Note from Sarah: We’re running this review and the guest review from Poppy together because they illustrate how one item in a larger context can ruin a book for a reader.
Wedded Bliss is an incredibly enjoyable story with one horrible problem that ruined the whole book for me. I’m going to start off by describing the plot and why I liked it, and then I’m going to get into the problem. There will be a history lesson and ranting. Prepare yourself.
Wedded Bliss is part of the Wicked Worthington series. I loved the last book, I Thee Wed ( A | BN | K | G | AB ), which had not one but two scientist heroes. Wedded Bliss deals with, well, Bliss, who has been living with the delightfully eccentric Worthington family and is considered an honorary family member. She spent her childhood in happy settings with an aunt, but always missing her parents, who made random and rare visits. Bliss is very excited about marrying Neville, a nice, handsome, boring guy who is almost guaranteed never to leave Bliss’s side – given her abandonment issues, this is great news for her. Bliss is so excited about marrying a stable human being that she sets up an elopement.
But alas! Neville has an illegitimate sea-faring half-brother, Morgan. Neville’s evil uncle convinces Morgan that Bliss is out to exploit Neville for Neville’s money. He promises to give Morgan his own ship if Morgan will trick Bliss into marrying him instead. Morgan figures that
- he loves his brother
- he’s always at sea anyhow so it doesn’t matter who he marries
- it’s not wrong to trick someone who is trying to trick your brother.
One rainy night, one hooded cloak, one eccentric aunt, one badly lit nighttime chapel, and one mumbling priest later, Bliss is married to the wrong brother and looking for an annulment. This gets us to page twenty-six.
From that point, we have a battle of wits and wills between the unflappable Bliss and the determined but honorable Morgan. Bliss wants an annulment and Morgan doesn’t want to give her one and that’s pretty much the plot. It’s madly enjoyable because the two characters are each incredibly likeable on their own and they have fantastic chemistry together. Just to complicate matters, Neville’s shitty uncle also starts a scheme to defraud a rich woman and her daughter, Katarina. Like Bliss, Katarina is smart and levelheaded. Like Neville, Katarina is interested in botany and biology. Above all, while Neville pines for Bliss and rages against Morgan, Katarina proves to be an excellent listener.
In a nutshell, I loved this book because it was so well written and the characters are so engaging, though the villain was repetitive. The shitty uncle was basically the same villain as the one from I Thee Wed, pulling the same crap as the shitty mentor from that book. He practically twirled his mustache. I considered that both a feature and a bug. Yes, it was super over-the-top, but it also fit the fun nature of the book. Based on everything I’ve said so far, the book was gunning for a B+ – solidly enjoyable, but just a bit too contrived for an A.
Unfortunately this book has one terrible problem for me, and as I said, it ruined everything.
Katarina is repeatedly stated to be rich because her mother owns a sugar plantation in Barbados.
RANTING AHEAD:
When I read Regency and Victorian romance, and I suspect I am not alone here, I willingly overlook all kinds of things that might interfere with my suspension of disbelief and hamper my escapism. Sometimes an author will help the reader by pointing out that, for instance, the hero is beloved by his tenants and works hard to ensure that they can be prosperous, or he visits his factories and insists that conditions be at least tolerable so we don’t have to wonder if our romantic hero is responsible for the maiming and death of many small children.
For my part, I pretend that things like filth, infection, disease, rampant poverty, and childbed fever are not issues that our hero and heroine have to deal with. They inhabit a place that is a fantasy Regency, not the real one with all its many flaws.
However, because the story specifically and repeatedly mentions that Katarina is rich because of her mother’s sugar plantation, I must confront the source of her wealth, and I know that it’s ugly. Sugar plantations ran on slavery, and while any form of slavery is vile, the sugar plantations of the West Indies were pits from the fiery depths of hell. In the American South, the slave trade from Africa declined partly because the slave population in the South increased due to births. In the Caribbean, that didn’t happen, because in addition to a shortage of women, the slaves (children and adults) died so fast that they had to be replaced by other adult slaves, who were kidnapped from Africa. From Encyclopedia of the Middle Passage:
Only about one-quarter of children born to slave parents survived into adulthood. Malnutrition, overwork, and poor sanitation left slaves susceptible to diseases such as malaria and yellow fever and took their toll on the adult population…. Recent slaves were the most at risk, some 15 to 20 percent of them died during their first year in the Caribbean. Most field slaves only endured about eight years of hard labor before their demise.
