NB: Welcome to Flashback Friday! If you didn’t catch it, Carrie had a disappointing experience reading Mary Balogh’s latest release, Someone to Love, due to racist stereotypes. But, if you’re hoping to read Balogh without DNF-ing, Elyse wrote a glowing review of Only a Promise. This review was originally published June 10, 2015.
Only a Promise was the first book I read by Mary Balogh, and I rectified that situation pretty damn quick. It was so so amazingly good that I went to the used bookstore and basically just dumped the entire shelf with her name on it into my cart. The guy at the counter asked me how I was doing , and I think I just made Good Book Noise® back at him.
Only a Promise is basically made of Elyse’s catnip tropes, plus frosting. Marriage of convenience. Tragic, wounded hero. The heroine is a companion to an older lady, and I love companion books or books where the heroine is an outsider. There is some serious slow burn going on here–and it all comes together beautifully and culminates in a wonderfully satisfying ending. This book is 6th in the Survivor Club series, but can easily be read as a stand alone.
This book is about two people struggling to hold their shit together and failing. Chloe Muirhead is a woman of good breeding and should be in London for the Season, finding a husband. Instead she’s living as a “guest” and acting as a companion to an elderly duchess. Chloe will do anything to avoid London. During her first Season her sister eloped with a playwright, causing her family to be the subject of scandal.
Then during her second Season, rumors of Chloe’s legitimacy surfaced (she looks identical to another woman who is the daughter of a man her mother spent a lot of time with. And Chloe was two months premature. Ahem). Her entire experience in dealing with the ton is as the subject of mockery and shame, and so Chloe has basically run away.
When the duchess’s grandson comes home, Chloe sees the opportunity for bettering her circumstances. Ralph Stockwood was wounded in the Napoleonic Wars, but most of the damage was done to his psyche. Three of Ralph’s friends followed him to war, and all of them died. Ralph blames himself for their deaths and suffers from PTSD. When the novel opens he has only just recovered to the point that he’s not suicidal anymore. Ralph has zero interest in entering society again. For one thing, he might run into the families of his dead friends, and that’s untenable. He also just wants to hide and lick his wounds. But Ralph is the grandson of an aging duke, and his father is dead, so he does have to get married and continue the family line.
When Chloe suggests an alliance, it seems perfect. She gets to have children, like she always wanted, and run a household and be married. Ralph gets a wife and kids without having to go to London, and his bride is completely down with hiding out in the country and never going anywhere near the ton again. Ralph makes it very clear to Chloe that while he’ll always respect her, he can never offer her any type of emotional attachment.
One of the things that fascinated me about this book is that Chloe and Ralph don’t immediately have amazing sex when they’re married. In fact it’s a “lift the nightgown and insert p in v” sort of thing, and both are fine with that. Balogh doesn’t use sex to bridge the emotional gap between these two people. She makes them do all the emotional heavy lifting without the help of their groins.
When Ralph’s grandfather dies, everything changes for them. Ralph is now a duke, sooner than expected, and has to take his place in society — which means Chloe does, too. By forcing them into the crucible, so to speak, Balogh forces them to confront their anxieties head on. They also slowly come to understand the trauma the other person suffered, and that’s what made this book truly exceptional. It would be easy for Ralph to overlook Chloe’s social anxiety or the pain she suffered at being ridiculed. He could easily minimize her trauma compared to his–violence and loss suffered during war. At no point though does Ralph say, “Oh, people were mean to you, get over it.” And that’s the beauty of the romance genre–everyone is deserving of love, no matter what, and everyone is entitled to their pain, and their personal experience with it.
Chloe is also stronger than Ralph. She had self-exiled herself, but when they are put back into Society and forced to deal with what ails them, Chloe is the one better able to handle the challenge of facing her past. She could easily hide behind her title and be like “I’m a Duchess and you were mean to me so I’mma ruin you,” but she doesn’t. Chloe isn’t out for revenge against the people who hurt her; she just wants acceptance.
Balogh manages to write two characters who really need each other, and who wouldn’t succeed in healing without the other. For all of that, it’s really a quiet romance where the love blooms naturally rather than in one lightning strike moment. There are no punishing kisses or sex as a placeholder for feelings. As their emotional intimacy deepens, so does their sexual intimacy, but sex is a reflection of where they are as a couple, not a method of pushing them forward in their relationship. In fact, while they both enjoy sex, there isn’t a “OMG I’ve never had a hoo-hoo as magic as yours moment,” and I liked that. Often times in romance sex is used as shorthand for this couple being destined for each other, and I didn’t get that in Only a Promise. The reason that Ralph and Chloe work so well together is that they accept each other’s trauma, recognize when the other is having a crisis, and help each other through. It’s amazingly affirming:
“It’s not unmanly to weep,” she told him.
