TEST
Valerie Bowman’s The Footman and I is the first in a series where a group of friends – a duke, a marquess, an earl, you get the picture – pretend to be servants. I thought this was an unusual premise that had the potential to be either very good or very bad.
Well. It was not very good.
Lucas Drake became the Earl of Kendall after his brother’s death, and he wants to avoid women who are only after his title. During a drinking session, his friends suggest he masquerade as a footman, because that way he’ll get to see how female guests treat ordinary men, and one of the friends, Lord Clayton, offers his home for that purpose.
One of the guests is eighteen-year-old Frances Wharton, whose mother hopes to use the house-party to get Frances married to a pompous bore called Sir Reginald. But Frances is drawn to the handsome footman, even though she knows the two of them can never have a future together.
In other words, this setup relies on the hero deceiving the heroine, and keeping her deceived for most of the book, so YMMV. I was still on board, but then the story becomes unbelievable – and worse, boring. Frances desperately wants the House of Lords to vote against the Employment Bill because it favors rich powerful employers rather than the working class. But her crusade is such an obsession that she goes on and on about the Employment Bill to every man she meets, no matter what the occasion. She does nothing else to improve the lives of servants, and makes advances towards the handsome footman in a way that could easily get him dismissed.
As for the Employment Bill, it’s mentioned well over fifty times in the story. I hope potential readers will find it as absorbing as Frances does. Naturally, Lucas is on the other side of that fence, since his brother’s dying wish was that the Employment Bill be passed. Other than that, Lucas is so generic he’s cardboard – handsome, kind, expresses frustration by clenching his jaw, etc. Even if you’ve never read this book, you’ve read about him a thousand times already.
Naturally, Frances hates noblemen (which Lucas thinks is magnificent) but she reserves her deepest loathing for the Earl of Kendall. At one point the heroine of the next book assures Frances that the Earl of Kendall is a decent person:
Frances couldn’t help but stick her nose in the air. “Well, he isn’t. I’ve never met him but believe me, he’s awful. I’m convinced he’s pudgy and hideous-looking too.”
Did I mention the fat-shaming?
She deserved so much better than the bloated knight.
So Frances and Footman Lucas meet regularly in the library for conversations and kisses, while Earl Lucas dodges Frances’s attempts to corner him for Employment Bill harangues. It’s a bit like that scene in the restaurant in Mrs. Doubtfire, just not as entertaining. And other than wearing livery and waiting at the dinner table, Lucas doesn’t behave like a servant. He constantly gives himself away with personal, friendly references to his “employers”. He smiles at Frances and rolls his eyes at Sir Reginald in the dining room.
Most of all, he happily meets Frances for long conversations and kissing sessions. Anyone would wonder about a servant who had so much free time and no concerns about what penalties he might face for ignoring class distinctions. But Frances is too wrapped up in the Employment Bill and in her romance with Lucas to notice little things like that.
Still, all good things must come to an end. So Frances is enlightened in the most humiliating way possible at the point in the story when I expected it to happen. The denouement is farcial, and the only sex scene occurs ten pages from the end, after Lucas has proposed and Frances has joyfully accepted. It felt as though the author was throwing it in because there must be at least one sex scene where the virginal eighteen-year-old heroine deep-throats the hero (I’m not kidding, the narrative describes her “sliding him into her throat”).
A story where an earl pretends to be a servant could be great. I was imagining something like Longbourn, where the earl comes to grips with hard work, the difficulties servants face, and the class distinctions involved. But here? He does nothing strenuous, he hangs out with his friends, and the lady he likes is so eager for intimacy that at one point he has to tell her no. The characters mean well, since they’re trying to do the right thing for the working class, but this doesn’t make up for the story’s multiple problems. So I can’t recommend The Footman and I.
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Grade: D+
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 22/09/21
Publication Date: 06/2020
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
I'm Marian, originally from Sri Lanka but grew up in the United Arab Emirates, studied in Georgia and Texas, ended up in Toronto. When I'm not at my job as a medical laboratory technologist, I read, write, do calligraphy, and grow vegetables in the back yard.
