TEST
I like trying historical romances by authors new to me, so I picked up Suzanna Medeiros’s Loving a Marquess because in it, the hero believes he’s suffering from a hereditary, terminal illness. Unfortunately this book wasted this potential and turned out to be a mediocre read.
Down-on-her-luck gentlewoman Louisa Evans finds a man collapsed on her doorstep one night, helps him inside to her bed and nurses him. The next morning, Nicholas Manning, Marquess of Overlea, wakes up and can’t remember what happened to him. Nevertheless, when he sees Louisa, he pulls her into his arms, kisses her, and is groping her breasts (as one does) when Louisa comes to her senses and gets him to stop.
To make amends, Nicholas promises to repay her hospitality in any way he can. Then he goes off to his manor house, where his grandmother insists he get married soon. He can choose the lady, but he must have some heir other than his cousin Edward. The problem is that Nicholas’s father and brother both died from a mysterious illness and now Nicholas believes he’s been stricken by it too.
Therefore, he refuses to father a child. I would have liked to see how he reconciled his fear of passing on his unknown disease with his eagerness to tup Louisa before he even knew her name, but no such luck. Moving on, evil Edward is Louisa’s landlord, and when he comes to raise either her rent or her skirts – her choice – Louisa goes to Nicholas for help. He immediately offers her marriage, all the while planning to have another man beget an heir on her.
Whenever I’ve read this setup before, it’s been the other man who gets the hero to father his child, so I was interested to see how this story would twist the trope. Nicholas asks his friend the Earl of Kerrick (clearly the hero of the next book) to do the deed, and then lets Louisa know about the deal. Neither Kerrick nor Louisa are enthused, but because Nicholas won’t touch her, she and Kerrick decide he’ll pretend to seduce her, to make Nicholas jealous. That works well enough. But Nicholas’s episodes of illness are growing frequent, and he fears the end is in sight.
While the idea behind this conflict is intriguing, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The characters are sadly stereotypical. Nicholas likes Louisa because :
She was a breath of fresh air after all the simpering, marriage-minded females of London.
This novel was published in 2013. By now, I hope historical romance heroes are moving beyond the ‘all women except the one I want are frivolous, emptyheaded chits’ attitude.
And Louisa doesn’t come off as any better than the simpering females. She blushes frequently, thinks it’s easy to annul an unconsummated marriage, and doesn’t figure out the truth behind Nicholas’ mysterious disease. Every time she thinks about him, it’s to reflect on how handsome he is, and other than getting him to have sex with her, all she does after their wedding is make a doctor stop leeching him, worry about her brother joining the army, and persuade Nicholas to accept a dinner invitation from his evil cousin (this goes about as well as you’d expect).
Speaking of sex, this was a bit problematic. It’s clear that Nicholas doesn’t remember what he’s doing on occasion. On top of that, the stress of thinking another man is canoodling with his wife makes him turn to drink. So consummating their marriage isn’t something he does because he’s thought about it and truly wants it; instead it’s treated as a weakness he gives in to. And while he and Louisa have a passionate relationship, nothing about the sex scenes really stood out except for this description of Louisa’s breasts:
They were not overly large, but neither were they small.
So basically, she has medium-sized breasts. Good to know. I just wish the story had applied the same type of description to his penis. ‘It did not lean to the left, but neither did it hang to the right.’
Loving a Marquess is the first in Suzanna Medeiros’s Landing a Lord series, but I won’t be trying any of the sequels. I’d rather look for better historical romances than spend time on something that is not overly awful, but neither is it good.
Buy it at: Amazon
Visit our Amazon Storefront or shop at your local independent bookstore
Grade: C-
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 17/01/20
Publication Date: 01/2013
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.
Related Reviews
God, spare me from heroes who hate every woman but the heroine.
This sounds super squirmworthy.
Yes, I’m tired of misogyny dressed up as a compliment to the heroine. It also never works both ways – if there’s a romance where the heroine thinks the hero is different from all the useless, untrustworthy males of the ton, I’ve yet to read it.
