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In writing workshops and classes everywhere, one of the most repeated instructions is this: Show, don’t tell. The Infamous Bride by Kelly McClymer is a frustrating example of how badly things can go wrong when that rule is ignored.
Juliet Fenster is a flirtatious English beauty who is miffed when one of her suitors, Lord Pendrake, becomes engaged to someone else. Juliet never intended to marry Lord Pendrake, but her pride is wounded. How dare he marry someone else when everyone knows he is her slave? She intends to demand an explanation for what she decides is a humiliating rejection. But whenever she tries to approach Lord Pendrake, his friend, an annoying American businessman named R.J. Hopkins, gets in her way.
R.J. has been told by his father that, in order to earn the right to participate in the family business, he must demonstrate his trustworthiness by finding a suitable wife – preferably one with aristocratic English blood. R.J. knows that the impetuous beauty Juliet is not the submissive bride he wants, and he makes no secret of his contempt for her from the moment they meet.
Inexplicably, these two fall into sudden lust when they find themselves playing the leads in an amateur production of Romeo and Juliet. In fact, that’s inexplicable, too – starring in a romantic play seems to run completely counter to every single aspect of R.J.’s personality, and I simply couldn’t believe it when he took the part. In this totally plot-driven development, R.J. and Juliet find themselves seduced by the power of Shakespearean drama, and promptly fall into bed together, creating a scandal. They are forced to marry immediately, and Juliet returns to Boston with R.J., where his intolerant family and Bostonian society in general scorn her. At some point during all this they fall in love, but I must have missed when it happened and why. Certainly they never mentioned it to each other.
The character development in this novel is worse than nonexistent – it is self-contradictory. We are told that Juliet is intelligent, sensitive, tenderhearted, and that “she had believed she was not clever or good enough to deserve” the kind of happiness her siblings found in their marriages. Juliet’s actions almost never reflect this information; in the beginning of the novel her behavior is childish and arrogant almost beyond belief. She gets better towards the end, but the development of her character is so superficial that there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for her maturation, aside from the dictates of the plot.
R.J. is even more of a cipher. At first I didn’t mind him: he didn’t like Juliet, but then, I didn’t like Juliet either. His sudden plunge into passion with her seemed to come completely out of the blue. After their marriage, we are told that his feelings towards her grow tender, and he longs for her to be happy. But once again, his actions contradict this. Until the very end of the book he ignores Juliet and treats her with disrespect, boredom, and apparently unremitting dislike. In one killing scene, he “listened with only half an ear” while she confesses to him that she is miserable. He is also cringingly obsequious towards his tyrannical father, which I didn’t find to be a heroic feature.
All this is wrapped up with a big climax, during which several one-dimensional secondary characters suddenly leap onto center stage, manipulate events, and cause a Big Misunderstanding. Then there’s a reconciliation, and voilà , they live happily ever after. By this time I felt so disconnected from both Juliet and R.J. that, not only was I unconvinced by this denoument, I didn’t care about it at all.
The Infamous Bride moves along at a breezy clip and the subtlety of the love scenes may recommend it to those who dislike explicit reads. But it didn’t succeed as a romance. What it succeeded in doing was making me think wistfully of all the other books out there that I’d rather be reading.
Grade: D
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Subtle
Review Date: 12/01/01
Publication Date: 2001
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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.