Mills & Boon, £4.99, ISBN 978-0-263-92561-6
Historical Romance, 2017
Margaret Moore’s A Marriage of Rogues starts out great.
When her father lost everything at the gaming table to our hero Sir Develin Dundrake, Theodora Markham approaches Dev with a proposal.
If he would marry her, she would be the buffer that keeps him separated from marriage-mad moms and their daughters, and he’s free to continue gamboling around town like a bachelor. She’s also, as she claims, well educated and can take care of his holdings, thus he doesn’t have to do any of the tedious responsibility stuff. In return, she gets a roof over her head.
Hey, a proactive heroine in a historical romance! That’s like spotting a unicorn in the backyard, so maybe the story will be something special…
Well, no. The author then drags the story into a tedious phase of both characters hesitating and changing their minds over and over, as if I didn’t already know that they will get married so that there will be a story. True, in this arrangement Dev doesn’t really have much to gain, so he has the right to think things over, but at the same time, he waffles between feeling guilty over the fact that he cheated in order to win (and thus ruining Theodora’s life) and feeling that maybe he shouldn’t get married after all. It gets really boring and repetitive after a while.
Then, the author starts doing what could have been damage control to win back readers that are aghast that the heroine was so forward as to want to take steps to keep herself from having to eke out a living on the streets. Yes, it’s not long before Theodora is wondering about love.
Sigh, the story then rolls downhill further. Theodora’s worries that she may not be her new husband’s true love escalate as he starts sneaking around like… ooh, he has a secret. Likewise, Dev starts moping about being married to some woman he is attracted to like it’s the worst thing ever.
Have these two forgotten that their marriage is supposed to be a business transaction of sorts? Why are they moping about finer feelings?
These two can’t communicate halfway decently, preferring instead of jump to conclusions and assume the negative. Throw in an unnecessarily convoluted subplot involving an annoying female character that abruptly morphs into what I suppose is to be considered a strong woman, and it’s all a chaotic mess.
The problem with this one is that there is nothing here that feels like a natural and organic evolution of the main characters and their relationship. After the initial premise of their marriage being a transactional affair, both characters immediately begin whining and moping about their feels. Why? If this had been a practical arrangement, why should they even care what the other person feels about them?
Why should they care about what the other person is doing? Why is honesty such a big deal when all that matters should be that they both now have the means to go about their separate lives in peace?
It is one thing if they whine and mope after developing feelings for the other person, but they couldn’t wait fast enough to do that song and dance the first moment they could. Why do they do this?
The cynical answer would be that this is standard behavior expected of these characters. Still, even the most standard behavior should fit context and circumstance, and here, the characters are being illogical poor communicators and all around annoyances.
I can’t help wondering what could have happened if the heroine had been allowed to persist being that practical lady that isn’t afraid to make things happen to take care of herself. Sadly, what I get instead is a story that sees the author, perhaps at her own initiative or her editor’s behest, clumsily hammering the story to fit into some mold even if doing so transforms the story into an artificial construct made from body parts that don’t really fit well together.
