LynneC’s review of  The Marriage Betrayal by Lynne Graham
Contemporary Romance published by Harlequin Presents Extra 28 Jun 10

Harlequin has begun to put selected titles from their category lines on netGalley for review. I’m guessing they want these books reviewed and promoted all over the place. So it beats me why they decided to review a book that Lynne Graham seems to have phoned in.

Warning – there is a kind of spoiler at the end of this review, because this book is one of two books featuring the same characters. But there is a warning too, because Graham uses a trope some readers might not be comfortable with.

I have read some really good Harlequin/Mills and Boon books recently, books that took chances and explored new themes. This book reads like it was set in the 1960s, and, in truth, I’d have enjoyed it much more if it had been written as a period piece. Slang like “shag” belongs in Austin Powers, not the modern world, and this and other aspects dragged the book down and made it a slog to read. Graham uses traditional tropes, but she doesn’t play with them and she doesn’t try to explore character through tropes, like, say, Caitlin Crews and Kate Hewitt. Neither does she plunge into them like Jennie Lucas. She just takes them and plonks them into the plot.

In this one, twenty-year-old Tally meets Sander at a house party. Sander’s there reluctantly, and Tally is accompanying her half sister to the party, but Cosima doesn’t want everyone to know that Tally is her illegitimate half sibling, so she calls her her personal assistant. Cosima refuses to share the room they’re allotted, so Tally has to share the room of one of the servants. She dresses plainly, and what’s more, more like a middle aged woman. Yes, Graham lavishes this, pours the Cinderella trope on with a very large spoon.

Sander is promiscuous and a misogynist, naturally thinking the worst of every woman he comes across. He finishes with his mistresses (and that word, ‘mistress,’ gives me hives) when they get too demanding and clingy. What a prince. Not.

When they get together, he is about to screw her when he tells her he doesn’t do exclusivity. I would have slapped him silly. At least Tally walks out. But in this day and age, it’s just not on. Nor is it on to say it at a moment like that.

These problems are only exacerbated by the poor quality of the writing in this book. Strange descriptors abound. We have pouting nipples and hungry hands, sometimes in the same sentence, and these characters have independent body parts – their hands do stuff, without, seemingly, the approval of their owners. Every author does that sometimes, but too much is never fun, and you start to imagine eyeballs popping out of people’s heads and going a-wandering.

Characters never speak in this book. They breathe, assert, deny, question, retort, even frame. The constant euphemisms for that simple word “said” abounded and took me out of the story more than once. The POV is appalling. It can switch in a sentence. And I do mean head-hopping, with such dizzying frequency it gets confusing as to who is thinking what. It also leads to a shallow point of view, which is one of the main underlying problems in the book. I couldn’t get into either of the characters. With such problematic and difficult characters, the reader really needs to get right inside their heads and feel what they’re feeling, otherwise they’re liable to just not give a damn. Some Harlequin writers do this with aplomb, and I’ve read some Lynne Graham books that really score in this regard. Not this one. You only ever skim the surface with Tally and Sander. Not that you don’t know what they’re thinking and feeling, because Graham kindly tells us. We never experience things with this charmless pair – we are told, and that naturally leads to a dichotomy between what they think and what they do.

Tally is a bolter. Every time there’s trouble, she runs. Except from her miserable home life and her awful mother, and she welters in that. When in doubt, go back to your horrible little house and your promiscuous mother and carry on being a martyr. Sander chases, has sex, and dumps.

Later, Tally agrees to have unprotected sex with Sander. Yes, the Sander that doesn’t do exclusive. I wouldn’t touch him, but there you go. There is a hastily inserted paragraph about Sander having a “health check,” which I bet her editor made Graham put in, but it doesn’t convince me. This man is toxic, in every sense of the word.

And there’s a traffic warden. In London. I kid you not (traffic wardens were abolished in London some years ago. There’s now a different authority that deals with traffic offences). I wouldn’t have been surprised to see parking meters.

