Roxie Brandon, $0.99, ISBN 978-1005997694
Historical Romance, 2021
Oh god, that thing on the cover… I think it is sucking my soul out of my body into its dead eyes.
Where was I? Oh yes, the present. I really should looking into some review requests from people. I am so sorry for the delay, but some of the requested materials for review aren’t easy to find in this part of the world, while for other requests, I can only ask for patience because my brain is experiencing some kind of numbing fog as the country enters another phase of lockdown due to you-know-what.
While hoping for some means to jumpstart my brain, I think maybe I should try something wholesome, something completely unlike some of the more out-there stuff I’d tried to enjoy reading recently. Oh, what better than a traditional regency romance, right?
Actually, Roxie Brandon’s Rescued by the Earl is set in the Victorian times, but it’s “regency” in that we don’t see any choo-choo action, nothing like that. Clean and wholesome, people, not a hint of scarlet action and absolutely no need to shame the heroine for putting out to the hero even in the name of true love. Sadly, “intelligence” doesn’t seem to factor into the whole clean fun package, but then again, it never does, does it? The dumber the heroine is, the more romantic the love, or something like that.
Play the cutesy Disney cartoon-esque music as Alexandra Winters, our heroine, ticks off the items on the list in quick succession. She’s hot of course, said to be “intelligent”, and penniless; has a pretty younger sister, a boorish and disagreeable father; sheds hapless tears at the drop of a hat. What do I win when I score a bingo? Her mother dies after making a melodramatic appearance in the opening chapter, and her father then loses the whole house at the gambling table. Naturally, our heroine will do anything to ensure that her sister is safe and happy, so if she had to do that crying-all-day selling-my-body-to-the-Duke of Warwickshire gig, so be it.
Fortunately, the Duke’s good friend, Anthony, the Earl of Wiltshire, is soon besotted with her and can’t bear to see her perpetual weeping willow act to continue. Hence, his dilemma: can he betray his hateful friend to stick it to this hapless honey, or will the bro code prevail and Alexandra will scream in raw anguish as the doors of despair shut on her for good and she is forever forced to debase herself to the sick and twisted lusts of men that are not hot and loaded like her true love?
You may think I am being ridiculous in the way I write the previous paragraph, but wait until you read this thing. My goodness, this story is at boiling point from first page to last when it comes to overwrought, histrionic purple prose. The women are constantly crying, weeping, and finding sentimental letters and journals at opportune moments to read and start weeping all over again. Men are constantly braying, shouting, raising their voices, and shrieking like demented loons when they are the bad guys, or gritting their teeth, scowling dramatically, and more if they are the hot guys.
Everyone is constantly animated like clockwork figurines powered by Energizer batteries on steroids.
“There is one way I know of, that you could repay me,” Anthony said innocently.
“There is? Please do tell me?” she asked him enthusiastically.
“You could marry me?” he suggested with a spark in his eyes.
“You must be jesting, My Lord!” Alexandra said to him, confused but slightly glad.
“Oh, but I am not. The only thing that would soothe my wounds and heal me faster is if you would say yes to marrying me,” Anthony said, with his wit and charm.
“My Lord, are you really proposing to me in a hospital, amidst the sick and injured, including us? Not the most romantic of places,” Alexandra laughed softly.
“Yes, I suppose I am. Why should not a little happiness come from here? It is from the ground that is of dirt where little plants sprout is it not?” Anthony said cleverly.
In the above excerpt, short as it is, Alexandra flies from enthusiasm to confusion to laughter within the space of three utterances from Anthony, who apparently is doing acrobatic stunts with his voice and eyes and eyebrows in the space of five utterances. I feel exhausted already just trying to picture the manic facial expressions of these two characters.
Still, after a while, I start to find humor in the whole overwrought nature of the story.
“Let me go, please! Please let me go! I did not do anything! You cannot kill me!” Alexandra kicked and screamed harder, trying to set herself free but the Duke was bigger and stronger than she and he held onto her with a tighter, more firm grip every time she tried to wriggle free.
“Not tonight, Alexandra! Tonight there will be blood and I will shed it with my own hands of those who are disloyal to me. Where is the one who will rescue you now?! How will he save someone who is already dead?!” the Duke mocked her vulnerable state, laughing at her.
Alexandra kept looking over the window in between his sentences and saw that no one was there. Where are you My Lord?! All of a sudden, she felt a sharp cut on her skin, on her neck and she screamed in pain with her eyes closed, pulling on his big and thick arm, trying to loosen his grip.
“Please, no! No!” Alexandra shrieked.
I am laughing out loud at how ridiculously dramatic the narrative is in the above scene. By that point, I think the story has broken me: I just go with the flow because things are so loony that I can’t do anything else. WHERE ARE YOU MY LORD?! Yes, where, where, where?!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, and don’t think our heroine is going to save herself out of that one. She is only good at playing the martyr here, crying and weeping non-stop until I marvel at how she can constantly shed tears and cry herself raw without becoming dehydrated. Yes, the hero shows up at a dramatic moment to save her. Shocker, I know.
Rescued by the Earl features the same old crap plot of a heroine being a useless waste of crybaby flesh constantly needing to be saved, so a part of me wonders whether the overwrought prose is a deliberate gimmick by the author to stand out from the rest of the stories that utilize this same crap plot. Sure, I do get some laughs out of this at the expense of the author, but I wonder whether it’d be more dignified for the author and more worth my money if she had just done better in the first place.