“The devil it is not.” He nudged her away from his chest and gazed into her face. His own was a bit blotchy. His scar was more pronounced than usual.
“I hope you do not mind too much that I stayed,” she said. “Sometimes we need company while we weep, especially when we are mourning a loss.”
“They have been dead for more than seven years,” he said.
“No,” she said. “For you they have just died.”
There’s no easy resolution for Chloe and Ralph, either. For each step they take forward, they sometimes take two back. Occasionally, lost in their own emotional shitstorm, they say unkind things. By not making the solution to either of their problems simple, I felt like Balogh did credit to the characters and the depth of their anxieties.
I really can’t say enough good things about this book. It’s the best kind of romance, the kind with real people for characters, the kind that affirms we all deserve a partner to help us through the sticky patches in our life. And it’s all so subtly done that the story unfolds naturally and beautifully, and only when I stepped back at the end did I truly appreciate how complex and perfectly wrought Balogh’s narrative was.
That’s a lot of words to say that this book was awesomesauce. Pure awesomesauce.
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This. So much this. I want to put this on a cross stitch sampler and display it on my bookshelf.
Also the book sounds fab. SOLD!
ACK! The quote didn’t post:
“And that’s the beauty of the romance genre–everyone is deserving of love, no matter what, and everyone is entitled to their pain, and their personal experience with it.”
Bought becoz of your review Elyse. I have not tried this author before. Can’t wait to start. Thank u.
Library hold PLACED. Thanks!!
Balogh does heart-wrenching and farce very well. (Not in same books!) for some of her lighter fare try The Unlikely Duchess or The a Lady With the Back Umbrella.
Yay Mary Balogh! She has an occasional dud (I threw Then Comes Seduction across the room and never finished it), but her books are always warm and affectionate and her heroes very often have Feelings they are unafraid to express. She also does lovely joyful Christmas romances. Should get this one from the library tomorrow!
Alright, you’ve got me! I’ve never read Balogh before either but this review sealed the deal. My TBR just grew by leaps and bounds. Thanks for such a thoughtful review Elyse!
What a great review, this reminds me I need to get caught up on this series. Mary Balogh is such a great writer, I think of her books as being emotionally complex in a very quiet way. She doesn’t do exciting or showy, and she doesn’t need to. Glad you finally discovered her Elyse, enjoy that large backlist you found!
Ahhhh yes, Mary Balogh is one of my insta-buys. I’ve been loving this series SO much and I can’t wait until I finally get a chance to read this over the weekend. I think my favorite in it is probably “The Arrangement”, even if the cover is really, really bad. Balogh is incredibly talented at creating two unique characters and finding a deep connection between them to build a love story around. One of my absolute favorite authors.
RIGHT THEN, this can go onto the list of Stuff I’ll Be Checking Out from the Library. 🙂
‘Cause I may have me a pretty small set of types of catnip, but slow burns is in it!
I love Mary Balogh’s books!! The Survivor series is my favorite.
Elyse, welcome to Mary Balogh’s world. ((hugs)) She is one of my favorite writers of all time and is a master at slow-growing love in her stories. Only a Promise hit my doorstep yesterday as I have to read her in print. Hoping this weekend will give me some quiet reading time to savor this book, especially after reading your review. The Survivors’ Club series is wonderful and I recommend reading it from first to latest. The Escapeis my favorite so far.
I have been reading Mary Balogh ever since the Signet Regency days (and still have one in paperback that hasn’t yet made an appearance as an e-book). Have enjoyed the Survivors’ Club (especially “The Escape”) and damn it, here’ another one into the TBR queue.
Elyse, I envy you having so many Mary books to discover! I actually detoured on my way to a meeting to buy this today after your post reminded me it was out.
All I can say is I envy anyone who is just beginning with Balogh. There are so many hours of reading pleasure ahead. I am almost finished Only A Promise (first reading, have to read each one twice to savor). I’ve loved the Survivors’ Club, although I love, love, love the Bedwyn Saga.
