Avon, $7.99, ISBN 978-0-06-306352-5
Historical Romance, 2011 (Reissue)
Gentle Rogue by the late Johanna Lindsey was first published in 1990, and it was a lovely, different time back then. For those that weren’t reading romance novels back then, the 1990s were a transition period of sorts, between the wildly lurid and politically incorrect bodice ripper era of the 1970s and 1980s to the increasing safe and politically incorrect romance stories that we tend to see these days.
This one is a good example of what a historical romance can be like when the author started out writing “forced seduction” stories only to be now told by her editor that her heroes couldn’t do that anymore.
Incidentally, this is also the best thing ever from the author, if one listen to her fans, so I hope all you folks appreciate that I may be risking my neck by reviewing this thing!
Now that I am reading this for the first time, I am amused by just how many things in this one had since become played-out tropes in historical romance back in those days.
We have Georgina Anderson, the sole lady in a household of brothers, and she is determined to make her own way to England from America, against her overprotective brothers’ wishes of course, to locate her MIA fiancé. The luggage get stolen, she had to make do with middle class lodging arrangements (oh, the horror), but the biggest yucks is her finding that man already married to someone else, and he doesn’t understand why she would hold out for him still all this while.
Humiliated, she is determined to go back to America, but oh no, she has come all this way without considering that she may not find what she wants, so yeah, she’s now stranded unless she does what every desperate romance heroine does in her situation.
No, silly, not to prostitute herself or anything so vulgar. She’s a romance heroine, she can easily pose as a bloke and no one will look at her and think something is off. What she does therefore is to dress up as one and get herself hired as a cabin boy on the ship of our hero, former pirate Captain James Malory.
One thing that stands out here is that, because the romance genre has some serious daddy issues back in those days, our hero is old enough to have a son that is just a bit younger than our heroine.
That’s okay, though, because our heroine needs a father as much as a lover. Oh boy, Georgie is dumb. She is no doubt intended to be passed off as some feisty spitfire, but she just comes off as an unnecessarily abrasive and rude chit with barely two brain cells working. She doesn’t plan or think, she just does without thinking, and it’s a good thing that there are always men in the vicinity to save her from having to face the consequences of her antics, or else she’d probably end up a corpse with a scowl on her face before the week is out.
The hero and the heroine, curiously enough, barely interact until later in this story, after the first third or so. A lot of the story up to that point, and even after that to an extent, is about these two characters’ interactions with their family members and staff. This isn’t a bad thing in itself. Indeed, this story is a nice demonstration of how romance authors can connect various romance novels together into one big family saga—a refreshing change from the trend today to have various sequel baits show up in a roll call, without any thought given as to how these sequel baits can play a role in the story.
From a technical viewpoint, Gentle Rogue is also an engaging read because the words just flow nicely on the pages.
Georgina Anderson held her spoon up backward, placed one of the pared-down radishes from her plate in the bowl of the spoon, pulled the tip back, and shot the radish across the room. She didn’t hit the fat cockroach she was aiming for, but she was close enough. The radish splattered on the wall only inches from her target, sending said target scampering for the nearest crack in the wall. Goal accomplished. As long as she couldn’t see the little beasts, she could pretend she wasn’t sharing accommodations with them.
She turned back to her half-eaten dinner, stared at the boiled food for a moment, then pushed the plate away with a grimace. What she wouldn’t give for one of Hannah’s rich, seven-course meals right about now. After twelve years as the Andersons’ cook, Hannah knew just what pleased each member of the family, and Georgina had been dreaming about her cooking for weeks, not surprising after a month of shipboard fare. She’d gotten only one good meal since she’d arrived in England five days ago, and that was the very night they docked, when Mac had taken her out to a fine restaurant just after they had checked into the Albany Hotel. They’d had to leave the Albany the very next day for much, much cheaper accommodations. But there was nothing else they could do after they returned to the hotel to find all their money missing from their trunks.
These are the first two paragraphs of this story, and it’s a good demonstration of what one should do in telling a story. The author inserts just enough exposition to present the heroine’s current situation to the reader.
The first paragraphs shows, nicely, that our heroine is impulsive but she doesn’t always succeed in getting the desired result of her intended action—George in a nutshell for the rest of the story. The next paragraph delves into Georgie’s privileged background and what happened to lead her to this current predicament of hers, but unlike most authors, Ms Lindsey presented just enough information to keep me clued in, without inundating me with too many extraneous details. Reading these paragraphs is enough to make me want to read more.
Sadly, the romance, unlike the narrative, doesn’t hold up. Georgie is dumb and spoiled, which I can still accept in small doses and long, deep breaths if she weren’t also gullible. James is a typical hero of his time: he doesn’t hesitate to lie and mislead the heroine in order to get into her underpants, and he also continues to do this after he’s gotten into them. He would wax lyrical about her innocence, because remember, the genre has some really big daddy issues back then, and I have no idea why these two are in love at the end of the day. It’s more like he wants her because she’s innocent and somehow her hoo-hoo is special, and she loves him because she’s just dumb.
Even then, I have to admit, I find myself entertained by the way Georgie just screeches and flounces at everyone and everything, or how James runs circles around her. A good reason for this is that I have zero investment in the romance, as it’s not at all believable, so I can find some amusement in how the hero often mocks the heroine for her stupidity and how she throws temper tantrums and acts like she’s Miss Know It All when she doesn’t know many things in the first place.
I have to say, at this point, that the author clearly knew some sneaky tricks if she could keep me entertained while presenting a romance that, at its core, is about a manipulative asshole and his spoiled, entitled, and not-too-smart hussy.
The only drawback here is the lack of tawdry sex that characterizes many romance novels of that time. This one is amusing enough without tawdry sex added in, but people expecting this to be as gloriously trashy as other romance novels of bygone days should take note that this one was published in 1990. Also, one doesn’t read Johanna Lindsey’s books for such sexy stuff. For that kind of thing, there are always books from around that time frame from Bertrice Small, Brenda Joyce, Virginia Henley, and of course, Rosemary Rogers.
So yes, Gentle Rogue. As a romance story, it’s definitely a product of its time, and I suspect folks more used to the romance novels of present day may need to adjust their expectations by a considerable degree before delving into it. Nonetheless, it’s still an entertaining read, provided one doesn’t take the main characters or their romance seriously. Folks wanting to explore the dark and wild past of the romance genre, but in baby steps, can always start with this one.
