess.) Though written around 1909, this collection of comic/mystery short stories features an American-Egyptian hero-who is also a phony psychic-and ends up courting and marrying his lily-white female assistant without a single suggestion that this might be outside the norm of that time. In another story in the collection, a Manhattan socialite elopes with her Japanese butler, and the attitude is “Meh, it’ll be a scandal for a week or so, and then everyone will forget it and move on.”
And of course, there’s the late, great Elizabeth Peters and her Amelia Peabody series, that featured a handful of British/Egyptian pairings.
The cover is quite pretty and distracting although it looks like a movie poster circa 1967 or should that be 76?
Anyway the cover is very cute.
@Heather, there’s an old book I haven’t read in a long, long time – Goodreads says published in 1981 – called “Miss Hungerford’s Handsome Hero” by Noël Vreeland Carter. I think it was a Georgian, and I’m trying to remember if the hero was Chinese/Irish or Chinese.
I’m a regular reader/lurker here. I’m also a Hindu and I speak Hindi (among other Indian languages). It’s really disappointing to see you fall into the Hindu/Hindi trap, especially after featuring a Bollywood film review on the site just a few months ago (I even overlooked it when you misspelled “Khan” as “Kahn” repeatedly there, because I was grateful to see something closer to home featured on the site. He’s an Indian actor, not a German goalkeeper!) If you write about cultures you’re not familiar with, please fact check before publishing.
Anyway, mini-rant apart, I love the work you ladies do and the fount of knowledge that is the bitchery. Keep it up!
@Kri:
That was my fault, and you’re right, I should have caught that. I apologize.
@Heather: Liz Carlyle has two books featuring an Anglo-Indian brother and sister, One Touch of Scandal and The Bride Wore Pearls.
@Kri
I’m disappointed with you. People make mistakes; they’re human. Both Sarah and Redheaded girl already apologized. Not everything is the result of malicious intent. If people are going to learn about other cultures, they need the freedom to make a few honest mistakes, that’s usually how we learn. I hope your attitude improves.
@Anna I know people can make mistakes and I honestly wasn’t looking for an apology from Sarah or RHG. I was just frustrated, because for the first time I felt a bit alienated while reading the blog, when usually I feel so much a part of the wonderful community of readers here. It wasn’t my intention to sound catty about it, but I guess I did.
@SBSarah, sorry if I came off as oversensitive!
@kri, I think you’re allowed to be a little shirty about Hindu vs. Hindi. I for one thought you were pretty gracious about it all in all! (And was glad to see it owned and corrected). As for Khan vs Kahn, I made that mistake with a dear friend 20 years ago, and was soundly scolded…guess what? Never made the same mistake again! Ha. And we’re still friends.
Ooh, I’m definitely bumping this up to the TBR list now. I’ve been umming and ahhing about when to read it for a while now, but that review definitely helped me decide!
Thanks!
I just finished reading this and loved it, especially for the exploration of the emotional space of grief. Augusta is grieving for her parents, but also for the end of a relationship that happened at the same time. And Emily is mourning the loss of a much wished for daughter. All of these losses are treated with gravity, and take the entire book to work through. As much as I loved the Joss/Augusta romance, I loved even more how it played out through both women trying to find their sense of self again.
Also, note to Faellie – the novel does mention, a couple of times, that the Prime Minister has Anglo-Indian heritage.
Thanks for the recs, everyone! Lots of new authors to add to my list 🙂
Thanks @leftcoaster! Btw, Khan vs Kahn sounds like a great name for a legal thriller 😀