On the whole, this is a story about a very young girl and a man who behaves like a stallion in heat, but with less finesse. They both speak in a kind of working-class English slang that isn’t appropriate for at least one of them. But I did notice that the British cover of the follow-up book , Bride for Real, has the same character on the front as is on one of my books (check out Seductive Secrets. Which means Harlequin is using stock photography these days. Interesting. The two pictures could have been taken at the same photographic session, actually.

There is a pseudo happy ending to this book, and then you get the prologue to the next book. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. And here is the spoiler:

This book ends with Tally pregnant and she and Sander together. The next book starts with the news that Tally’s baby was stillborn and the marriage broke up. After reading this book I had no confidence that Graham would deal with an issue as heartbreaking as that with any reality or depth, so I chose not to follow her there.

I hate givig Fs, but I couldn’t find anything to redeem this book. Usually I look for something – realism, an interesting secondary character, or good writing, but I couldn’t find anything here. I’m hard, and it hurts to do this to a Lynne Graham book, but it wouldn’t be fair to the other great reads I’ve had lately to do anything else.

Grade: F

Summary:

Careless passion, pregnancy surprise…

Sander Volakis goes his own way. He’s forged his reputation in business, rather than relying on the family fortune, and indulges his darkly passionate, wild streak. He has no intention of marrying…

He doesn’t do country weekends, either. Pitching up at Westgrave Manor is a favor to his father and a bore…until he sees Tally Spencer, so pretty and voluptuous that he can’t resist her. Sander’s looking forward to casually seducing her, not knowing that one night with the innocent Tally could end his playboy existence…

Read an excerpt.

Several people have commented that one of the villains of my latest historical novel, Seductive Secrets, is gay. (Since that is known almost from the beginning, I wouldn’t consider that a spoiler). The heroine, Isobel, has been abused by her late husband, Harry, and associates sex with pain and discomfort. I thought very carefully before making Harry gay because I knew I’d get the response that has come from some quarters.

I don’t want to defend the book, or comment on other aspects of it, just this issue. Neither should this be seen as a defense of the book. It doesn’t need it. You either like it, or you don’t. If you don’t, I’ll just have to try harder next time, and if you do, thank you. So on to the point of this piece.

Can you make your villains gay? In the recent past, no. Gays, especially gay men, have been persecuted, ridiculed and even executed for their sexual orientation. I write historical romances set in the mid eighteenth century and at that time ‘sodomy’ was illegal and punishable by the death penalty. It was enacted, too. Very often, the offence was used as an excuse to punish a different crime, fencing stolen property, for instance, or even spying, but it was still enacted. Homosexuality was illegal in the United Kingdom until the 1960’s, although by then you couldn’t be hanged for it, only disgraced and ruined. Oh goody. There’s progress for you.

So when gays were finally accepted into society, there was, and still is, a tendency to go the other way, and imply that gays could do no wrong. Put that way, it’s obviously nonsense, but the inclination is to give them the benefit of the doubt, to try to depict gays in positive ways. They’ve had it too hard for too long. Acts against them are seen as bigoted and unfair. Which they are, if they’re being persecuted for their sexuality.

But I still believe that nobody, gay, straight or bi, deserves to be classified according to their sexual orientation. Being gay doesn’t make you good, or evil, or any of those things. It just makes you gay. And yes, I’ve known a lot of gay people in my life, and not all of them have been admirable or even pleasant. Most have. Sometimes the circumstances in which they’ve been forced to live have pushed them into behaving in less than perfect ways. Sometimes, they’ve just been unpleasant people. Usually, they’ve just been – people.