I found Balogh a few years ago because of recommendations on this site, for which I am profoundly grateful. She wasn’t on my radar at all, and it was trilling to find not only a great new author, but one with such an extensive backlist. Yay!
Mary Balogh is on my must read list. Like you I read one book several years ago and promptly went on a Balogh binge. Glad to know her newest is out.
My favorite by Mary Balogh is Lord Carew’s Bride. I don’t love all her books, but when they are good they are great! This one sounds great.
Nice review Elyse! Mary Balogh has written some of my favorite romances. A Summer to Remember, Slightly Dangerous and Simply Unforgettable to name a few. No none can make me laugh and cry like Mary Balogh….I envy you.
I would suggest starting with AStR then reading the Slightly series. 🙂
The whole Survivor’s Club series is amazing! Mary Balogh is an auto-buy author for me.
Great review, will try to pick this up asap, you reminded me why I always love sitting down with a balogh book. There is something so rewarding about the slow burn and people who are mostly aware of their feelings and why they have them.
I’m number 6 on the list at the library for this book – can’t wait to get it!
Loved the review – I started the Survivor Club series based on reviews here at the bitchery and this one is making me think about knocking out Numbers 1-5 so I can get it first!
Like mel burns said, Mary Balogh makes me laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time.
This, for me, is a sign of a really good author.
The laughter, because characters that can make you laugh are characters that are real. Mary Balogh doesn’t write jokes, she’s not a comedienne, she writes characters that behave and converse like real people. Real people are hysterical.
The crying, because characters and situations that make you cry are ones that you can identify with. Mary Balogh could make Sherlock empathize.
At the same time, I don’t find Mary Balogh to be terribly obvious in her manipulation. I don’t feel like I’ve been manipulated when I read her.
I love Mary Balogh.
There are five people ahead of me in the queue at my library! I don’t know if I can wait.
Balogh is my all-time favorite author and really the only author left that I auto buy the hardback. The Survivor series has been terrific so far, especially the first one that featured Lady Muir, a woman seen in many of Balogh’s other books. The Bedwyns are still my favorite, though – Slightly Married and Slightly Dangerous are exceptional.
Great review Elyse. I love Balogh, but this isn’t my favourite, even though I loved much of it.
Your review has me thinking again about one of the reservations I mentioned in the review I’ve posted on Amazon. I felt disquiet about the early sex scenes, because I thought they showed Ralph in a poor light. He wasn’t inexperienced. She was. And yet he took her virginity with absolutely no preparation for her. Then he revelled in their physical closeness during the night which allowed him to sleep? But gave nothing back? I know that Chloe was happy because she wanted babies, but I think he could have invested at least a little attention to her needs. I acknowledge that sex for many married women of the time was just what Ralph offered, but it didn’t go down well with me. Now I’m trying to decide which of us has the right take on it. Undoubtedly you’ve read it the way Balogh intended.
Other than that, I loved Chloe. Loved, loved the scene with her hair. And I came to love Ralph. The scene with him sobbing in her arms is very powerful.
My only other reservations are with the pages and pages of declamatory conversations (although the ones between Chloe and Ralph about war and pacifism are great) and the cover, with a gorgeous design but a picture of Chloe without her flaming RED hair.
I’m so looking forward to Imogene’s story and I hope that George is going to get one as well.
,
Mary Balogh is a fabulous author, which is not to say that she never misses. The best ones include some of the Bedwyn saga (the six in the Slightly series) and, even more, the four in the Simply series. Simply Love is one of the very, very best. Two damaged people who are not each other’s insta-cure, but nevertheless are better together than apart. Catnip.
Lovely review. The excerpt that you posted made me tear up a little.
The Survivors’ Club series has been wonderful so far. (My personal favorites are The Arrangement and Only Enchanting.) I’ve got to say, Ralph didn’t make much of an impression on me in the previous books, but now I can’t WAIT to read this.
Mary Balogh is just … there are no words …
(I’m still making my way through her backlist. I finally read the 1st Bedwyn book last week.)
Balogh is a goddess of the romance genre and my favorite author. It’s kind of amazing to realize I’ve been reading her for nearly 30 years. That said, there are books of hers that I don’t like (*cough* Gentle Conquest *cough *) but for me she hits it out of the ball park more than any other author. I envy you, Elyse and all the others on this thread, who will be discoving her books for the first time!
