C-
Genre: Historical: European, Romance
Theme: Crush
I got my hopes up too high for this novel. Strategic fail. You see, I had been trying to find a copy for review purposes for months, but it was never available in South Africa. When the book finally was available, I grabbed it with both hands. It’s a rare book that can live up to months and months of anticipation and sadly this one did not.
Lydia is rich thanks to the wool processing factories her family owns. Her social climbing aunt and uncle force her into an engagement with Ashford, who will become a duke when his father dies. They’re keeping the engagement a secret until the ball that will be held at his cousin’s house party. Then the duke will make the big announcement. Lydia decides that the only way out of this engagement is for him to jilt her so she decides to be terrible for the duration of the house party.
Disclaimer: I last watched How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days when it was first released in 2003. I remember precisely none of the plot. This story is inspired by the movie’s plot, but for the purposes of this review, I’m pretending I’ve never even heard of the movie (because I remember none of it)
The first 30% of the book was torture for me. One of the primary reasons I don’t watch reality TV is because I am extraordinarily sensitive to secondhand embarrassment. Lydia makes a scene, makes a fool of herself, insults people around her with her rude behaviour. It’s awful. The only thing that made it bearable was that she had a moment or two of feeling bad about how her behaviour made others feel. Not enough to curb her actions mind you.
Í will say that a lot of her actions are centred around playing up the ‘new money’ caricatures that people assume she’ll fulfill. So she’s not, like, telling people they’re assholes. But you do see the strain that it puts on the hostess to always be smoothing over waters that have been troubled by Lydia’s behaviour.
Eventually, Ashford cottons on to Lydia’s scheme and the two then engage in bickering and childish schemes to make the other look bad. Some of this is enjoyable, but mostly it’s just tiresome. This might be a me problem. I have no appetite for pranks.
Finally, they start to really talk to each other like human beings and those parts are delightful! I wish they took up more real estate in the book.
The lack of historical detail bothered me. As with many historicals there is blithe disregard for any of the less salubrious parts of that time period. These people are rich because they exploit poor people across the globe. Sometimes in books I can stomach that erasure, but I couldn’t in this one, maybe because they already included unpleasant things (see CW).
Mention is made of the Dutch East India Company and of one of the characters becoming a colonial governor of Mauritius and one of the characters ‘getting’ jewels from India. The mention without context or awareness decreased my enjoyment because each example is steeped in hideous context, but all of that context is ignored. The easy excuse would be that ‘the characters wouldn’t be thinking about all that,’ and because one cannot prove or disprove awareness, I disregard that argument. By mentioning specificities like the above, the book is forcing me to confront the source of this wealth, one that I know is appalling. The characters may be blithe about it, but I am not. Context, and the lack thereof, matters. And so the cruel machinery of commerce and the colonialist state are mentioned but not explored in any meaningful way, and I am left thinking about it while the characters dance and sparkle. Anyway, I digress.
My chief complaint is around the ending. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that it’s a HFN, but for more detail on why that bothered me, click below.
At the end of the ten days, just before the engagement is to be announced, Ashford jilts Lydia. I got the impression that Lydia had been hoping for the engagement to be announced. It wasn’t explicitly stated that Lydia had changed her mind and did, in fact, want to be engaged to Ashford for real, but based on her heartbreak when he jilts her, it was what she wanted after all.
Ten days later, Ashford finds Lydia and asks if he can court her. Lydia is furious. She had just been starting to feel better and he reentered the picture.
I don’t know about you but if it takes me only 10 days to get over a relationship that I had potentially wanted to continue for my entire life, I can’t have been that interested in the first place. Lydia then pipes up during this conversation saying that she doesn’t know if she wants to be a duchess. First time that’s been mentioned and it’s on the second last page of the book. So they agree to court for today and perhaps tomorrow and then they’ll just play it by ear.
HUH? I can’t with these shifting goalposts.
I can’t give this book too poor a grade because I did, in fact, want to finish it. It left me disappointed and it irritated me but I wanted to see how it ended. I can’t say I recommend this book to the Bitchery. Maybe if I hadn’t anticipated this book so hotly, I would appreciate it more. But no, it’s not for me.
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I’ve enjoyed Sophie Irwin’s prior books and was looking forward to this one based on the premise – but totally agree with the review. It was such a disappointment and felt like a damp squib on almost all fronts. Glad I wasn’t the only one that felt that way!
I enjoyed it but not as much as her other books. I preordered it from Blackwell’s in the UK (free shipping!) so I got it right when it came out so I didn’t have any anticipatory letdown.
Yeah. I started with high hopes and then jumped to the 80% mark to read the conclusion. Agree completely with the review.
That must have been so disappointing–referring to spoiler. I’d be bummed, too.
This sounds just plain nonsensical and BAD.
This is the most well-timed review, because I have struggled to get through half of this book and was just debating whether to continue to struggle with it. Nope!