Everyone is responsible for his or her actions, and having created sympathetic gay characters in the past, I thought it was time to have a gay villain. No, that’s not quite right. Harry came to me gay, he worked as a gay character, so I decided to go with it. He’s not a nice man. He realizes Isobel is a complete innocent, the fault of her mother, and uses that against her, tells her that painful, humiliating sex is the norm, or rather, doesn’t tell her otherwise. But Harry is not a villain because he is gay, to do that would truly be to enter the world of bigotry and prejudice. He’s weak, and he would have been weak if he was straight. He’s also dishonest and a coward. He never fully accepted what he was, and he forced his guilt on to someone else. Isobel. She is seventeen when she marries him, knows little about sex, and Harry used that, and blamed her for his failures. Harry never faced what he was, and used his sexuality as an excuse.

Giving gays equality means to see them as people, good and bad and in between, and not to define them by the gender they happen to prefer to have sex with.

So what do you think, readers?

Sandy M’s review of Seductive Secrets (The Secrets Trilogy, Book1) by Lynne Connolly
Historical Romance ebook published by Samhain 10 Jun 08

I know when I read Lynne Connolly I’m going to get something different that I haven’t read before. I still get the feel and the taste of whatever era or subject she’s writing about, but the storyline is original and distinct. Very seldom am I disappointed.

I definitely was not disappointed in this first book in her new trilogy. Instead of living through the chase of the heroine by the hero, right off the bat Nick is determined to have Isobel as his wife, and they do marry within a short period of time. Because of this we also learn very early that Isobel is timid and frightened when it comes to men and, therefore, the coming wedding night. It’s with Nick’s sensitivity, his love for her that both he and the reader learn the why of her fear. I fell in love with Nick immediately because of his delicate treatment of his wife, knowing something was wrong and having the heart to find out why, to want to allay her fears, to want her completely and wholly as his wife in every way.

Both of them have gone through hell the past several years, Isobel in a horrendous marriage and Nick living a true rake’s life when he lost Isobel on the eve of their wedding years before. Nick’s hell was of his own choosing, but what Isobel suffered was much more damaging. She ran off with another man, who had courted her during her season, when she was overwhelmed by Nick’s nearly out-of-control ardor for her. Her husband’s deceit throughout their marriage, as well as his treatment of her in the bedroom, could perhaps have been avoided if only he’d been honest with her about his his love, which was never for Isobel. When her husband commits suicide, that’s when Nick is determined to have her after all and that’s when we begin to learn the sad, sordid story, plus a new mystery of extortion and murder that will test both Nick and Isobel and their love.

I liked both Nick and Isobel. Being a nobleman Nick has always had everything in life while Isobel had a terrible home life, a family that used and abused her, only tolerated her because of her money they wanted. She didn’t let that or her disastrous marriage beat her, though. She takes the lifeline Nick offers her and is determined to make the best of it, even when things begin to go wrong in her life again, allowing scandal right through the front door. Nick’s two best friends, Severus and Peter, are very likable fellows and will be the subject of the next two books in the trilogy. There are the usual money hungry and selfish characters to cause havoc, the kind you love to hate, but they’re taken care of quite nicely.

This book is vintage Lynne Connolly and I know the rest of the series is going to be just as lively and just as good. I look forward to them.

Grade: B+

Summary:

Nick is back.
After eight years of facing public scandal and private humiliation with her head held high, Isobel’s courage fails when the man she never stopped loving returns and asks her to marry him. Once he discovers her secret, he won’t visit her bed more than once. And she can’t bear his rejection.
Nicholas, Marquis of Cardington, is confident he can cope with the baggage Isobel carries from her first marriage. It doesn’t matter that the beautiful widow once left him to elope with another man. After all, he was partly to blame for that disaster. All that matters is he has always loved her, and now she’s free to accept his proposal.Only on their wedding night does Nick learn the terrible secret Isobel has harbored for eight long years. To win his wife’s trust will take every ounce of tenderness he possesses – when what he really wants is to show her the passion he saved for her and her alone.
But just as Isobel begins to believe her heart is safe with Nick, the blackmailers who drove her first husband to suicide reappear. And they want their pound of flesh.
Isobel must finally trust Nick will all her secrets—and her life—or their enemies will destroy them both.

Read an excerpt.

