Review: No Good Duke Goes Unpunished by Sarah MacLean

Sarah MacLean keeps improving, but No Good Duke Goes Unpunished hits some of the same buttons One Good Earl Deserves A Lover did. Also, there's a black guy in this one but he's not going to be the romantic lead of the next book. He's only there for (would it be unfair to say color?) background depth. I sound snarky (and I am) but I appreciated the acknowledgement that the world these characters live in would have some diversity. I held off reviewing No Good Duke Goes Unpunished because the author wanted it to be approached without spoilers and my review is going to be spoiller-riffic. 

The major revelation (of course) is contained in the epilogue. Who is the mysterious Chase? You'll shrug as the heavily foreshadowed revelation is made. I suspected the answer in Book One (felt pretty certain in Book Two) but was thrown off by the Twitterverse reaction. I'm not going to directly reveal this one, but other things I discuss may obliquely do so. Again, stop here to maintain your ignorance before reading the book.

Temple, the powerful fighter known as The Killer Duke, is the hero of this one. Mara Lowe, the women he believes he murdered, steps up to be the heroine. Temple is offered his old life back, the proof of his innocence in Mara's distinctive features. Mara has no former friends, no extended family. There is only Mara and her brother, a man who has taunted and tormented Temple since the alleged murder. Turned out by his father, Temple made his living fighting on the streets before rising to power as an owner of The Fallen Angel nightclub. Nights find him boxing the ruined patrons whose gambling losses fund the club. Days mean distant management of his ducal holdings. Temple is inconsistent but resonant. I found him to be the most fully realized of MacLean's Scoundrels.

Mara could have been a very strong heroine. She was marred for me by the inconsistency of her story. By that I don't mean the lies she tells Temple, rather the trajectory her life takes after he wakes up covered in blood. While I will give Mara her carefully planned disappearance, her reappearance has several difficult elements. If we accept her current career, we have to accept the book's explanation for how she came to have it. If we accept that, then her circumstances when we meet make little sense. Where did her backers go? Why are they unable to assist her in any fashion? How does a woman able to exploit any situation to ensure her own survival not leverage her multitude of secrets into support payments? If we accept that Mara is alone, with no former friends or extended family except her brother, then her career is a major leap of faith.

Up to the final section of the book the relationships between Mara and Temple, Mara and her brother, Temple and his partners, are all solid. An opportunity to explore sudden disability is squandered, but probably wisely. There's the requisite Good With Kids scene, the Jealous Without Cause bit (quickly dismissed) and a nice evolution of the two coming to understand how they both participated in a defining moment in their lives. I could root for Mara and Temple to work things out. Both their backstories made sense. Mara enjoys self harming as much as Temple. Where he fights in the ring, she fights herself. Everything is Mara's fault, everything was caused by Mara. She never stands up and says "wait a minute, that part is all you" without quickly adding "but you wouldn't have done that if not for what I did." Like Chase, I found that aspect of her personality tedious.

Where it all goes wrong for me is during the Near Death Experience. (With the well known Rapid Healing Ability most  NDE characters have.) There is so much talking. So much. Temple's partners are willing to kill for him, but they never do. They do precious little. Each takes their turn standing on stage to loudly proclaim their devotion, followed by almost no action. It's chest thumping for the hell of it. Women save the day repeatedly, almost ludicrously. We tip from only men acting to only women acting as the men flutter about frowning and missing all the points. Soon Mara is busting through windows and disowning the brother she was protecting moments before.

This entire scene makes no sense at all. Mara's brother was the cause of the NDE. The club members have been searching for him with amazing inefficiency. There are any number of charges they could bring against him, if they chose not to murder him on sight. Yet he enters The Fallen Angel freely to confront Temple. Absolutely no part of this makes sense. None of it should happen. The staff and owners stand by, leaving only Mara available to save the pointlessly endangered day. I was face palming all the way through. MacLean had already strained my patience by Temple handwaving a major betrayal by Chase. Chase compounds that betrayal through further actions that put Mara in the Save The Day position.  My "Dude, Really?" trigger flipped over to "DUDE! REALLY?!" Mara and Temple should both abandon everyone they know and never make a friend again. They completely suck at judging people. Anyway, read it but be ready for the Supergirl moments and lower your expectations that The Scoundrels do anything but thump their chests whilst bellowing.

* This review originally appeared at Love In The Margins and NGDGU inspired a spoiler filled rant as well. 

