meganbmoore (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
meganbmoore) wrote2009-07-01 11:40 am
meganbmoore) wrote2009-07-01 11:40 am
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One Night For Love by Mary Balogh
A year and a half ago, Neville Wyatt, the Earl of Kilbourne*, married his sergeant’s daughter, lily, in Portugal after his sergeant’s death, promising to take care of her. The next day, however, Lily was shot and apparently killed in an attack. Now he’s set to marry his step-cousin and childhood friend, Lauren, who he’s been expected to marry most of his life, only to have a bedraggled Lily run into the church as he’s about to exchange vows.
Having unintentionally read A Summer to Remember (the sequel to this) first, I admit that I started the book not really expecting to like Neville, given that I adored Lauren in A Summer to Remember and knew that he dumped her at the altar, resulting in everyone always trying to get her to host a pity party, even though I’d gathered enough of the plot to know that he couldn’t really be held responsible. Thankfully, he turned out very nice, and probably the most sympathetic “My true love is gone…oh no wait, there she is. Where’s she been all this time?” romance hero I’ve come across, and spends a fair bit of time wallowing in guilt between hurting Lauren and not having known Lily was still alive, not to mention having his relatives unleashed on her. Lily, for her part, is naïve about England and the aristocracy but not naïve about life, and has to deal with her experiences during the time she was missing. There aren’t exactly a lot of options for what happened when a woman disappears on the battlefield and isn’t able to contact her husband for well over a year.**
I like that most of the conflict is external, and about dealing with Lily’s experiences without blame, and with how she’ll be able to adapt to his lifestyle, given that she’s never actually been to England since infancy, and I like that Balogh seriously looks at it from the perspective of Lauren and the people who care about her (including Neville, and, later, Lily) without vilifying them. I typically find external conflict in romantic fiction much more interesting than the endless misunderstandings and will they/won’t they and people attempting to interfere in the relationship and whatnot.
I understand that, like Connie Brockway, Balogh’s novels tend to alternate between romantic comedies and angsty dramas. The two I’ve read have both been of the (very well done) angsty drama variety, but can anyone recommend any of her lighter books? For reference, I have the Bedwyn books, the “Simply” books, the “Web” books, the “Mistress” books, and the recent “First Comes…” “Then Comes…” books.
*Romance novels and heirs running off to war/not allowed to run off to war because they’re the heir give me a headache, so lets just go with it.
**This is actually one of the better handlings of rape that I’ve come across in fiction. Strangely, one scene between Lily and Neville reminded me greatly of a scene in a Hemingway book that I read when I was about 15 that did a lot to scar me for life regarding rape in fiction, gender in fiction, Hemingway, and “real” fiction in general. Except that while Hemingway made me think that a woman only still has value and self-worth after being raped if a man tells her she does, Balogh makes me think that anyone who thinks rape affects a woman’s value or should lower her feelings of self-worth should have their opinions forcibly rearranged. (I read the Hemingway at 15. At 28, I may have a completely different reading of it-based on what else I’ve read of his and what I’ve heard, though, I doubt it-but I literally flinch at the thought of trying it again.)
Having unintentionally read A Summer to Remember (the sequel to this) first, I admit that I started the book not really expecting to like Neville, given that I adored Lauren in A Summer to Remember and knew that he dumped her at the altar, resulting in everyone always trying to get her to host a pity party, even though I’d gathered enough of the plot to know that he couldn’t really be held responsible. Thankfully, he turned out very nice, and probably the most sympathetic “My true love is gone…oh no wait, there she is. Where’s she been all this time?” romance hero I’ve come across, and spends a fair bit of time wallowing in guilt between hurting Lauren and not having known Lily was still alive, not to mention having his relatives unleashed on her. Lily, for her part, is naïve about England and the aristocracy but not naïve about life, and has to deal with her experiences during the time she was missing. There aren’t exactly a lot of options for what happened when a woman disappears on the battlefield and isn’t able to contact her husband for well over a year.**
I like that most of the conflict is external, and about dealing with Lily’s experiences without blame, and with how she’ll be able to adapt to his lifestyle, given that she’s never actually been to England since infancy, and I like that Balogh seriously looks at it from the perspective of Lauren and the people who care about her (including Neville, and, later, Lily) without vilifying them. I typically find external conflict in romantic fiction much more interesting than the endless misunderstandings and will they/won’t they and people attempting to interfere in the relationship and whatnot.
I understand that, like Connie Brockway, Balogh’s novels tend to alternate between romantic comedies and angsty dramas. The two I’ve read have both been of the (very well done) angsty drama variety, but can anyone recommend any of her lighter books? For reference, I have the Bedwyn books, the “Simply” books, the “Web” books, the “Mistress” books, and the recent “First Comes…” “Then Comes…” books.
*Romance novels and heirs running off to war/not allowed to run off to war because they’re the heir give me a headache, so lets just go with it.
**This is actually one of the better handlings of rape that I’ve come across in fiction. Strangely, one scene between Lily and Neville reminded me greatly of a scene in a Hemingway book that I read when I was about 15 that did a lot to scar me for life regarding rape in fiction, gender in fiction, Hemingway, and “real” fiction in general. Except that while Hemingway made me think that a woman only still has value and self-worth after being raped if a man tells her she does, Balogh makes me think that anyone who thinks rape affects a woman’s value or should lower her feelings of self-worth should have their opinions forcibly rearranged. (I read the Hemingway at 15. At 28, I may have a completely different reading of it-based on what else I’ve read of his and what I’ve heard, though, I doubt it-but I literally flinch at the thought of trying it again.)
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Wait, aren't these things mostly examples of external conflict?
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