Trashy romance novel time again!
This time around, I’m thrilled to say that we have a nice, old fashioned romance with no alien abductions or roommates left to pay the rent on their own. Valentine, by Jane Feather (and is that a pen name or what? Jane FEATHER?), is a old school 10 Things I Hate About You/She’s All That-type book. It has nothing to do with Valentine’s Day, St. Valentine, or anyone named Valentine, so I’m not sure what’s up with the title, but I hate coming up with titles myself, so I’m not one to judge.
We open this novel as our hero, unfortunately named Sylvester Gilbraith, has just been named fifth Earl of Stoneridge as the last earl (a distant cousin or something) has died, leaving only four granddaughters in his direct inheritance. That primogeniture nonsense created a lot of unnecessary drama…just ask anyone married to Henry VIII. Turns out the old earl was sneaky, though, and while he’s passing on the title and the manor, Sylvester Gilbraith (who will henceforth be known as Syl Gil since it’s easier to type) doesn’t get any money unless he marries one of the old earl’s granddaughters. And, to add a nifty little ticking time bomb to the plot, he has a month to marry one of the girls before they find out about that little fact.
So off goes Syl Gil to Stoneridge, where he has a fascinating encounter with a pretty young girl who he thinks is a gypsy. They fight, and Syl Gil has a flashback to his days fighting in Portugal, which ends their encounter.
About three paragraphs later, SURPRISE, the gypsy girl is revealed to be one of the old earl’s granddaughters, Theo. She’s very Jo March-ish, right down to the boyish name, running around in improper clothes, being a general tomboy, having three sisters, having only a mother present to raise them (their father died when the girls were young), and even chopping off all her hair. The oldest, Emily (read: Meg) is betrothed to another guy off at war, the next oldest, Clarissa (who seems to be Beth only without any Scarlet Fever) is a dreamy, romantic girl who is waiting for a knight in shining armor. The youngest, Rosie, is only 11 or something, and she’s obsessed with biology and experiments (and she’s Amy because she’s so precocious and always saying inappropriate things).
Elinor, their mother, is completely Marmee, and she's the one Syl Gil talks to when he makes his appearance, and he says that he wants to marry one of the girls out of the kindness of his heart. He figures Clarissa’s the oldest without an attachment, but Elinor tells him he’ll be better suited to Theo, so Theo it is. Now he has a month to win her over, and she is understandably difficult because she hates his family and doesn’t want to lose herself to a guy. However, he keeps making out with her at random moments, and almost (gasp!) has sex with her even though they aren’t married, and she is incapable of resisting, so she finally gives in. This is plot one: Syl Gil gets ornery Theo to marry him.
Plot two results from Syl Gil trying to keep the motivating reasons behind his marriage from Theo. As we were only about a third of the way through the book when the marriage took place, we can imagine that he is not successful. Theo does some eavesdropping when the lawyer comes to call, and she gets seriously pissed off. Syl Gil can’t see why—she gets to help him run the estate, the title stays in her bloodline, and they’re having lots of good sex!
They have lots of fights about it, and before it’s resolved they take off for London for The Season to present Meg, Jo, and Beth…err…Emily, Clarissa, and Theo. Rosie’s off the hook and can continue trying to dissect worms. Lucky Rosie. After some drama with plotline number three (more on that later) and some more sex, Theo and Syl Gil reconcile. This was the least interesting of the plotlines.
The third plotline, which Jane Feather has been hinting at throughout the book, links back to Syl Gil’s time in the army. He was court-martialed for surrendering when he wasn’t supposed to, but he doesn’t remember any of it, and he got off, but everyone just assumed he was guilty. Anyway, turns out someone’s been trying to kill him for a while. There were some traps set for him back at Stoneridge, and a bunch of thugs try to beat him up in London. Of course, Theo has had lots of wrestling lessons and she helps take on the thugs, so Syl Gil makes it out alive. Syl Gil decides to go on the offensive, Theo follows him, he gets pissy at her for interfering and refuses to tell her what’s going on even when he figures out that the guy (Mr. Wimpy, since I can’t remember his real name…I think it’s Neil or something) trying to kill him fought with him in Portugal at the battle he can’t remember.