Seductive Secrets (Secrets Trilogy, Book 1) by Lynne Connolly

This will be available on June 10. I am very interested to see what you all think of it. For the most part I really liked it but it still doesn’t equal my fave of hers. Personally I just want her to write more historicals .

Nick is back.

After eight years of facing public scandal and private humiliation with her head held high, Isobel’s courage fails when the man she never stopped loving returns and asks her to marry him. Once he discovers her secret, he won’t visit her bed more than once. And she can’t bear his rejection.

Nicholas, Marquis of Cardington, is confident he can cope with the baggage Isobel carries from her first marriage. It doesn’t matter that the beautiful widow once left him to elope with another man. After all, he was partly to blame for that disaster. All that matters is he has always loved her, and now she’s free to accept his proposal.

Only on their wedding night does Nick learn the terrible secret Isobel has harbored for eight long years. To win his wife’s trust will take every ounce of tenderness he possesses—when what he really wants is to show her the passion he saved for her and her alone.

But just as Isobel begins to believe her heart is safe with Nick, the blackmailers who drove her first husband to suicide reappear. And they want their pound of flesh.

Isobel must finally trust Nick will all her secrets—and her life—or their enemies will destroy them both.

“Will you marry me?”

Isobel spun around to face Nick. Her presence struck him like a physical blow. She had the same effect on him as always, from the first time he’d met her, eighteen years ago. She remained the only woman he wanted.

Her eyes widened in surprise. “After the last time?”

A small smile quirked his lips. “Yes, even after the last time.”

In a quick, sudden movement, Isobel covered her face, her fingers trembling against her closed eyelids.

He longed to go and comfort her, but caution kept him away. She might send him away, and he couldn’t bear that. Not after all he’d gone through just to get this far. Obviously, having learned the identity of the early morning caller, Isobel had sought refuge in this shabby back parlor rather than see him, but her father, anxious to see the matter settled, had betrayed her whereabouts to Nick.

Abruptly Isobel pulled her hands away from her face, turned and went to stand at the window. Nick glanced outside. The scene looked so ordinary; a hot English summer day, a gardener moving among the roses, deadheading and pruning with methodical care. The hot sun cast heavy shadows on the grass; the bright light enhanced the pinks and creams of the roses.

She turned to face him again with a swish of light silk, impossibly fresh in this dilapidated room. “Why?”

He kept his face passive and expressionless. He’d known something was wrong when he’d seen her briefly in London but because of his position as jilted ex-fiancé, he couldn’t approach her. Her response to him then might have been awkwardness, but he didn’t think so. Isobel always exuded grace and elegance. Something else troubled her, something Nick shrewdly suspected she’d told no one. Something personal.

He moved into the room but stopped, not too close to her. She didn’t move away, but he felt the space between them crackle. He felt too big for this small room, too big for her. “Perhaps I thought we deserved another chance.”

He stared at the clock over the mantelpiece, not at Isobel. It was a perfectly ordinary clock but concentrating on the black hands and faded gold face steadied him, and helped him to quell the fierce surge of desire Isobel’s proximity always evoked in him “Where to begin?” he said softly, almost to himself. Then he turned on one heel, back to her, the skirts of his formal coat, too heavy for the sultry weather, swinging around his thighs. “Shall we be practical?”

The stillness in the room, invoked by the heat of the day, felt uncanny. So much lay between them, so much to explain and discuss. They needed to start somewhere.

“By all means.” Isobel stood with her back to the window, her features cast into shadow by the bright sunshine outside. He didn’t need to see her clearly to recall the lucid grey eyes, the tactile silk of her fair hair, her perfect complexion.

“Very well. For a start, it would rehabilitate you in society. You are notable by your absence.”

“I expected them to forget me.”

He frowned. “No, they’ve not forgotten you. The gossips drag up the old story from time to time.”

Even with her face in shadow, he saw the twinge of regret that touched her face. “Was it terrible? I’m sorry, I did think of you at the time but I had – other things on my mind.”

