It’s meet-disaster for Laura Hayes and Alex Archer: Fascinated by water, Laura is at the local pond practicing her diving skills. Alex thinks she’s drowning and tries to “save” her, much to her indignation. Little does Laura know that wading into the pond to save her was an act of sheer courage on Alex’s part, connected to a past he’d rather forget.
A Convenient Fiction is the third book in the author’s Parish Orphans of Devon series, set in 1860s England. I read the previous books and really enjoyed the first, The Matrimonial Advertisement, a well done marriage-of-convenience story with Gothic elements. While it is not necessary to have read the other installments (the plot itself does not hinge on any previous events), it was extra rewarding to finally get to the story of the mysterious Alex, one of four orphans raised in dire, loveless circumstances. That’s what passed for charity in Victorian times, and it reads every bit as horrid as we can imagine.
There’s nary a duke or even a viscount in sight, which I quite liked. Laura’s family was in the perfume business and she’s barely eking out a living after the death of her father. Alex manages to acquire the trappings of a gentleman thanks to his gambling skills. Years ago, he had disappeared from his friends’ lives never to be heard from again.
The highest-ranking local family is Squire Talbot’s, and his daughter Henrietta is Alex’s quarry. Alex comes across as a scheming person, and sure enough he’s after an heiress to marry. He finagles an invitation to spend some time in the little town where both women live and is intent on offering for Henrietta.
Alex is, at best, a problematic hero, and he veers close to being an antihero at least in the first third or so of the book. I didn’t soften up or warm to him until the book hit the halfway mark, even though I knew all about the extenuating circumstances: pent-up anger about his abandonment (he conjectures he’s the natural son of the local lecherous nobleman), the harrowing years of deprivation at the orphanage, and the abuse he suffered. He did one heroic act and one despicable act as a boy, so even then he was a fifty-fifty proposition.
Laura was much easier to like. She shouldered the responsibilities of taking care of her family (older aunt and invalid brother) without coming across as a martyr or a Mary Sue. She’s strong and succeeding at keeping her family afloat at some personal cost. Henrietta is her BFF but their friendship is unbalanced due to their social statuses, with Henrietta more interested in being “queen bee” than a true friend to Laura.
Granted, unlike Alex, Laura knows what it is to be surrounded by a loving family, and one of the highlights of the book is a touching scene where Laura blurts out an offer to be Alex’s family. I also enjoyed the way the author conveys the subtle humiliations and roadblocks in Laura’s way for being a woman of modest means without a “protector,” all without hammering me over the head with it. The writing is skilled; I’m hardly an expert in Victorian vernacular, but to me the prose evoked a sense of time without being stilted or verbose.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the details about the era that create a strong sense of place. There’s a particularly delightful portion set in the seaside town of Margate, complete with bathing machines (Queen Victoria had hers), head-to-toe woolen bathing suits, busybodies using telescopes to keep tabs on beachgoers, and snooty people decrying that, thanks to the novelty of train travel, Margate was becoming overrun with lower-class daytrippers.
That seaside holiday is also the backdrop for a pivotal scene, which involves Alex once again setting out to save Laura from drowning (see woolen bathing suit above), only this time it’s for real and he, scandalously, does mouth-to-mouth to save her. No one seems to care that he saved her, though, because in doing so he thoroughly ruined her in everyone else’s eyes.
Unlike his other orphan friends, Alex is not exactly a good man. He may have been dealt the worst hand; he’s not the noblest, or the sharpest, and definitely not the kindest of the four. He’s the sly one, though, and he shows enormous growth as the book progresses.
He’d been alone for the better part of his life. Ever since he’d left North Devon. There had been other people around, naturally. Even other women. But at his core, he’d known there was no one he could trust. But now there was Laura. Suddenly, he was no longer alone.
Oh, my heart did go out to him in the end.
The sex is off page, and I believe that’s part of the reason the romance between Laura and Alex can come across as a little on the tepid side at times (we are told but not shown their passion). In addition, Alex spends a tad too much time insisting on following Plan A (marry the heiress and be done with it.) I did like that Plan B, following his heart, involved a financial setback, which for calculating Alex was realistically presented as a tough pill to swallow. I don’t get to read that many historical romances with an element of financial instability, particularly on the hero’s part.
While that was welcomed and interesting, it could have been explored further in the book. Without giving too much away, Laura and Alex won’t be poor, but they will have to work, and I’d have liked to see them negotiating any future professional roles. That would have gone a long way to show me what kind of romantic partner Alex would be.
Readers who appreciate character-driven, slow-burn romance, flawed heroes, and a firm sense of time and place will enjoy this one despite its minor flaws. Alex and Laura are both lonely when they find each other, and their relationship evolves to true friendship and partnership, with Alex strong enough emotionally to agree to a homecoming of sorts and coming to terms with his past. I’m looking forward to any future books in this series, with the fourth orphan slated to get his story in the next year.
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Ooh, I’ve been intrigued by this one for awhile! I’m glad it’s pretty good.
Oh, wonderful. Oddly, an 1860s book without titled characters is exactly what I’ve been looking for just recently.
I loved the first two books, but found this one somehow lacking, but I’m not quite certain why.
Part of it is that I wasn’t as invested in Alex and Laura was I was the characters from the previous two books. I generally love redeemed characters,but I never quite felt like Alex was truly horrible. I mean, yeah he did a terrible thing as a kid, but KID. And his treatment of George was not god, but then George was a bigger jerk than Alex, and I had ZERO sympathy for him.
And Hen. Wow. I really did not believe that she was ANY kind of friend to Laura. I mean, except for the last chapter all of her behavior was pretty terrible.
I’m still going to buy and read the last book, but this one was a disappointment, since I liked the previous two books so much.
@Random Michelle: I’m looking forward to Neville’s story, that’s for sure.
I just bought all four…
I loved this series, too, although my favorite was the second one, which takes the hero and heroine all the way to the Himalayas with only a few heated kisses to sustain them.
For audiobook fans, the second and third books in the series are narrated by the dreamy Alex Wyndham and all three are on Audible Escape.