While the slave trade in British territories was abolished in 1807, slaves continued to be smuggled to the West Indies. Slavery itself was not abolished by Britain until 1833, fifteen years after the events of Wedded Bliss, which is set in 1818.
There’s no discussion of any this in the book, which was startling given that abolition was quite the hot topic in England at the time. Instead, the fact that Katarina grew up in Barbados and stands to inherit a plantation signifies in the story only to explain why she is slightly awkward due to her lack of exposure to city life among rich people. Katarina’s slaves are not mentioned in the story though Shitty Uncle and Katarina’s mother do discuss the financials of the plantation.
As I said when I began ranting, I recognize that reading romance of any kind often requires some suspension of disbelief. Contemporary romance features CEO’s who have a lot of spare time. Science fiction romance assumes an unlikely tendency for humans and aliens to be sexually compatible. Historical romance is no different: a delicate touch is required that either allows us to imagine that the wealthy have come by their wealth ethically, or tells us directly by stressing how well the wealthy person provides for his or her dependents.
A quick moment of related trivia: Jane Austen specifically brings up sugar plantations in Mansfield Park to show that the Bertram family is of poor character and therefore stands in contrast to Fanny, who is both highly moral and smarter than she appears to be. Austen was an abolitionist, philosophically speaking. All of her heroes have money from land, domestic trade, inheritance, or a combination of the three. For example, the prosperity of Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice and the praise of his servant indicate that Darcy is a responsible landowner and employer. In contrast, in Mansfield Park, Sir Thomas Bertram has to go to the Indies to check on the state of his plantation – which suggests that he has been lax in his responsibilities in the past, and which reminds the reader that Fanny’s adoptive family has gained wealth by exploiting others.
Because Wedded Bliss raises the issue of wealth stemming from sugar plantations without examination or question, the book was ruined for me. I have to give it an F, and not the fun kind. Deciding what to overlook and what to ignore is a subjective and often unconscious process. Because this book mentioned the sugar plantation specifically so many times, I could not ignore it. Once that happened, this story which had previously made me feel happy and safe (the knowledge that a happy ending is coming does wonders for my anxiety) made me feel angry and sad.
The line of plausible denial is a fine one and a subjective one that will vary from reader to reader. Certainly not everyone’s line would be crossed by this historical detail. But once I encountered the repeated mentions of Katarina’s plantations, I crossed that line, and there was no crossing back.
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These two reviews are a study in how to review a book that didn’t work for to you.
What a shame, Carrie. Apart from the comic book villain, it sounds like it should be a great read. I would have had the same difficulty as you, and in the past, that’s made me stop reading the book. This feels like a greater impediment than that referred to in The Perils of Pleasure review.
Hmmm. I guess I won’t be giving this one a try.
Thank you for a thoughtful review.
Oh, wow. 🙁 I didn’t know about the conditions of the slaves in the West Indies. That would be very upsetting to intrude on a romance.
I enjoyed both reviews and appreciated how thoughtful the reviewers were in carefully outlining their reasons for assigning the books the grades they did. The reviews also help explain why, over the past few years, when it comes to romance reading, I have migrated from reading historicals almost exclusively to reading contemporary romances almost exclusively: it’s gotten harder and harder for me to make the required suspension of disbelief to NOT acknowledge the source of all those beautiful gowns, spacious manor houses, and multitude of servants: the wholesale exploitation and and subjugation of women, people of color, and the poor.
I just finished a re-read of Georgette Heyer’s The Quiet Gentleman (which I had just forgotten, and ended up nearly tossing across the room for other reasons) and was discomfited by way Jamaica is treated in the story. Interestingly, Jamaica also shows up as a source of wealth in Heyer’s novel Venetia, which I love, but there it is repeatedly referred to as an exotic place where “they hold life cheap” by a would-by Byronic teenager who has been deeply impressed by his one visit. It doesn’t bother me there, partly because it IS a realistic source of wealth for said teenager’s family, and partly because underneath the comedy the kid’s observation that it is an incredibly violent and frightening place is quite sound. He’s not held up as a moral model, and neither is Jamaica, so it doesn’t bug me.