So now the two of them are each separately trying to figure this guy out. Turns out this guy is trying to kill him on orders from Fred or Ted or Ed O’Flannery, who’s apparently a thug (I picture him as one of the Fitzpatricks from Veronica Mars). During The Battle, O’Flannery and Mr. Neil Wimpy were supposed to be the reinforcements coming to save Syl Gil’s troops. However, they decided to flee because Mr. Neil Wimpy hates physical fighting, and so THEY are the ones who should be court-martialed, but they just waited to show up until Syl Gil’s troops had to surrender. Syl Gil had a serious head wound, hence his inability to remember any of this. Anyway, after Theo is kidnapped and nearly raped by Mr. Neil Wimpy (who somehow thinks that raping Theo will keep Syl Gil from sharing the truth), Syl Gil and Meg/Emily’s fiancé rescue Theo, get a confession from Mr. Neil Wimpy, and all is well. End plot three.
When they return from this chaos, they learn that Clarissa is engaged to her white knight (who’s a painter and has been hanging around being boring for a good hundred pages) and that she’s going to have a double wedding with Emily. Two pages from the end, Theo and Syl Gil both admit they love each other, and they all live happily ever after, the end.
And, best of all, they don’t leave any of their old friends to pay their bills for them.
A precursor to a few upcoming reviews: they are NOT Young Adult, nor are they books I would normally be caught dead reading. However, I was recently “up north” at a cabin, and while unable to fall asleep, I decided to grab one of the books lying around. My options were at least a dozen mysteries or some trashy romances.
I have a long history with the trashy romance genre. My grandmother and mother have always loved them. When I was about 10 I still thought romances were boring, because everyone knew that boys were gross and kissing was nasty. If I was at a cottage or my grandparents house and I ran out of my own books to read, then I’d pick up my Grandpa’s copies of The Toledo Blade or Newsweek and read those instead. I’d also flip through every copy of Sports Illustrated around, searching for any mention of figure skating. Within a year or two, however, I’d decided that boys were vaguely intriguing after all, and maybe there was something to be said for these romances. Since most of my grandma’s stash is from the ‘60s (she and my mother both claim that romances were nice and wholesome back in their day, and now they’re just all about sex), the first few I stumbled upon were rather tame. One was even a Young Adult book (White House Autumn) that’s still one of my favorites (it’s possible I stole that for my collection…). However, my grandma often goes to Savers or Goodwill, clears out their entire romance novel collection, and then stores them in her basement, and it just so happens that not all of the ones she brought home were the nice, tame Harlequins of my mother’s youth.
Enlightening, I suppose, would be the best word for some of the racier books, and my poor innocent 12-year old self was shocked to pieces more than once. Talk about sex ed!
That said, once I stopped blushing (approximately four years later, I’d guess, as I was a naïve middle schooler), I decided that while these certainly weren’t real literature, they were awfully fun to read. Just on vacation, you know. To pass the time. If there wasn’t any Dostoevsky or Dickens hanging around.
The point of this history is that, when I found myself in need of a book, I selected the trashy romances over the mysteries. Besides, dealing with mysteries when in a forest in the middle of nowhere scares the hell out of me. I’ve seen enough episodes of Criminal Minds to know that all the creepy serial killers live out in the boonies. Plus there’s no light ANYWHERE out there (aside from the stars, and being a city girl, I don’t count those. I want some streetlights! And not the wimpy Evanston-variety streetlights, hardcore downtown streetlights!), and it would not be hard for someone to sneak up on me. At least in the city I’d see them coming.
So, yeah. It was all the crazy serial killers living in cabins up north that forced me to spend my time reading trashy romances. And no, we aren’t going to talk about why I never got around to reading my real literature that I’d brought with me.