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Genuine question: Do people (OK, in most romance novels it’s women) actually do this in real life? I honestly can’t think of any real life occasions when someone stuck a nose in the air in a huff. I’ve seen it done facetiously in movies and it peppers HR quite a bit (or it did when I read more of it). Or is it one of those odd tics that one author starts and others pick up?
I’m betting it comes from when people sniff dismissively–this I have seen many do–and, in doing so they often tip their heads up very briefly. But who knows?
I’ve never seen women in real life sticking their noses or chins in the air, but boy are these popular tics in romance. Just like men clenching their jaws.
Ahaha! The jaw clenching! I’ve been trying to remember some of these oddities that appear throughout books. I remember there was a spate of mewling women in sex scenes. If any others come to mind I’ll add them.
She has never gotten anything higher than a B from us. Interesting.
Marian, thank you for taking on the task of reviewing this dud. (If it’s any consolation, I loved your review.)
With the plot points you mentioned, it’s almost like Ms. Bowman asked herself “How can I construct this book so that stl-reader’s head explodes with the preposterousness of it all?”
Special thanks for telling us about the virginal woman-child “sliding him into her throat“. Yet another HR virgin who turns out to be a natural at stuff like that.
Glad you liked the review!
And yes, the sex scene was the last straw, literally. There was zero tension since the hero and heroine were in love and had agreed to marry. I think the author wrote herself into a corner here, because if the hero and heroine had sex earlier, it would have been under false pretenses, yet if they didn’t have on-page sex at all, this would be a HR without sex, which stands out a bit oddly in today’s market unless it’s what readers expect from the author. Though that didn’t make the fellatio any more believable for me.
I’ve seen books where the upper-class character pretends to be a servant, and it can lead to an interesting story despite the deception. But this sounds … boring.
Also, I keep waiting for someone to write a book called “A duke, a marquess, and an earl walk into a bar…”
Only tangentially related, but I just finished a nonfiction book called A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear, which tells the story of what happened in Grafton, NH when libertarians took over the town. No romance but lots of bears.
I’ve been wanting to read that one because the situation in the town sounded so chaotic! From an article about the book :
I suspect it’s out there, just waiting in the wings. We’re getting books with titles like “Duke I’d Like to F**k” and the forthcoming “Rake I’d Like to F**k” – aka Book I’d Like to Consign to the Pits of Hell – so the walking into a bar line is surely a distinct possibility.
That title is misleading. At first I thought, “Yay! A romance with a main character who is actually part of the working class!” I’m not interested in reading about aristocrats pretending to be servants. If HR authors really wanted to write “working class centered” stories, then they would make at least one of their main characters actually a working class person who stays working class and still gets an HEA.
That’s a good point. If the heroine hates all aristocrats, why not have her put her money where her mouth is and marry one of the working class instead?
Instead she ends up with this “Not All Earls” guy who’s just slumming for a brief interlude before he returns to his life of wealth and privilege.
Exactly! I thought it was going to be along the lines of “The Footman” by S.M. LaViolette where the hero actually was a footman when he and the heroine first meet.
God, this sounds awful. You’re subjecting yourself to some truly horrible books, Marian, but thanks for the warnings!
I was hoping this would be a story where the earl would be confronted face-first with the difficult lives of servants. He’d have to work hard, polishing the silver and carrying up the coal and struggling to stay on top of all his new duties. He’d make mistakes and get treated poorly for those and have to remain professional throughout.
That would have been a great read. So you can imagine how disappointed I was with a story that was basically “earl cosplays as footman”.
I have to say that the name of the author would have immediately alerted me to to the fact that this book was NOT going to be Option A.
I’m sorry your deep dive into HR is providing so many duff reads – although that’s probably a sad but accurate reflection of the state of HR today.