His smiled grimly. “Yes, it was bad. Eloping on the eve of your wedding with another man is about as juicy a morsel as you can throw to the hounds of Society. They called you a Scarlet Woman, when as far as I saw, you’d only behaved in a way true to yourself. I bore the deep sympathy of many women with marriageable daughters of their own.” His smile changed to warmth, inviting her to share in the joke.

It worked. He could always make her smile. “You fought them all off, though.”

“I managed. I swore off marriage.” An understatement. Nick’s bedroom exploits had become legendary in the last few years, but he’d avoided young, marriageable females. Nick didn’t want to marry anyone else, or raise hopes he didn’t intend to fulfill.

She moved a little, and the tense lines of her shoulders visibly relaxed. “So what changed your mind? And why me?” She made a deprecating movement with her hands, graceful even in her agitation. “I’m sorry, I’m being terribly rude but I need to know.”

“I know. And I think we’d better be honest, don’t you?”

“Yes. After the last time.”

Isobel moved to the big, shabby sofa and sat down, indicating the space next to her with a graceful gesture. With only slight hesitation, he took it.

He gazed at her, holding his desire under steely restraint. He’d stopped denying to himself how much he loved her some time ago but perhaps he should hide it from her a little longer. She shied off at any mention of the personal. “Why did you do it, Isobel?”

She bit her lip, pausing for a moment. “I fell instantly in love with Harry Thoroughgood, or I thought I did,” she said, staring at her hands clasped in her lap. Her knuckles gleamed white with strain. She glanced up at his face. “I was afraid, too. You showed me a degree of – of passion I wasn’t ready for, not at eighteen.”

Nick cursed under his breath. He’d contributed to it, then. He remembered the day when, no longer able to control his youthful ardor, he’d tried to make love to her. That day cost him dear. “I was too young and too eager. I didn’t know it would drive you off. I knew I’d behaved badly but when I came to apologize, you’d already gone.”

She moved as though to touch him, but withdrew her hand. “It wasn’t your fault. That wasn’t the only reason I left. Mama never stopped reminding me I’d be a marchioness, what it would mean and how I should behave. I felt so hemmed in by all the rules and conventions, I felt stifled by them.”

He sighed. “My mother wouldn’t have helped you. She’s acutely aware of her station.” Isobel’s excuse didn’t wash, not completely. She knew how to run a household, even one as large as his. What was she hiding? Why did she shy off from all physical contact? He loved her, and once he’d admitted that to himself, he thought he’d conquered all his demons. Society would have to learn to live with the fact that he’d come back after eight years to court the woman he’d nearly married before. Isobel was as suitable as ever, perhaps more so. A childless widow, of enough maturity to help him run the large estates he was responsible for, beautiful, well born, and now, thanks to her late husband, possessed of a reasonable competence, more than she’d had when he first courted her. Not that he cared for that, but it might make matters easier in the eyes of the sanctimonious world.

“Yes! I felt trapped.”

When she looked at him directly, the intervening years seemed to slip away. Nothing else mattered. Whatever else troubled her they would overcome it together. His love was enough to sustain both of them. He’d not let her turn him down. “Do you feel trapped now?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I’m six and twenty now, not eighteen, and my view of the world is more realistic. I could cope.”

He grimaced, a wry turn of his mouth. “I’m sorry you didn’t confide in me at the time. I thought something of that nature was happening but I wasn’t sure. I should have asked. I could have reassured you.”

Her next words came out in a rush. “Then Harry showed an interest, more than flirtation. He was charming – you remember how charming he was! I thought I loved him. It seemed easier to run away than to face things.” She looked up at Nick’s face, hiding nothing, tearing his heart apart with her frank confession. “I was wrong.”

A slight spasm crossed his face, which he immediately controlled. “The only consolation for me at the time was the thought of your happiness. I told myself at least one of us had our heart’s desire.” He bit his lip. “How soon did it go wrong?”