In fairness about Mansfield Park, slaves are not directly mentioned there either, and the completely morally praiseworthy Mrs. Smith in Persuasion is also the owner of an estate in the West Indies which is able to make her “comfortable” at the end of the story thanks to Captain Wentworth’s efforts on her behalf. The only openly abolitionist character in Austen is the horrible Mrs. Elton in Emma. I think it is plausible that most middle class English people wouldn’t trouble themselves overmuch about slaves in Jamaica, just as most middle class people today in the US or Britain don’t worry too much about the conditions of clothing workers in Bangladesh, or electronics makers in China. We deplore the conditions of course, and in a general way we think it’s a bad thing, but not enough to actually change the economics of our society, or to avoid reading about heroines in contemporary romance who enjoy the occasional shopping spree at places like H&M, Zara, or the Gap.
Which is a long way of saying that the attitudes of the characters in this book seem totally plausible to me. But they’re still scary and unpleasant to read about, partly BECAUSE they’re so much like real life.
I so deeply appreciate your inclusion of these issues in your reviews. In both cases, it doesn’t appear that the author gave any thought to the weight of her passing statements. I understand it’s hard to keep track of every little thing in a book. I guess the point is that we stop seeing the continuation of subjugation and ignorance as little things.
I feel heartened that this is a discussion, even when most of us (me included) are just looking for a juicy love story.
Both the Bradley book and the Long book were published by big-name houses. Where were the editors? Am I wrong in thinking that part of their job entails pointing out problematic issues with books and requesting/requiring changes? Could the issues with the sugar plantation have been ameliorated by saying the widow was trying to make changes to the business she inherited, that she was trying to sell the plantation because she was so troubled by it (although that’s just passing the buck), was in England to meet with abolitionists and to support their efforts, highlight things she and Katarina had done to improve conditions, etc? Is there another type of less exploitative business that could have been used?
@Susan – Ideally having an editor would mean that these issues were pointed out, but editors are predominantly white women who would likely have their own implicit biases. We expect that someone, anyone, at a publishing house would recognize when something is egregiously bad (like Nazi romances, and yet …) but when it’s something like one line about killing Indians, or in the case of the other books, not doing enough to acknowledge the horrors of slave ownership, would they always even be aware that that would be an issue? I don’t know. Apparently not.
I agree that the plantation mention wasn’t handled well, but where do we stop?
If an 18th or 19th-century heroine has lace on her gown, coal in her fireplace, carpet on her floor (Joan Aiken’s “Midnight is a Place” offers a picture of child labor in carpet factories), or jewelry on her person, then more than one individual probably suffered a good bit to get it to her.
Does someone need to mention fossy jaw every time a candle is lit with a match? Did sugar come from anywhere other than plantations? Because most people used it without thinking where it came from. Tea as well. Scullery maids were young and even in kindly-run households are hauling buckets around and not going to school.
Beaver were almost hunted to extinction to get gentlemen their hats, but heroes wear them.
Thank you for posting both of these reviews. I recently had a similar experience during a re-read of two different books and it is helpful to know that I am not alone. One was actually a contemporary (or at least a contemporary when it was published) and I found it more jarring for several reasons. The book was Gone to Far by Suzanne Brockmann. This is Sam & Alyssa’s book (for those like me who usually don’t remember titles). I started to re-read this book (which I had loved during my first read) a few months after the movie Loving was released. The secondary romance in the book is about 2 characters (a Black man and a White woman) who were married shortly after WWII and lived in Texas. As I was re-reading, I started to wonder about Texas and its laws on interracial marriage, since I thought (but wasn’t sure) that most of the Southern states prohibited interracial marriage until after the Loving case was decided in 1967. Turns out, Texas did have a miscegnation law in effect until 1967. Took me right out of the story. I still like both those characters, and will probably re-read other Brockmann books, but I’m not sure that I’ll be able to re-read Gone to Far again.
@Susan: “Where were the editors? Am I wrong in thinking that part of their job entails pointing out problematic issues with books and requesting/requiring changes?”
Only on TV. Modern publishing-house editors have too many marketing responsibilities to devote loving attention to the manuscripts they’re trying to get to market. The kind of changes they want are usually to make the book more to trend: change the protagonist’s age, add a romance now that she’s no longer twelve, make it sexier, add some BDSM to spice it up, etc. They do not go through line by line elevating the prose and highlighting potential problems. A lot of editing is done through agents’ offices to make the submission look “done” specifically to make it appeal more to editors who don’t have time to baby it. Authors are lucky if they can even get a thorough markup from a copy editor during the publication process now; sometimes it’s just an unpaid intern doing proofreading.
