I Blame Mary Balogh...

Really Mary Balogh seems like a lovely woman, but I hold her responsible for bringing me back to my obsession with romance novels after a very long break. After high school, I abandoned my complete set of Barbara Cartland books, as well as the hotter and even more educational, Rosemary Rogers and turned my attention toward all the serious stuff that one has to deal with when trying to get a degree and a job. After many years away from the romance genre, it was Mary Balogh’s The Secret Pearl that brought me back. It began when I realized that almost every female friend I have reads romance. Since all of my friends are smart, witty and very discerning (and I’m not just saying that because they are probably the only ones reading this blog), I wondered what I was missing. Turns out that I was missing some of the most absorbing, emotional and entertaining reading around.


When I decided to dip a toe back into the romance pool, a friend suggested Balogh as a good place to start. She is, for many readers, the gold standard and I started looking around for an interesting title.  The Secret Pearl caught my eye because of the intense feelings it seemed to arouse in readers.  Talk about your love/hate!  Some loved it with a sincere passion.  On the other side, there were readers who claimed it couldn’t even be called a romance because of all the romance no-nos that MB threw in there.  Let’s see there was a prostitute heroine, an adulterous hero, attempted murder, and that was just in the first few chapters!  Controversy never fails to pique my interest so I found a copy ASAP and set to it.  I finished the book about four hours later and almost immediately read it again.  I was hooked.  First let’s get the basics out of the way; Balogh is a very good writer.  She puts words together well, she creates interesting characters and she can tell a story like nobody’s business.  What made this book so successful as a romance was amazingly enough, the fact that it was soooo crazy romantic!

The story begins when our heroine, Fleur, desperate and on the verge of starvation after fleeing  an unwanted seduction by her creepy guardian and possible murder charges, decides that she has no choices left and turns to prostitution. Her first customer, Adam, turns out to be not only a Duke, but a pretty decent guy, who pays her well above her price upon discovering that he has taken her virginity. Eventually, because he really is too decent for words, Adam has his secretary hunt Fleur down and offers her a job as the governess to his young daughter at his country estate. Seriously wounded in the war and believed dead, Adam lost his estate and his fiancée to his brother.While he eventually was able to reclaim his position as duke and make Sybil his bride, he could not regain his reluctant wife's affection. Initially, upon discovering exactly who her savior is, Fleur doesn't care much for Adam either. His presence takes her back to that single act of desperation and the horror she felt that night. So we have a heroine who is literally terrified to be in the same room as the hero, she actually shudders and recoils every time he starts to touch her and we have a hero who inflicts his prostitute one night stand on his family. This just screams romance right?  Well, in Mary Balogh’s hands it really does. When I am reading, there is almost nothing I love more than angst.  Angst is a key ingredient in all of my favorite romances and few do it as well as MB.  And it is high quality angst, not the silly ‘big misunderstanding’ type angst that makes me want to spork my eyes out when I read it. Her characters are complex and amazing!  There is a depth to Fleur and Adam that you rarely find in fictional characters. They are truly good people caught up in truly terrible circumstances and, when facing almost insurmountable obstacles, they still manage to fall in love and behave honorably. The other amazing aspect to TSP is the fact that even the characters that are not nice are not just your stereotypical villains. Balogh somehow manages to make us see their viewpoint and in the case of the poor, doomed Sybil, we may even sympathize with her at some point. There is little black and white in Balogh’s world and I love that. Her characters live in that messy grey area where decisions are rarely easy or clear cut.  


Complexity, angst and love folks those are the elements that I treasure in a romance and The Secret Pearl has plenty of all three. I completely understand why this book is not to everyone’s taste. There are those for whom adultery is a deal breaker in a romance, no matter the circumstances, but to me the context of the act makes a difference and I completely bought into Adam and Fleur’s motivations. Personally, I think life is messy and I like to see that reflected in the books I read, no matter the genre. The lovely thing about romance is that you can always count on a happy ending, so you can relax and revel in the angst along the way.   


I decided to start this blog by talking about TSP because it represents much of what I like best about historical romance; the aforementioned angst, complex characters, difficult choices and real obstacles, and the idea that love can indeed conquer all.  Sigh…

So those are some of my ingredients for a successful romance, I’d love to hear what makes a romance work for you…