Spoileriffic Review: One Good Earl Deserves A Lover by Sarah MacLean

*Since we're diving deeper into the book I thought the step back would be a more fitting graphic than the cover. 

A few days ago I suggested you preorder Once Good Earl Deserves A Lover, read it at midnight and meet me back here to discuss where I thought it fell apart. I can only show you the path, I can't make you walk it. If you're reading this without having finished One Good Earl  that's on you, kitten.

With everything I loved about OGEDaL this is not a cliche free book. MacLean deals with the logistics of a girl who wears glasses so well that I forgave that girl being an intellectual. (The details of Pippa trying to tie a mask to her face won me over.) While I'd love to read about vision impaired heroines without their defective eyes conferring intellectual power, I get that this stereotype is hardly negative. But still. Smartacles. The magic of myopia.

With all the Pippa Middleton / Prince Harry shipping in the zeitgeist it took me a moment to get past our leads being Pippa and a tall charming redhead. It certainly didn't hurt that Cross was also an intellectual. (Say what you will about Harry but he's never been known for scholarly prowess.) I appreciated how Pippa dominated the book. Cross was well represented but it's Pippa that drives the story and dictates the action. She never becomes a passive passenger in her own story. The human relationships were (with some exceptions) well defined and realistic. I believed the divide between Cross and his family, as well as the interactions between Cross and his partners. I appreciated MacLean leaving Cross and his sister estranged. It was truthful and appropriate. What was neither was the distance of Bourne. I found his exclusion completely implausible. It's one thing for Cross to conspire with Pippa, it is another thing for his partners to do so. Events escalate to the point that the partners spend 19 million in company funds (300,000 plus pounds converted to modern pounds) without consulting or informing him. (The 19 million spent made little sense. This was a feel good resolution that didn't hold logically. It also put the owners - and thus Bourne -  into business with men they didn't wish to entertain.) Aside from the financial aspect, Bourne is invisible in his own family life. He is a prop used to support the HEA from a prior book instead of a realistic character.  This is Bourne, he likes to bang Penny now - as though there is no other purpose to his existence. Send your prior characters on a tour of Europe if you're going to write them out of their own lives.

Cross and Pippa have a nemesis in rival club owner Knight. Of course Knight has a daughter. Since Pippa has two men on her string you know we're going to end with one of them marrying the girl. It's unlikely, unrealistic and unbelievable. It weakens the overall story when characters not destined to be sequel bait pair off like animals on an ark. There is no need for Knight (or his daughter) to bag an aristocrat. Late in the book events also weaken the portrayal of our extra earl. It's understandable that Pippa would build a plan requiring the full cooperation of a recently rejected lover. It's less understandable that he would comply. Marrying him off to Knight's daughter undermines the only simple explanation for his eager compliance. We needed more characterization of his friendship with Pippa to understand what appears to be an inexplicable willingness to comply with her desires. "Hi, I'm not going to marry you. It's really sweet of you to offer to marry me even if I'm pregnant or just desperate, and I totally adore how you're keeping the offer on the table, but would you come help me win the man I want instead?" What makes him agree? Nothing but the needs of the plot.

One aspect of the book I I really enjoyed was Pippa's frank acceptance of human sexuality and lack of disdain for sex workers. Pippa struggles to understand who would choose such a life (and if they would). I felt MacLean was having it both ways when Pippa tells a prostitute that there is no shame in the word, then tells the hero she cannot condone the life. On the one hand, a heroine refreshingly free of slut shaming. On the other, nod to conservative reader expectation. When the prostitute flips on Pippa she has a wonderful defense of her actions that again, is adjusted to reader expectation by her regret at having wronged our Pipster. I'm conflicted in my feelings about this aspect of the book.

I'm not at all conflicted about the final pages. Cross has his last minute revelation. He runs down the street to make the church on time where he finds Pippa in the foyer instead of walking down the aisle. A public proposal follows, and a babylouge ties it off in a bow. This part of the story couldn't be more cliched if it starred Hugh Grant. Pippa has called off her wedding. Why is she at the church? If not Pippa then at least her family is aware she has jilted an earl and will be subject to extreme public scrutiny. Pippa is sporting a bruised face and a blackened eye. Someone around her (oh, I don't know, Bourne?) might have feelings about her appearance. Someone might suggest (her mother?) that society is going to assume the earl beat her and thus she canceled the wedding or that her father beat her for canceling the wedding. Either way, bare faced Pippa hanging out at the church is going to create unwarranted and unsavory rumors for someone. I didn't believe that she'd appear or that she'd hang out in the lobby. Far more likely that Pippa would be at home or at the wedding breakfast (where her appearance could possibly be explained). Pippa is in the church only to facilitate the cinematic staging of her proposal. In a book so deeply concerned with logic and intellect it doesn't hold together. Plus, babylouge. So, so sick of babylouges.