Perhaps that’s just every editor and publisher I’ve worked with over the course two decades, though, and all the others have endless time to micromanage.
A book that crossed the line for me was Honors Splendour by Julie Garwood. I loved it as a teenager and went back to reread. Its been about 20 years. Anyway right in the beginning the heroine mentions (i think it was internal dialogue) how her brother like relations with men and it makes her ill. Well that just stopped me cold. The heroine cannot be a homophobe.
I have to agree here with MirandaB and further point out that there is not one person reading this blogpost who does not participate in some way in exploitation. You’re reading on a smartphone or a laptop or a reader of some sort, all of which contain elements that are mined by low-wage workers and then assembled under horrible working conditions for ridiculously low wages. You’re wearing clothes that were sewed in factories none of us would ever want to spend an hour in, let alone years without end, but which you were lucky enough to buy on sale. You’re wearing shoes made of leather from the skin of sentient beings, slaughtered in gruesome pain. If you go out to eat anytime soon, maybe the waitstaff and the owner of the restaurant are getting by, but what about the dishwashers or busboys – what kind of life do you think they’re living? We’re all culpable. We read romance to escape, to imagine a world different from our own and a partner more perfect than any we’re likely to find in real life. Yes, maybe the pretend at times contains references to historical details that should have been addressed at the time, but as the old saying goes, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Writing books is hard, too, and if an author carelessly throws in a detail that he or she should probably have thought better of, just remember a time when you thoughtlessly did or said something you later regretted.
Margaret (& MirandaB) – You’re not wrong. We are all culpable. If we follow the line back on any of our possessions or choices, there is almost always a direct line to someone getting hurt.
But making an argument from that perspective that leads to “so we can ignore it in our books” or “don’t criticize because writing is hard” doesn’t work for me. It’s by looking at all of our art more critically that we can raise our awareness and begin to see our current surroundings through a clearer lens.
The goal of this sort of view is to begin to see and call out ALL forms of oppression – especially when it’s not immediately obvious – so that we can begin to eradicate the very real, systemic issues at the heart of our society today. Because there is also a direct line from ignoring those historical details as irrelevant to turning a blind eye towards the violation of women and minorities and the rise of Nazi-ism in Charlottesville VA in the news today.
I tend to agree with Margaret and MirandaB’s comments and understand some of the other point of view. However, I am more likely to be taken out of a book by attitudes that are clearly 21st Century than by those that fit with the time period being portrayed. That sort of anachronism bothers me quite a bit. I am a feminist since forever (longer than most of you have been alive, I would guess) and I do grate my teeth when I read something about women in a historical that is true to their time but wrong in reality, but I’d rather read the comment I hate but know was widely believed then than something that’s a current belief. I’m part Native American and don’t eat meat, but I was not bothered by the “Perils of Pleasure” comment that is so bothersome to so many of you, because in the early 19th Century in America, I’m pretty sure neither Native Americans nor bears were considered of much value.
I would love to be able to fix the past to match what we now believe but it’s just not gonna happen (and seeing some of what’s going on in the world today, there’s a lot of stuff still to fix in society).
One of the problems with historicals is that if the characters express beliefs and attitudes that are plausible for the time, they are apt to sound offensive to contemporary ears. If they have attitudes and beliefs that are acceptable in the 21st century, they are not historical.
A character who is comfortably wealthy in the past inevitably is enjoying that wealth because of the exploitation of the poor. It may not be as horrendous as the conditions of a slave on the sugar plantations of the West Indies, but it isn’t pretty. Even the conditions for a servant in a wealthy household—one of the cushiest jobs available—would seem horrendous today.
If you don’t want to face that, you have to skip historicals completely or stick to the fairytale variety.
I need to relate to a heroine and fall in love with the hero. That can’t happen if they do or believe things that I find morally repugnant, so I tend to be pretty lax about the historical accuracy of the views of romance heroes and heroines. Frankly, we all are–do any of us really believe that there were THAT many sex-positive aristocratic men around who could make a virgin orgasm in under two pages? Or that so many people had white teeth? Or that so many arranged marriages were anything more than tolerable AT BEST? Or that heroines and their friends don’t seem to die in childbirth? These are not historical characters. These are characters with fairly modern attitudes to gender, life, and choice dressed in pretty costumes.
