TEST
In Liz Tyner’s It’s Marriage or Ruin, Emilie Catesby dreams of being a painter, but her mother wants to see her married instead. Finally, her mother threatens to take away her art supplies, so Emilie decides she must either marry a man who’ll leave her alone, or ruin herself. If no one ever wants to marry her, her mother will have no choice but to let Emilie do as she pleases.
So Emilie sends a letter to a rake asking for a private meeting, but the letter is intercepted by Marcus, Lord Grayson, who happens to be the rake’s older brother. Marcus was a rake too, but he slept with all those women because he was aimless and unfulfilled, rather than because he enjoyed the lifestyle. He meets Emilie, they go through an orchestrated seduction scene, they are discovered as planned, and even the people who discover them don’t seem surprised or disconcerted. Emilie and Marcus are married and they go to live on a tumbledown estate where Marcus can restore the house and Emilie can have her freedom.
The strength of a romance is in its characters, but I’m afraid these two don’t quite cut it. Emilie’s plan to ruin herself is just… not well thought out. For one thing, she has younger sisters, yet she never stops to wonder if their lives will be affected by the scandal. For another, ruin doesn’t just mean your mother stops pestering you to get married. It’s revealed later that Emilie hoped the rake would stop short of actual sex so she wouldn’t get pregnant, but anyone counting on a rake for that sort of birth control is, shall we say, highly optimistic.
As for the art. Emilie is obsessed with thinking about painting. She thinks about it all the time. But the closest she gets to it is to keep a sketchbook, something I imagine a lot of ladies did at the time. There’s an occasional mention of paint-water or turpentine, but the story doesn’t show any time spent before a canvas, much less get into her technique or style or vision for her art. She just thinks about it. A lot. Though she also reflects on how she’d like to have “several children”, perhaps because a historical heroine who doesn’t want half a dozen babies would be unnatural.
As for Marcus, he has some issues jeopardizing his relationship with Emilie, and here they are :
- Emilie wanted his brother to ruin her
- Thinking about painting comes first with Emilie, and she only wants him as a subject in that endeavor
- Marcus is colorblind so he can’t appreciate art
- Marcus is bored and doesn’t know what he wants out of life
- His father didn’t love his mother, so he doesn’t know what love is
- His valet Robert doesn’t get along with Emilie
A couple of these could have made for interesting problems if they’d been well-developed and executed, but for one person to have all of them – and to be amorphous and bland into the bargain – didn’t work for me. In most of the first half of the book, Marcus dwells on how Emilie wanted his brother, but after they move to his estate, his focus shifts to his other issues. The weirdest of those is Robert, the valet. He’s actually Marcus’s mother’s illegitimate half-brother and he saved Marcus’s life once, so Marcus keeps him around although Robert constantly carps at him. Marcus spends his wedding night playing cards with Robert, and when Emilie slips out at night to look at the stars, she takes Robert with her rather than Marcus.
I couldn’t figure out why Robert is in the story. He’s not funny enough to be comic relief, or compelling enough to be the hero of the next book. Maybe he’s just there because nothing much was happening otherwise. Marcus and Emilie have no chemistry together, and they don’t even consummate their tepid marriage until well towards the end of the book.
A strong romance has characters who feel like real people, sometimes larger than life but always capturing my emotions. But unfortunately It’s Marriage or Ruin is not such a romance. If you’d like to read about a historical heroine who’s a painter, I recommend Unsolicited Duke Pic, which was recently well reviewed at AAR. I can’t, however, recommend this book.
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Grade: D+
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Subtle
Review Date: 13/11/19
Publication Date: 10/2019
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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That is the most alarming title I’ve ever seen on a Harlequin.
Yeah, I’ve noticed Harlequin has been getting a little sloppy with some of their titles lately. They might be better off just letting the *author* pick the title if they are going to come up with things like “It’s Marriage or Ruin.” Heck, I’ve seen some cleverer, more compelling titles on self-published erotica. (I say this with great respect to my fellow indie erotica writers.)
“I’d like to read a romance where the heroine started out with this ludicrous plan, discovered what ruin was really like, and dealt with it while falling in love with someone who started to see her good qualities as she matured.” Oh, wow. *THIS* could make a great story.
For an HR about a ruined heroine, I read “An Inconvenient Kiss” by Caroline Kimberly, published by Carina Press. It’s about a well-behaved heroine who is accidentally ruined by a misunderstanding (i.e. she is caught in a compromising position). It’s been a while since I’ve read it, so I’ve forgotten a lot. But I seem to recall she had to go abroad to India with a relative to ride out the scandal that never actually happened. It’s not exactly the plot you’re talking about, but I remember enjoying the story. Maybe it wouldn’t hold up as well as I remembered, but you might be interested.
It always takes me aback when ruin is treated like a spot of minor embarrassment that means you’re free to do whatever you like afterwards. Rather than people not wanting anything to do with you, the shame brought to your family, and men who think that since you’ve got nothing more to lose, you’ll get it on with them too. Thankfully for these heroines, the men they pick to do the ruining always offer marriage ASAP.
I’d like to read a romance where the heroine started out with this ludicrous plan, discovered what ruin was really like, and dealt with it while falling in love with someone who started to see her good qualities as she matured.
Thanks for taking the time to review “It’s Marriage or Ruin,” Ms. Perera.
Lately, there seem to be a lot of historical romances with the premise of, “Oh, I don’t want to get married. I guess I’ll just ruin myself.” It’s a bit bizarre to me that this has become a trend. How about some stories where the heroine marries a fairly obvious homosexual to protect both his and her reputations? Maybe then the heroine might fall in love with somebody else *gasp,* but now she’s married and the whole thing is a tangled mess filled with plots, plans, affairs, and you name it. Or perhaps the man she marries is a bisexual who starts to have feelings for the heroine which ruins her plans at first but slowly becomes an ideal arrangement… Anyway, I’m rambling here. My point is, I think there is a lot of wasted plot potential in “It’s Marriage or Ruin” and similar HRs.
Given that this is a Harlequin romance, I can see where they stuck to a combination of trends and tried-and-true formulas. I’ve noticed compared to some other romance publishers, including their imprints, Harlequin has a tendency to play it safe in their category romances. True, they’re a little more open to unconventional heroines than they used to be, but originality seems to be tolerated only to a point. And I get it. When a reader picks up a Harlequin romance, there is a certain expectation for each category romance line. That’s why I’m glad they have Carina Press and Avon in their portfolio for a little more variety.
“Unsolicited Duke Pic” is one of those books that I wish was available in paperback so I could get it at the library. Nico Rosso, who also writes for Harlequin, appears to have self-published “Unsolicited Duke Pic.” And it just goes to prove how creative an author can get when he isn’t restricted by publisher guidelines. So yay for hybrid authors!