I still loved One Good Earl Deserves A Lover. Books, like people, don't need perfection to be worthy of affection. We can embrace them and see their flaws simultaneously. MacLean owns me for her next release and probably two or three after that. If there's an author / reader version of reality show immunity, she's got it.

Review: One Good Earl Deserves A Lover by Sarah MacLean

Emotionally, One Good Earl Deserves a Lover is absolutely fantastic. Epic. Sheer greatness. Best Book Of The Year material. Critically, One Good Earl Deserves a Lover has substantial flaws. Much like Jennifer Ashley's book The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie reader investment overcomes the structural problems. I was so engaged in the story of Pippa and Cross that I forgave the book everything. In Pippa we have an educated woman free of the cultural bias authors generally ascribe to educated heroines. Pippa does not rebel against conventional femininity nor does she require anyone's defense. She is accepted by those around her. Pippa is not disdainful of people who think differently than she. This is an intellectually curious woman with difficulty understanding and processing emotional cues.

Pippa uses information as a shield against embarrassment, a way to mimic the conventional behavior that seems so alien to her. By studying the strange world most people inhabit, Pippa can move confidently within it. This brings her to Cross, a business partner of her brother in law. Pippa is marrying a perfectly nice man, a man she wants because he wants her. Pippa is aware her interests do not mirror those of conventional society. She is grateful to have found a man who honors her unique qualities. In the interest of conducting herself properly as a wife, Pippa seeks to understand human sexuality. This is a common beginning for historical romance - the naive heroine in need of a sexually experienced tutor. MacLean tweaks the plot by pairing her ingenue with a celibate. Cross is also a prodigy. Where Pippa is emotionally unconnected, Cross is attuned to the way emotions dictate human behavior. He understands and categorizes it the way another might their personal library. What is a mystery to Pippa (human sexuality and attraction) is an open book to Cross. He shares her interest in science as well as her inability to stop thinking critically about the world surrounding him. Where Pippa labels herself as odd, Cross labels himself as continually inadequate. The difference between them is larger than age or experience. It is built by their extended family. One is embraced, the other was rejected. Pippa has never before had a need to decode human interaction. Cross has always been forced to look outside his home for warm appreciation.

Because the emotional strengths of One Good Earl Deserves A Lover outweigh the structural weaknesses I'm going to run a second review after the book's release. It will discuss the dissatisfactions I had with the framing of Cross and Pippa's courtship. I'm splitting the review because I strongly recommend One Good Earl Deserves a Lover and believe it should be read without spoilers. Pre-order this one, read it at midnight and come back on the 30th to see what I have to complain about. All you need to know before you crack the cover is that MacLean has written a celibate hero, a strong female lead and an emotionally satisfying resolution. Enjoy it, for tomorrow (or in two weeks) we quibble.

Review: A Rogue By Any Other Name by Sarah MacLean

Bodices are ripped in the making of this novel.

I am not even kidding. It's like an internet video as our hero channels The Incredible Hulk and rips not one but two articles of clothing off the heroine. The first time she is shocked. (As are we. Didn't bodice ripping go out with the 80's? She is bundled up in winter wear. Has the author ever tried to rip a few layers of wool apart, even with well sewn buttons being the focus? And a nightgown - get one, put it on, ask someone to grab the front edges and give it a tear. Then wait a really, really, really long time. Eventually they might get it, but unless you perforated it in advance it's not the quick one two move popular imagination paints it. Ok, I might have just damaged a cheap shirt from Target giving it the college try, but that was on the seam. Does our heroine have front seams on all her attire?) The second time she sort of digs it. Penelope, she's not big on the self preservation.