I would read the hell out of a story with this setup where the heroine and the non-hero did the deed.
So would I. It would have been an interesting twist, if the hero couldn’t father a child for whatever reason, so the heroine had sex with another man for that purpose. I was disappointed that this story went for the predictable way out instead.
I think part of the reason you won’t see a story with this setup any time soon is because of category romance rules. Earlier this month, Harlequin posted an article on their blog entitled “Suggestions from the Slush Pile:3 Mistakes to Avoid,” and number 3 was letting the hero have sex with someone other than the heroine or vice versa. The article is here for anyone interested: http://www.soyouthinkyoucanwrite.com/suggestions-from-the-slush-pile-3-mistakes-to-avoid/.
Obviously, Harlequin does not speak for all romance publishers, not even their imprints such as Carina Press and Avon. But the fact they listed sex with other characters as a no-no is probably reflective of traditionally published romance in general. This is where self-published authors can definitely create stories with more subversive plotlines and situations than mainstream romance producers may be willing to try.
By the way, I agree with you Anonymous and Ms. Perera. That would be a cool plot twist or premise for a story.
I think authors might be able to get away with the hero having sex with someone other than the heroine, as long as these aren’t actual scenes and as long as there’s a separation. I’ve read quite a few romances where the hero and heroine are parted and he doesn’t expect to see her again, so he bangs some nameless, faceless women (the heroine, of course, stays chaste).
But in general, you’re right. Last year I queried a manuscript with the setup where the heroine, a married woman in Victorian England, accepted an Indecent Proposal from a rich stranger to save her husband (the hero) from bankruptcy, but this caused a rift in her marriage. The story began with her trying to reconcile with her husband, meaning the sex with another man happened off-page and in the past, but the manuscript still got a rejection from a publisher with the explanation that adultery in any shape or form was a no-no.
“I’ve read quite a few romances where the hero and heroine are parted and he doesn’t expect to see her again, so he bangs some nameless, faceless women (the heroine, of course, stays chaste).” Isn’t that something how a female-centered genre still manages to play into male-centric narratives? If history has anything to say about this, the double standard is laughable. For instance, it is well known that a lot of married sailors and sea captains had a woman in every port. But what I found fascinating was how historical Chef Staib explained the symbolism of sailors’ wives putting out pineapples in Colonial America. It was not only a “welcome home” gesture for her husband but also a potential warning to her lover as in, “See the pineapple, lover boy? Stay away! Hubby’s home!”
I think your story about a woman accepting an indecent proposal in Victorian England is a fantastic premise! But as you well know, mainstream publishers are typically unwilling to take chances. In a way, I get it. If they have a huge conservative fan base with clear genre expectations, a book of that nature could potentially turn them off to the whole publishing company. Look what happened with the Hallmark Channel lesbian wedding commercial debacle. Those kinds of incidents can potentially make or break an already shaky company. (I’m neither criticizing nor defending what happened with Hallmark in this case, just reporting what I see.)
Hang in there with your story. If it doesn’t find a good home among the trad or indie publishers, at least KDP is an option for us writers now.
“Isn’t that something how a female-centered genre still manages to play into male-centric narratives?”
Yes, and I find this all the more frustrating when the double standard is upheld – e.g. the hero asking if the heroine has been with anyone else during their separation, with the implication that he’ll be jealous or angry if the answer is yes. It’s as though she’s supposed to know she’ll see him again eventually, so she has to keep herself pure for him.
“I think your story about a woman accepting an indecent proposal in Victorian England is a fantastic premise! But as you well know, mainstream publishers are typically unwilling to take chances.”
Yes, and you’re right about not alienating a readership. Fortunately there are many different readerships out there, and I always have the option of self-publishing the manuscript. Heck, at this rate I’ll have a whole series ready to go!
