Avon, $7.99, ISBN 978-0-06-286168-9
Historical Romance, 2019

Rebel is the first entry in Beverly Jenkins’s new series Women Who Dare, but this series is sort of a spin-off of the author’s series that feature the LeVeq family. This one can be read as a standalone story just fine, which is a good thing as the most recent entry, Captured, came out in 2009 and I can’t recall much about that one!

It’s 1867, and slavery is officially no more. All slaves are now free, but in New Orleans, like the rest of the country, former slaves and white folks are now in an uneasy coexistence, with the threat of violence on the new free ex-slaves just simmering close beneath the surface.

All Valinda Lacy wants is to carve her own life while giving back to her people. A schoolteacher, she wishes that she can be allowed to teach ex-slaves young and old in peace. She has enough problems as it is: it is an uphill struggle to gain funds for her classes as well as to collect her stipends.

However, her school is soon vandalized beyond repair and she is nearly assaulted in the process. Fortunately, our hero Captain Drake LeVeq and his sister-in-law Sable (Through the Storm) happen to be around and he is armed, so yay.

Then she gets evicted, but fortunately, Drake is more than happy to help her out. This is when the story veers into familiar territory, as while Valinda is feisty and what not, she still needs protection as the author keeps throwing lemons at the poor dear, and luckily Drake is the man to stand by her side.

This is more of a “marathon of events” story, as there is no overarching plot or villain in the picture. Instead, Drake has to stand up against his racist superior, and he and Valinda have to deal with the neighborhood white supremacists while helping out the folks in their community in this, that, those, these, and so forth. While I do like these two characters as a whole, I soon stop seeing them as human beings and more like vigilante superheroes.

The romance is rather slow burn, but I am not complaining because it will feel odd if these two spent more time smooching when there are so many bat signals in the night sky all needing their attention. Also, Valinda always believe that she will marry a long-time friend, who is currently away on a business trip, so for the most part she is trying to remain just friends with Drake.

Now, this is one of the author’s better written books in a while. This one gallops on a solid pace, with the tension and the drama never letting up. I wish there are some nuances here, as the villains practically go “Muahahaha!” like evil cartoon characters, but that’s okay. Having read the author’s books for a long time now, I know Ms Jenkins doesn’t do nuances.

However, my issue with all this drama is that, after a while, the whole thing starts to feel contrived. The moment one threat to the community is done with, another one pops up. This story starts to resemble the result of the author furrowing her brow every few chapters and going, “Hmm, what other forms of villainy can I pit these two against next?”

Still, because the story rolls at a rollicking, edge-of-seat biting pace, the artificial procession of conflicts and drama isn’t that big an issue. My bigger issue is how many of the problems are resolved due to the hero being well-connected to a family that comes with a parade of loyal allies.

I know, this is… a romance novel thing, let’s just put it this way, and it is typical for an entry late into a series to have all the folks from previous entries to show up here and go all Avengers-assemble-Thundercats-hoooooo at the bad guys, but having the hero and his family steamroll over all challenges in their path sort of cheapen the nature of the conflict and, subsequently, the messages the author wish to share about racism and all.

Also, everyone having problems until the hero and fam show up is a played-out cliché, one that never fails to make me wonder why everyone is so helpless until the hero sails into the picture. The hero makes the problems seem so trivial with the ease he solves them, and this in turn infantilizes the heroine and the neighborhood.

Not to mention, this series is called Women Who Dare, so can anyone blame me for feeling tad disappointed that this story is more like Women Who Find the Guy with the Right Skills and Connections?

Anyway, I have fun reading Rebel, but I don’t feel anything while reading it, if I am making sense here. The way the hero and fam just sweep aside all challenges in their path robs the story of any sense of struggle or the suspenseful worry that the good guys may lose, so it’s hard for me to get emotionally invested in their story.

A part of me will always wonder what kind of new heights it would reach if the author had, say, shed off all romance novel-y tropes and served this one up as a true blue work of historical fiction. Maybe then this story will get to elicit feels and catharsis that it can’t do in its current form.