It's fitting that the focus of this cover is the heroine. She is the redemption of the book (until she isn't) and the primary reason I'd recommend it as a read. While there is a bit of late in book ass covering (Early on Penelope seems unconcerned at the thought of her father dying while she is unwed despite having a Boy Next Door example of what happens when your parents die on you. Late in the book she's yelling about how her father could have died while she was unwed and how could anyone think she hadn't considered that? Y'know, that sort of thing.) overall Penelope is the awesome kind of heroine I'd like to see more. She's not that into trading her self worth for male approval, she has interests and goals, she doesn't lie to herself, she faces reality and she makes the best of whatever life hands her. We could totally do lunch. Toward the end it all goes a bit ass over teakettle as everyone falls in love with her and she shows an astonishing propensity for beginner's luck when it comes to gambling, but hey. While it's good it's great. If you're going to read A Rogue By Any Other Name, read it for the heroine.

The hero is an immature ass. But he has some really cool artwork. Actually, I'm not sure why he has the really cool artwork. He's a gambling addict who is a partner in a gaming club that boasts a multi level two way stained glass window of Lucifer. The club itself I'd totally check out if it had live music instead of gambling. It's all about the glossy woods and the saturated colors with the bold graphics of damnation pulsing through the party. I think he has the really cool artwork to make you interested in the club and to stop you from thinking about why he owns part of it. The guy who really owns it is said (late in the book) to have plucked Bourne off the streets to run his games and tell him the ways of the aristos, yet early in the book Bourne just seems to be good at bitching about his life. Bourne makes a point of being ignorant about the aristo world, while the dude who plucked him off the street knows all about it. It's inconsistent. What do you expect when your hero is a a gambling addict who lost everything in a game of 21 yet spends his life obsessed with revenge while taking everything from other gambling addicts? They are losing their estates because they are weak, foolish addicts and he lost his estate because his guardian was a big meanie that cheated him. (The cheating allegation comes quite late in the book and is part of the effort to villainize the villain so you'll get over Bourne being a whiny bitch.)

Right, so Bourne loses it all gambling, makes it all back gambling, and focuses his life on penalizing the dude he lost it to. (Oh Hello, Self Awareness. Table for none?) His childhood sweetheart Penelope (star of an earlier book as well) is languishing at home when her father makes her the new holder of Bourne's land (which he got while gambling despite our villain having previously refused all offers for it) and suggests she get married already. Penelope goes for a melancholic walk in the woods in the middle of the night while it snows (as you do) and Bourne appears to rip her dress in half. Rather than just, you know, ask Penelope to marry him he's devised this ginormous plan of entrapment and artifice so he can get on with the revenging already. Their dynamic is a weird hybrid of abusive and tedious. I totally believe they will stay together forever and be drama queens into eternity but I think Bourne is right when he says Penelope deserves so much more. I also believe her when she says he's all she wants. Life has stripped the self worth off her enough for her to think he's a good catch.

Everything about this book would have been improved by the villain not being a villain. If the big denouncement scene had ended with the villain saying "Well Bourne, you were stupid as the day is long and therefore bound to lose it to someone. As your guardian who better to ensure your assets remained intact until you got some damn sense? And so what if I adopted a kid? I should leave my brother's son to a life of grinding poverty and shame? What kind of man does that make me? Glad you grew a pair, here's your stuff back." But no, he's an evil scheming woman smacking bad guy who wronged our poor self pitying Bourne. Let's all hold Bourne's hand while he cries. Again. Bourne could have been a compelling hero. His hitting bottom as an addict, his walking away from his life and his love, his reinvention from the ashes using the very thing that destroyed him - all the bones of epic greatness are here. For me, greatness goes unrealized.

Yet I didn't hate the book. I loved the lush descriptions. I loved the sense of place (if not time). I loved the family dynamics and the internal conflicts of Penelope as she struggled to rebuild her sense of self over and again. I stayed in the story even as I wished for a sudden change of hero. The constant rehashes of events already known to me were brushed aside. I forgave the blatant sequel bait as little hooks were dangled for future tales, tidbits barely relevant to the events at hand. I accepted yet another world where everyone goes by one name like Madonna. No one has a near death experience, although Penelope does have stupidly unlikely beginner's luck at any game of chance she sets her mind to. Overall there was plenty to like about A Rogue By Any Other Name. I just needed more than a late book revelation of What Is Really Important to buy Bourne as a guy worth wanting.

Review: Eleven Scandals To Start To Win A Duke's Heart by Sarah MacLean

Now I understand.

Eleven Scandals To Start To Win A Duke's Heart (Thank goodness MacLean's leaving rhyming titles behind. It's like a Fiona Apple box set, these things.) is a more assured and nuanced story compared to the previous books of the trilogy. I'm not sure I needed to read those to appreciate Eleven Scandals, but I'm glad I had the background. MacLean is a lock for everyone's best of the year lists.