Romance is about fantasy. I don’t want a character who was written recently by a (usually) white, middle-class, straight, at-least-nominally Christian, able-bodied woman be simultaneously knee-weakening-ly attractive and also casually racist. If this is a part of an author’s fantasy, I have a BIG EFFING PROBLEM with it. It’s very interesting to me that no one seems to be excusing Colin’s mansplaining with claims of historical accuracy. More generally, reviewers and commenters on this site don’t excuse male characters for sex acts without consent. Those things are highly historically accurate. Marital rape wasn’t outlawed in England until 1991, but you bet your buttons I don’t tolerate it in characters I’m meant to find sympathetic.
Historical romance isn’t really historical–it is so divorced from actual history as to be fantasy, so all this hue and cry for historical accuracy (and “historically accurate attitudes”? As though that is not a monumentally stupid string of words to put together) is a little misplaced, I think. And, honestly, if an author writes her heroine to be a slave owner and refuses to examine that choice and you’re unbothered by that, maybe some soul-searching should be in order.
I agree with Miranda B et al. If you are reading historical romance, you want to be whisked to another time. Someone else said that the history part in historical romances isn’t researched anyway. Most dedicated writers research. Sometimes a tiny bit of history is changed for the sake of the story, like a date moved a couple of years. It would be pointless to have a heroine worry about the slaves in another country, unless she plans to take over the country or start up a business smuggling slaves back to Africa. If it isn’t directly part of the story and it offends you, why not stop reading the story and find something that doesn’t? I’m more offended by historical romances that have aristocratic heroines running around without underwear or a chaperone, eating scones for every meal, and going out on dates with dukes.
@MirandaB and @Margaret, I believe CarrieS already addressed this angle by pointing out that she (and many readers) consume historical romances as a form of fantasy. If the author decides to include this ugly, realistic historical fact in the story then the subject matter must be incorporated respectfully, with full thought and attention given to the implications this has on the characters’ moral decisions. I learned something new today about Jane Austen and how she uses the Bertram family’s slave holdings to illustrate their characters negatively (I haven’t read Mansfield Park). I think that if someone contemporaneous to the issue of abolition and slavery can see a problem clearly for what it is and write it accordingly then someone with nearly 100 years of hindsight should probably have been able to do the same.
Also, culpability is not the same thing as willfully enslaving someone. Respectfully, I think this argument establishes a false equivalency that leads only to complacency. Rejecting the idea of something is the first step to changing it. If all electronics are manufactured in inhumane conditions then someone in our society would have no choice to be culpable. But if enough consumers reject the practice and demand higher standards from the manufacturers, the manufacturers will comply. Slavery didn’t abolish itself, weekends didn’t create themselves, and OSHA didn’t descend from the ether – people had to ask more of themselves and others and it started with – it always starts with – identifying a problem for what it is.
Hmmm.. so if I’m disappointed in a book, I should remember that historical romance is an escape, but somehow also reflective of reality/history, so again, I can’t be offended because it’s supposedly also true? This sort of cherry-picking of what’s escapism and what’s true has been brought up many times during these discussions, and maybe we can acknowledge that historical romance uses a historical setting but for most part is not historically accurate on many, many levels??
Bringing up every single oppressive force in the world is a major red herring because it excuses culpability for the issues at hand.. It’s an easy way to sit back and say “Ha! There”, with no resolution to this issue (except for telling people who disagree to remove themselves from the genre)… But there are solutions. Would our experience of reading romance become better or deteriorate with these sort of discussions? If it does deteriorates, how? And how can we account for the wide-ranging demographics of readers? If it doesn’t deteriorate, why stop others from helping the genre evolve by bringing large, immovable systemic issues into this discussion? (As also pointed out eloquently by @CK).
I believe the concerns here are voiced because their experiences of reading the genre has deteriorated, a sentiment that is not exclusive to this genre. Telling them to take their dissatisfaction elsewhere is simply unproductive.
I checked the comments in this thread, and no one has told anyone to take her dissatisfaction elsewhere.
@MirandaB: Thus far, a couple have said (I’m paraphrasing) if you don’t like it, stop reading the book or the genre. The fairytale comment is hard to miss, I should think. Granted, the implications of those statements are open to interpretation in a comment section. Expecting anyone who reads a particular genre to adopt a take it or leave it approach, especially when it’s just as beloved to them, is asking them to set their dissatisfaction aside, in my opinion.