Isobel twisted her hands together in her lap. He badly wanted to hold her, but it might scare her off. She behaved like a skittish colt, not at all the warm, loving girl he’d known before her marriage. Had Harry Thoroughgood mistreated her? He wanted to strangle the man, for all he’d been in his grave for the last three years.

“Not long after we married. He wasn’t a happy man, Nick, and he didn’t find whatever he was looking for in me. When it became obvious to both of us that we’d made a mistake, we decided to make the best of things and went to London. I believed we’d live the elopement down, and we started to, didn’t we?” New understanding lit her eyes. “Did you have anything to do with that? Our acceptance back into society?”

He shrugged, trying to make light of it. “I told anyone who listened that I held no grudges, and I’d receive you if I met you anywhere.” A reminiscent smile curved his lips. “We did meet once. Do you remember?”

A fraught moment, taken out of ordinary time when they’d come face to face in a country-dance in a ballroom. After a second, he held out his hand, she placed hers in it and they continued the measure. He still recalled the shock her touch brought him, the moment he realized he still loved her. None of the other women he’d been with mattered. He hadn’t forgotten her, and the feelings he suppressed returned in force.

“Yes I remember. I was very grateful you acknowledged me. I started to believe everything was going to be all right.”

“It wasn’t all right.” His face went still again, the strong mouth firming.

“Yes, it all went wrong again. I don’t know why Harry killed himself, or why he did it in such a way.” Her voice shook. “Not really.”

There was something else. The brief hesitation before her last words made him sure of it. No longer able to fight the urge to touch her, Nick placed his hand gently on hers. She allowed it and he let out the breath he’d been unaware of holding.

“I wanted to do something to help after his death, but there was nothing. Your husband left you reasonably well off, and you seem to have kept your fortune out of the clutches of your father, so what could I do?”

Isobel swallowed. “I fell into disgrace again when he died. The stigma of suicide, added to the shame of my earlier elopement branded me a scandalous woman, and a dangerous one.” She looked neither dangerous nor scandalous now, dressed as simply as any squire’s wife, eyes holding honesty and hurt.

She took a couple of breaths, and lifted her face to Nick’s, meeting his still, quiet look with one of her own. “So we come to it. Why, Nick? Why do you want me? I’m a social outcast. I’m not a beauty. I don’t know if I can give you children. My portion is respectable but not so staggering the fashionable world in the drawing rooms of Grosvenor Square will welcome me warmly. So why?”

Seductive Secrets (Secrets Trilogy, Book 1) by Lynne Connolly!  Isn’t that just an amazing cover? I lurve it! If you are wondering it is by Anne Cain. You can see it, a touch bigger at the bottom of the post, you know, in case you missed it *g* (excerpt is coming!)

Hopefully Lynne will have some nifty news soon… because older series, Richard and Rose, she has pulled from Mundania Press and she is shopping it again to get it back into print.

To survive, she’ll have to trust him with all her secrets.

The Secrets Trilogy, Book 1

Nick is back.

After eight years of facing public scandal and private humiliation with her head held high, Isobel’s courage fails when the man she never stopped loving returns and asks her to marry him. Once he discovers her secret, he won’t visit her bed more than once. And she can’t bear his rejection.

Nicholas, Marquis of Cardington, is confident he can cope with the baggage Isobel carries from her first marriage. It doesn’t matter that the beautiful widow once left him to elope with another man. After all, he was partly to blame for that disaster. All that matters is he has always loved her, and now she’s free to accept his proposal.

Only on their wedding night does Nick learn the terrible secret Isobel has harbored for eight long years. To win his wife’s trust will take every ounce of tenderness he possesses—when what he really wants is to show her the passion he saved for her and her alone.

But just as Isobel begins to believe her heart is safe with Nick, the blackmailers who drove her first husband to suicide reappear. And they want their pound of flesh.

Isobel must finally trust Nick will all her secrets—and her life—or their enemies will destroy them both.