Juliana is a decent woman driven to prove how bad she is by the low expectations of others. Simon is a man afraid of imperfection, a man who holds himself (and therefore everyone) to impossibly high standards. Between her rebellion and his disdain Eleven Scandals comes alive. Keeping the focus on conflict between the characters (as opposed to external plot forces) is a smart choice by MacLean. Adding the irony of the Perfect Simon being unacceptable to her scandalous family, the couple find themselves with no supporters. (The only unrealistic note would be part of a subplot involving Simon's sister. It doesn't quite work in the context of Ten Ways).

Eleven Scandals is a gossipy treat with well considered character motivations and plausible actions. The coincidences are kept to a minimum and the cliches barely present themselves. Overall the story is a fresh and original take on the Boy From Society and the Girl Who Doesn't Fit In. Sarah MacLean just hit my auto buy list, even with the Oprah ending. You know, where they pass out babies like Oprah does cars. And YOU get a baby, and YOU get a baby, and... I never find those endings that happy. Given the infant mortality and childbirth death rates, it worries me. Really, when Regencyland is taken to task for so many small errors I'm glad that big one gets to slide. Happily Ever After needs all the help it can get.

The Hermetically Sealed Heroine, Can We Let Her Go?

There's a lot of positive buzz for Sarah MacLean's new book Eleven Scandals to Start to Win A Duke's Heart so I picked up the first two books in the trilogy. After making my way through the perfectly serviceable and often enjoyable Ten Ways To Be Adored When Landing A Lord and Nine Rules to Break When Romancing A Rake I had strong opinions about elements of both.  On reflection I realized that my problem wasn't with her work  (MacLean breaks as many molds as she's upholds) so much as it was with a need to retire some genre conventions.

When I started in romance, the heroine was commonly 16 - 18. Sometimes she was even younger, sometimes she was a few years older, but that was the average. Over the years heroines have aged as a result of consumer preferences. Now that we can't imagine a 16 year old making a solid choice for a spouse, many heroines are in their late twenties or into their thirties. (Forty appears to still be unacceptable except in side characters.) Both of MacLean's first two heroines are, by genre convention, older heroines. One is a wallflower, the other is stuck on a country estate trying to make ends meet. In return, they are paired with a rake (in the non rapist genre sense, which I liken more to a slut-boy than a historical rake) and his more discriminating brother. In both cases, the men have lived a life of companionship (for good or ill) and sexual experience.

The women have not. This bothers me. When the heroines were 16 and paired off with a 37 or 45 year old man of the town, you understood their lack of experience and hoped he hadn't picked up any interesting diseases. For a woman in her late twenties or early thirties, it is absurd to have them hermetically sealed for his protection. Beyond the issue of virginity (which is understandable in it's existence but then dispensed with laughably fast when the opportunity presents) these women have never been kissed. The typical lack of sexual agency in the romance heroine of the 70's and 80's is preserved in these older heroines. Why? It's almost offensive to find these women, presented as capable and multidimensional, possibly self pleasuring, certainly ready for a physical relationship, have never had even a pre-teen lip lock with a servant. It's a bit ridiculous, really. So why is it still important?

We complain about all manner of things in the genre. Was it historically accurate, does it line up with our own image of what the character would do, does it line up with our image of what we would do? What does it say about women or relationships? Why do we not complain when a woman falls in love with the first man she kisses? Does she have the tools for a relationship and understanding of her own needs? Can the older heroine adequately judge that which she has no frame of reference for? Why is such extreme purity even desired in books written primarily for women and by women? A book can open with a man sliding out of a devalued women (because any women the hero is physically involved with is inevitably less than fully human when compared to the heroine) and dismissing her as nothing, only to find us rooting for his involvement with a woman who has never kissed.

I don't know what this says about our self image, about power dynamics, about any of the things academics get paid to dissect and discuss. I do know that I find myself tired of it. There's a scene in a recent Boyle book where the heroine and the discarded mistress find themselves in a room having a rational conversation. It was refreshing. Two women, on equal footing, in different places in their lives.  But Boyle's heroine had certainly been kissed before. I can't understand why, when we have discarded so many things that devalued women from our fiction, we hold so tightly to these two truths. Women with physical experience are whores. Women with astonishing levels of physical purity are desired.