Nov 11 2010
REVIEW: A Masked Deception by Mary Balogh
Dear Ms. Balogh,
Lately, after enjoying A Chance Encounter very much and The Wood Nymph to a lesser degree, I've been spending some time reading more of your older traditional regencies. A Masked Deception is your first book. Here is a description of the novel taken from your website:
Margaret, the new Countess of Brampton, is a quiet, demure, dutiful wife by day, an alluring, masked charmer by night. Will Richard, Earl of Brampton, ever discover that the wife he is growing to love and the seductress he finds almost impossible to resist are one and the same?
Margaret fell in love with Richard during a masked ball. He fell for her too, but never knew who she was and wasn’t able to find her again, and when they met unmasked he showed no attraction to her, so Margaret was afraid to reveal she was the one he'd once kissed. Still, several years later Richard proposes to Margaret due to family pressure, thinking she is dull and boring, because she has been behaving very properly in all these years. After the two of them marry, Margaret continues to behave quietly and demurely, while Richard keeps a mistress on the side.
Just when Richard calls it off with the mistress in order to devote himself to his marriage, Margaret's sister Charlotte talks Margaret into wearing a mask to Vauxhall Gardens and meeting her husband there disguised in her old Marie Antoinette costume. Of course, Richard recognizes Margaret as a the charmer he fell for years ago, but not as the woman he married, and begins an affair with his own wife.
Margaret fears discovery but keeps meeting her husband in secret because his lovemaking is so different when she is masked than it is in their marriage bed. He shows her a lot more passion and seduction when he sees her as his lover than when he sees her as his wife, and she does not know that this is because he believes his wife would not want that kind of attention from him.
There is also a subplot about Charlotte who is spending a lot of time with Richard's brother Charles. Charles has a fiancée he hasn’t told the family about, and he asks Charlotte to deter other young women from pursuing him. Unfortunately, Charlotte is in love with Devin, Richard's best friend, but Devin believes she is falling for Charles.
I thought this book had several problems. First, there was a flashback to Richard and Margaret's first meeting at the masked ball and almost nothing happened between them. A stolen kiss and a few sentences exchanged, but in my opinion it was not enough to explain why they couldn’t forget each other years later.
Second, while Margaret suspects Richard of keeping a mistress, she never learns the truth about it, so he is never confronted with his wrongdoing on that score. Margaret’s anger at Richard “cheating” and with her and the difference in his lovemaking only emerges briefly toward the very end of the story.
Third (the biggest problem of all to my mind), Margaret is a very passive character when it comes to her marriage. She only disguises herself at her sister’s insistence and she refuses to wear attractive clothing or style her hair around her husband, out of some principle I didn’t quite understand. Her two personas could have been more interesting had the way she repressed her lively side most of the time been explored in greater depth. But it wasn't, and instead Margaret just came across to me as insipid and even a bit foolish.
One also has to suspend disbelief that Richard wouldn’t recognize Margaret's scent, voice or anything else about her while sleeping with her when she is in both of her roles, but I probably could have done that if not for all the other problems.
The subplot about Charlotte was entertaining, and as mentioned previously I did enjoy the farcical scenes toward the end of the book, but that just wasn’t enough for me. This is your first novel and I think that shows. I kept wanting to put the book down and in the end, and when I finished it I wasn’t sure why I had kept reading, or whether I had gotten anything out of the experience. Fortunately, many of your later books are far more accomplished, but A Masked Deception gets a D from me.
Sincerely,
Janine Ballard
This book is out of print.
Publisher: Signet (February 5, 1985)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0451134052
ISBN-13: 978-0451134059
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Nov 11, 2010 @ 14:39:26
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Nov 11, 2010 @ 14:56:46
So the hero finally decides to break things off with his mistress and commit to his marriage, then is easily distracted by a “new” mistress when he meets the heroine in disguise? Not exactly a faithful hero, then? To be honest, I think that one would push my “no adultery” deal breaker too far. I admittedly enjoyed “The Secret Pearl”, but in that case the adultery didn’t bother me because he wasn’t being unfaithful to the heroine, he wasn’t involved in a sexually active marriage nor was there any emotional bond or trust to be broken between he and his wife, and primarily, his wife was a heinous bitch. Cheating ON the heroine and technically twice if he thought it was someone else, is a bit of a turn-off for me. I think Mary Balogh is a good writer; it’s her plots that can be hit or miss for me.
Nov 11, 2010 @ 18:56:36
I read this one years ago and also couldn’t suspend my disbelief that he wouldn’t realize who his “mistress” really was. Or that one kiss at a ball would lead to love everlasting and be unforgettable for six years.
Nov 11, 2010 @ 19:03:32
@Jayne:
That was a huge obstacle for me as well. The six years of longing were based on so little.
Nov 11, 2010 @ 20:57:40
Jessica on her ReadReactReview blog had a recent post on unsavoury seductions based on this article:
“Unsavory Seduction†by Eric Cave (Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2009) 12:235-245, quotations protected under Fair Use
This book was mentioned in the comments as an example and I agree. For me, Margaret’s deception of Richard is an unsavoury seduction that comes from her unwillingness to be vulnerable. I just don’t see how trust is really possible for this couple after the events of this book without that willingness to risk being truly open to the other. Her behaviour is petty.
Nov 12, 2010 @ 13:29:58
@Laura I missed your comment yesterday — I wonder if it ended up in the spam filter. I would have replied sooner if I’d seen it.
Keep in mind that this was Balogh’s first book. I don’t think she’s had adultery in her book in quite some time but some of her other books with adultery in them (for example The Obedient Bride and Dancing with Clara) worked a lot better for me. What bothered me in this book was that I felt Brampton never really had to fully face up to how much he’d hurt Margaret by cheating on her.
Nov 12, 2010 @ 13:38:32
@Merrian: I’ve had this review ready for a couple of months so it’s serendipitous that it was posted the same week as that thread at RRRJessica’s.
That’s a great discussion over there. The concept of the unsavory seduction is fascinating to me. I do agree that Margaret’s seduction of Richard is deceptive in nature, but since he cheats on her before this happens, her fear of being vulnerable to him is understandable to me. I think it’s possible for me to suspend disbelief that trust could be attained by couple in this kind of situation but in this case Balogh didn’t pull it off.
Years ago I read a Rebecca Brandewyne book, Desire in Disguise, in which the couple unwittingly cheated on each other with each other without realizing their lover was their spouse. That book had its flaws, and I didn’t love the hero, but the plot was entertaining and amusing. Perhaps because they were both unwittingly deceived without intending to deceive the other (and because I was younger when I read it) it worked better for me.