Continuing with double standards, it seems like women are often quicker to enforce them than men. In the female dominated romance genre, you see a lot of put-downs and stereotypes of female characters as in everyone but the heroine is a simpering empty-headed twit, a woman who admires her body is a vain vamp, a woman who doesn’t wait for true love to have sex is a hussy, etc. Whereas I have read quite a few thrillers and historical fiction novels written by men where confident, attractive, sexually active heroines are portrayed as desirable foxy mamas who are also intelligent and well-rounded. Naturally, not every romance treats women badly, any more than other genres treat all women well. But certain patterns seem to emerge…
This happens in real life too. I remember reading an essay from a man who had a lot of expat friends in Bangkok (guess why). And he said the odd thing is, the only unkind words he ever heard toward prostitutes were from women, and that the men who used their services often spoke of them quite fondly. (Kind of a tangent here, but I thought his anecdotal observation was interesting regardless of what one thinks of prostitution abroad.)
Obviously, these are generalizations. But I have observed trends like this. Like you, I think it would be nice if the mainstream romance genre was a little more willing to explore so-called fallen/disgraced women, heroines who didn’t wait because she had good reason to believe the hero was dead, etc. But thank heavens for KDP!
Good luck with your series!
That might make an interesting story – a man who starts with the assumption that all women (or all insert-certain-subclass-of-women) are simpering twits, and then actually realizes he’s wrong during the course of the story. Usually such characters don’t examine their preconceptions or change their minds, because they fall in love with the one woman who’s “not like other girls”. But wouldn’t it be great to read something where such a character sees that all women have worth? Not to mention that they’re all individuals, and shouldn’t be shunted aside with blanket generalizations?
“…a woman who doesn’t wait for true love to have sex is a hussy”
Hm. Maybe this is why in historicals, when the hero and heroine are separated, she’s not allowed to have sex with other men even if she believes that the hero’s dead or that she’ll never see him again. Consensual sex should only be had with someone you love, so if the hero is to remain her one true love, she can never have consensual sex with another man.
That makes all kinds of assumptions I’d like to see challenged, but it also makes a sad kind of sense. I see why writers would do this.
Thanks for the good wishes on the series! I always feel inspired after discussing romance here, that’s for sure.
You are welcome! Inspiration is good, and you never know where you might find it. Incidentally, I had a weird flash of inspiration when I was reading Elmore Leonard’s “Bandits” a few weeks ago. The darkly funny, profanity-laden scene was of the main character criticizing a softball interview someone gave President Nixon on television. And BAM! Somehow it sparked a humorous erotica short story I never would have thought of writing otherwise- and it has nothing to do with interviewers or President Nixon. Weird how ideas work…
“That makes all kinds of assumptions I’d like to see challenged, but it also makes a sad kind of sense. I see why writers would do this.” I absolutely agree with you on this. Challenging assumptions is fun and can lead to more interesting storytelling, but there is always a risk of alienating readers. It’s a tough balance I sometimes struggle to find in my own writing. On the one hand, I sometimes feel very brave and inspired when I flip a trope on its head. On the other hand, I sometimes have to rein myself in to fulfill genre expectations to a certain point.
For a more specific example without getting pornographic, the two heroes in my ongoing m/m novella series purposely do not engage in a certain sexual act that is generally expected in the m/m erotic romance subgenre. But I balance reader expectations by making sure the main POV protagonist never has an on-page sexual fantasy with a character besides the other hero (I’ve made only one exception to this so far- and the other hero still wound up in it). Sure, it’s unrealistic for someone to have fantasies *only* about one’s partner, but keeping the focus on the m/m leads in this way is less likely to turn off a big chunk of readers for whom cheating- even in fantasy- would be a big no-no. Because of reader expectations as well as Amazon censorship, there are also times when I must “tell” rather than “show” or use euphemistic language. I have seen mainstream romance writers fall into this sticky trap as well. Like when I read a line of moralizing exposition that I just *know* the author had to include either because of editorial pressure or stringent reader expectations. Nobody who’s actually written a story ever says it’s easy!
I certainly explore taboo, forbidden, and/or unusual topics in my other stories. For me, the trick is to try not to cram too many trope-flipping, genre-bending topics into a single story. It’s kind of like the old saying, “Keep one step ahead of the public, but not two steps or you’ll lose them.”