Grade: B+

I’m pretty sure there’s a rule somewhere that romance novel heroes are supposed to be breathtakingly beautiful, veritable demigods walking around in tight blue jeans to be drooled over and worshipped inch by inch by mere mortals waiting to be swept into their brawny, muscled arms and ravished with punishing kisses. And if they’re “supposed to be” ugly, their genetically blessed mugs are only marred by a “disfiguring” scar, perharps a diagonal slash from the brow to the cheekbone brought upon by the tip of an enemy’s foil; or maybe the other half of his face—a perfect half, right down the middle—was burned in an explosion as he was running away from a towering inferno cradling squalling infants in his arms, thus he wears his hair unfashionably long, so that it would fall over the damaged part of his face, hiding it from the horrified gazes of gasping women. Though the scar is not only physical… at night, he can still hear the cries of those poor El Salvadorean infants… the ones he had to leave behind… I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to be described as bumbling oafs with disheveled manes the color of blazing carrots, ill-fitting and dirty clothes, a honker of a schnozz that would make Cyrano de Bergerac’s look positively patrician, and a mouthful of large, crooked teeth. If they do happen to look so unfortunate—and I assure you, dear reader, they never do—there’s still something about them that sets them apart from the joe-schmoes out there scratching their balls and picking their noses. It’s a certain je-ne-sais-quoi: he’s smarter than everyone else, or so charming that you forget he looks like Quasimodo (ah, the infamous Steve Buscemi charm!), or… I don’t know, butwhateveritis, he’s got it. He’s got presence, he’s got pizzazz, he’s got… “oooh.” And then there’s Geoffrey Ambler, Marquess of Swale, the town idiot— a man who’d be beneath anyone’s notice if it weren’t for his title and the fact that he’s an heir to a dukedom. And then there’s the unkempt bushel of hair on top of his head the color of burnt carrots (the heroine lovingly calls him “Ginger”). Did I mention he’s also known for throwing punches and the occasional tackle due to his quick and hot temper? And that he has the tendency to shove food into his mouth like a Viking who had been subsisting on a ration of water and moldy bread? Sexy. And no, he’s not the heroine’s mentally handicapped brother or the troublemaking sidekick of the long-suffering male protagonist.

He’s your hero.

At the start of the story, the well-known fop and horse-mad Cary Wayborn is beat up and left for dead in a London alley. His friend drags him to the house of his younger sister, Juliet Wayborn, who discovers that Geoffrey Ambler, the Marquess of Swale, had hired a bunch of thugs to beat up her brother so that he wouldn’t be able to race in the morning and the winner by default would be Swale. Disgusted and determined to avenge her brother’s honor, Juliet decides to dress up as her brother and humiliate Lord Swale by winning the race and revealing afterward that he was beaten by a female. You’re probably thinking to yourself, “Hah, that’ll never work.” And because you’re an avid reader of romance novels, you’ve probably already guessed that Juliet’s ruse will be discovered even before the start of the race and the hero will take her off somewhere to give her a lecture, which will set off their love-hate relationship and lead to a “marriage of convenience” somewhere along the line, and a few chapters before the end, they will start to realize how much they really love each other, and yada-yada-yada, here comes the sequel featuring the brother. WRONG. Here’s what happens: Juliet beats Swale pretty soundly in the race, Swale is humiliated, Juliet’s reputation is in tatters because she’s a “hoyden” and is sent off to the country by her older brother Benedict, and because everyone believes he’s a bigger idiot than ever, Swale vows revenge! REVENGE! And what would be the best way to humiliate Juliet in Swale’s thinking? Why, he must make her fall deeply in love with him, so he can dump her quite soundly, of course. Wait till you read that part where he’s supposed to be wooing her… and ends up throwing a basket at her head, which smashes into her uncle’s beloved shelf of tacky ceramics, breaking all of them into tiny little pieces. Tee-hee. Oh, and witness Juliet being charmed as Swale attempts to shove an entire muffin into his mouth! That Swale, what a card.

Not that Juliet is much of a prize, either. She’s a bit of a spoiled brat. She gossips. She whines. She stomps her feet. When she farts, she probably blames it on the dog. And unlike a normal romance heroine who would see something in our hero that others wouldn’t— a curious twinkle in his eye, for example, or the firmness of his upper lip in comparison to his lower, fuller one— Juliet looks at Swale and thinks, “Eww, get away.” It is not until she suspects Swale might be interested in someone else that she starts paying attention to him. Even then, her feelings for Swale bring to mind what one might feel for a none-too-bright pet who keeps bumping into walls. “Why, yet, it’s an idiot and it smells like a dirty sock, but it’s all mine!”

It is hard to imagine how these two could possibly fall in love—their first kiss involves Swale grabbing Juliet in the middle of eating breakfast, smashing his mouth against hers, and all Juliet can think about afterward is sausages— they argue like children, have nothing in common, neither of them have the most pleasant disposition, and yet oddly enough, it works. This book was a very fun read; there wasn’t a page that went by where I didn’t laugh my ass off. Swale is a very unusual, unique hero and while Juliet might be someone you’ll bump into in a book where the girl realizes she’ll never be the one the hero wants unless she stops being a bitch and has a personality makeover (mostly in books where she’s referred to as a “hoyden”), she’s also quite hilarious. The dialogue and bantering are lively and while there are plenty of groan-inducing and oh-i-can’t-look moments, it is also very romantic. There’s some stuff about the true identity of the person who hired the thugs that beat up Juliet’s brother and some mild sequel-baiting (the hero of the next book has a purple duster and rounded spectacles with blue—yellow?— lenses. yum) Think of a movie where the clueless, rude, pot-smoking slacker somehow ends up with the beautiful, but bitchy and shrill career woman and the romance is believable because you realize while watching the movie that no one else in the world could possibly want either of them but each other. That’s how this book works. You’ll laugh, cover your eyes, go “ewww,” and visit amazon.com to see the author’s backlist.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: B, Romance: Historical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.