Lightning Reviews: A High and a Low

We only have two books for this installment of LIGHTNING REVIEWS, but that’s okay! I think you’ll still find a book here to add to your TBR pile. Both books are wildly different and received opposite grades.

The Companion

author: Kim Taylor Blakemore

I’m a huge fan of Gothic and of creepy shit in general, so I was super excited to read The Companion. While this book has Gothic elements, it doesn’t follow the Gothic convention of having the heroine vindicated, and frankly it turned out to be a depressing read in general.

Part of the book takes place in 1855 as Lucy Blunt awaits the verdict of her murder trial. While she is imprisoned, Lucy reflects back on the events that brought her to this place. On the run from her own past, Lucy took a job as a downstairs maid for a wealthy New Hampshire family. As winter settles in and isolates them, Lucy finds herself drawn into a triangle of sex and manipulation between her employer, Mrs. Burton, and Mrs. Burton’s maid, Rebecca.

The slow unfolding of the mystery of how Lucy winds up in prison is well done, and the isolation of a New England winter created a wonderfully creepy atmosphere. Lucy is an unreliable narrator (another Gothic convention) and as the novel progresses Lucy’s complicated past prior to coming to the Burton household is revealed, another divergence from the Gothic tradition of the virginal and naive heroine.

The other ways in which this novel defied Gothic convention and my expectations are difficult to explain without spoiling too much, but what turned me off is

Click for spoilers

…that all of the women in this book begin and end as victims. Most of them are mistreated by men–Lucy’s father and Mr. Burton to name a few, and they are unable to escape the circumstances that trap them in unhappy roles.

As a result I found the book to be incredibly depressing. Typically Gothics offset the gaslighting and trauma the heroine experiences by offering her vindication in the end. In this case, Lucy never gets that vindication, which meant the novel is essentially just a series of events in which she is mistreated. Without justice for her, I walked away from the book feeling depressed. All of the Gothic conventions in the novel led me to expect an ending in line with that genre, and when it failed to appear, I felt let down.

Elyse

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Temporary Wife Temptation

author: Jayci Lee

I love tropes. I could talk tropes all the live long day. But you know what I really love, when there is a trope trifecta…

Office romance?
Fake relationship?
Marriage of convenience?

Tick! Tick! TICK! This book literally ticks all the boxes.

Garrett Song, the man about to be announced as CEO of Hansol Incorporated (his family’s company) is super-hot, super-driven and super-not-into-marriage. Garrett’s grandmother, the overbearing matriarch, has other ideas though and has arranged a marriage for Garrett. Unsurprisingly, he has no interest in following his grandmother’s orders on this front, so he declares with confidence that he’s already in a relationship. Enter…

Natalie Sobol is the Director of Human Resources at Hansol Incorporated. Natalie’s sister, Traci, passed away and her last wish was for Natalie to adopt Traci’s daughter, Sophie. But there is a spanner in the works. Sophie is currently in the care of her father’s parents. Natalie wants to improve her chances of getting full custody by getting married. Apparently, ‘the system’ prefers married couples.

You see where this is going, right? Right! But, it gets even better because with their first meeting we’re already seeking BIG SPARKS. Garrett hasn’t signed the required paperwork for his position at the company, and according to Natalie, it’s time for a reckoning. Natalie marches into his office and issues a written warning for not conforming to company rules. That this is the man that will take the reins as CEO is irrelevant. Fair is fair and Garrett isn’t playing the game. BAM! Fireworks! The attraction is INSTANT and palpable. And to make it even better, the two have unwittingly been presented with the solution to their individual conundrums: each other.

So I’m bouncing up and down while writing this review (and you can probably tell based on my liberal use of uppercase letters), but there is a minus. I devoured this book in a matter of hours (full disclosure: we had just entered lockdown and I needed comfort, so I spent the day in bed reading this book) but…sometimes the story seems ever so slightly forced. There are sometimes simpler solutions available for the problems the characters are faced with, but my deep, abiding love for the tropes in this book had me closing my eyes to these simpler, shorter, less messy avenues. In this book’s defense, I will say that while the trope is a classic, this is mostly a fresh take on it, and some of the characters’ choices genuinely surprised me.

There’s a reason I’m mad about tropes. I like to follow a familiar groove, one that hits all the emotional high points that I need. While these old favourites feel slightly stiff in places, overall, it was just the kind of emotional rollercoaster I love being on.

Lara

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Comments are Closed

  1. Maudielove says:

    I haven’t read The Companion, but it seems like a pretty direct homage to Alias Grace. Perhaps it’s based on the same historical event? So if the synopsis sounds appealing, I would heartily recommend Alias Grace instead!

  2. Karin says:

    Temporary Wife Temptation sounds like just what the doctor ordered, thanks Jayci Lee!

  3. DiscoDollyDeb says:

    Based on yesterday’s review of THE LOST ONES and today’s review of THE COMPANION—and keeping in mind how frequently books with similar themes seem to get published at the same time—it looks as if we might be in for a run of books with gothic trappings but without the female empowerment and vindication found in books that have a true gothic sensibility.

  4. Barb Porter says:

    Cover photographs of couples aren’t usually my jam but that Jayci Lee cover is so good!

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