@Anonymauthor (11): Thanks for the insight from someone who actually has direct knowledge on how the system works. As a consumer only, I probably do have unrealistic ideas on how things work to get an actual book in my hands.
And, as others point out, that’s undoubtedly true of many other products.
When I read this,I thought the first mention of of the West Indies plantations oddly specific.
At the second mention I decided it was foreshadowing a sequel. Someone in the next couple of books will become an abolitionist…
Maybe I’m wrong. In any case, mention of any particular trade in an historical will not flatter the characters in modern eyes. Wool mills in Yorkshire, tin mines in Cornwall etc were nasty too. Even the casual mention of being a landlord or pub owner meant exploiting others for low pay and no security.
Everyone has sensitive issues. I can understand the reviewers reaction, even though I gave the author a pass. For me, the wall bangers are the books that treat mental illness far too lightly. PTSD, bipolar disorder, major depression are popular plot points that never cause the pain and destruction in novels they cause in real life.
When my first reaction to a review of a romance is “I’d rather watch The Secret River ”, that’s a hard NOPE.
NOPE to the cavalier treatment of the victims of colonialism. (As has been better said by others.)
NOPE to colonial power-holders with no saving grace, like believable benevolence or critical distance from the character.
This is a step down, including for the image of colonials, believe it or not. …Yeah, I know I can’t have novels with adventure elements for my comfort zone as an adult, because the authors for adults are too bloody fond of killing their characters – as gruesomely as they can, to boot – but ye gods, I miss the Dickensian street rats and the underdog cred. If writers want to go to the opposite extreme with ‘sympathetic’ characters, I am NOT going.
And I really doubt I’m alone. Even before digital, popular old school stories for younger readers, eg the Australian “Billabong” books, had been edited to remove casual racism. Decades ago.
Writers for adults who don’t police their language and settings are well behind the curve, and not very welcoming for new readers, who typically transition from YA, iirc.
Btw I’ve read original source history without critical commentary, and it was terrifying . OMG the epic child abuse that came out of frontier war and cronyist politics of Ancient Rome! And I was 12 when I read it…
Then I read Boccaccio. First the commentator’s Intro with ALL the warnings. Plus, she’d tear strips of him in the endnotes whenever he made a misogynistic joke.
No contest. Thoughtful commentary won hands down against facsimile. Moral support anyday over unlimited vicarious traumatisation.
On that note, KUDOS to the reviewers and commenters.
I read this review because I wondered if Celeste Bradley’s new book was better than I Thee Wed. I struggled and struggled to get into that book; as far as I was concerned everyone came across as idiots who thought they were so smart. It was DNF for me. I knew it was supposed to be funny, but I wasn’t feeling it.
BTW, to make sure it was I Thee Wed, I went to CB’s website. Her tag line: I write chocolate for the brain. Want some? I’m allergic to chocolate, and quite frankly I want my books to be a little more substantial than a snack. I’m just wondering about my younger self that adored her Liar’s Club.
While JA was very astute to create that scene where Lizzie meets Darcy’s housekeeper, who praises him for being a ‘good master’… would anyone want to be in the position of servant in a ‘great house’?
Sure, the upper servants might have some great benefits, but the lower servants faced a future of grinding work seven days a week (or 6 1/2), no education, no future.. no thanks.
Most historical romances have wealthy heroes. Many are aristocrats, so the reader can have a comfortable distance between the wealth and the people who suffered for it. (He’s an Earl! He inherited land! His tenants are SO happy and coddled!)
I have to admit to rolling my eyes when reading about a ‘cit’ hero who owns a mill or a mine (But he’s humane! He never endangers his workers! They love him!)
And I would find it hard to believe a woman of a certain time being OK with her brother being gay.
I’m not sure what my point is… just that it’s really hard to find a balance between now and the realities of then.
I’m inclined to say that including offensive or disturbing elements in a book that’s meant to be a light read would be one thing if the book was ABOUT those things in some way; if it was important to the story in any way other than “people are being exploited but we don’t care about them, look at their exploiter’s bags of money, yay!” Just throwing it in there is fairly upsetting and I for one would be waiting throughout the book for something horrible to happen to the slave owner.