This is such a well written review! I’ll definitely have to see if I can pick up any Mary Balogh books the next time I’m at my local second hand book store.
Great review–I loved this book! Mary Balogh is probably my all-time favorite. If you’re just discovering her books (I am so jealous!!!), I would immediately dive into the Bedwyn series–the Slightly books–and don’t stop until you get to Slightly Dangerous. Ah, Wulfric…
Oh Mary Balogh! She is my author-to-go when in need of a good cry or emotionally satisfactory romance. She’s so subtle, their characters so human. Try Simply Love!! It’s in my top ten!!
I think this is the first time I didn’t finish a review, cause it already sounded so good I want to read it myself first. (scurries to Amazon…. no!! $5.99, when I have learned to read only $0.99 ebook, hep me, hep me!)
Great review – I just finished reading the book for the second time and I fully agree with your assessment – Only a Promise is pure awesomesauce.
Steeling myself to wait for my turn at the Library to read it – in the meantime enjoying again my favourites, like Lord Carewy’s Bride.
>>Danker said this: I felt disquiet about the early sex scenes, because I thought they showed Ralph in a poor light. He wasn’t inexperienced. She was. And yet he took her virginity with absolutely no preparation for her. Then he revelled in their physical closeness during the night which allowed him to sleep? But gave nothing back…”
I just finished this book and thought it was a “B” read–good, not great. But I actually *really liked* the fact that the sex was just like this! Ralph was 18 when he went to war, then was emotionally walled off from the rest of the world thereafter. Now he is 26–from my POV, he actually had rather limited experience with women. So it does not surprise me that it doesn’t occur to him that doing things to make the experience more pleasant for her might make it more pleasant for him. He cannot do what he does not know.
But once they reach another level of intimacy in their lives, I wish Balogh had spent more time with their bedroom activities. Instead, it’s mostly all just summed up in a few sentences here or there. Disappointing for me.
The story and dialog are all rather formal (or maybe the word is “genteel”), by the way. So much that it kept me from feeling more for the characters. And when the hero discovers that (as inevitably happens in a Balogh book) he is passionately in love with the heroine, I was a little taken aback, because I had, up until that point, seen little evidence of this passion. Again, the story was good, but not a keeper for me by any means.
The Survivors Club is not the Balogh I would start with! Everyone has their favorites. Mine is More than a Mistress. That one is a keeper!
I’m amazed that there are ANY romance readers out there who haven’t read Mary Balogh. She has an amazing body of work, and continues to put out top quality writing, for decades now. And yet her books are not formulaic, and she breaks the conventions of the genre as she pleases. For instance, in “The Notorious Rake” or “A Precious Jewel” or “Seducing an Angel”. My favorite of the Bedwyn books is “Almost Married”, and my favorite of the Survivor’s Club series is “The Arrangement”. In fact “Almost Married” may be my all time favorite.
Karin
I agree that Bakogh’s output is formidable.
Just one of her works that totally breaks romanceland rules is Dancing with Clara. The behaviour of the H post-marriage, is absolutely ghastly, and even as the HEA is unrolled he declares that he is not able to promise he will stay sober or faithful. And yet, Balogh makes the HEA convincing. Many of her readers hate this story, but I found myself awed with her seductive talent!
Dallas
Itt seemed to me that Ralph knew very well what to do, as evidenced by his proficiency, once it suited him. If that had not been the case, one would have expected mutual exploration to have led to more enjoyment. Instead, greater pleasure happens at his direction. I acknowledge, however, that your interpretation is very possible. And I admit that I’ve been much tougher on Ralph than the H in Dancing with Clara.
I’m unable to edit my comments so please excuse the evidence of my need for new reading glasses!
I had read a couple of Mary Balogh’s books over the years, but the two-part, cross-class romance article on Heroes & Heartbreakers back in May got me started with The Ideal Wife and The Temporary Wife. They were good, but then I read A Precious Jewel. That was all it took for me to start devouring them.
I just finished the Bedwyns (including the two prequels) last night, and oh, I wish I could go back and read them as a new reader all over again. They were all so good, but Wulfric in Alleyne’s story made me cry. And Wulf’s own story was just So Good.
I’m spending the rest of the summer working my way through the rest of her backlist. Thank goodness my library has many of them in ebook format, or I would be broke!
Hi Elyse, thank you for this review. I bought the ebook yesterday based on your recommendation and i loved it!