REVIEW: The Accidental Countess by Valerie Bowman
D ReviewsEngland / friends become lovers / hidden identity / Regency historical / shy heroine / war heroes9 Comments
Dear Ms. Bowman,
When the story switched perspectives from heroine to hero at the fifth chapter, my distinct thought was: I don’t know how I made it past the first four chapters in this book without slapping someone. It was not an auspicious start and went downhill from there.
Both the heroine’s friend and cousin were atrocious. The friend was especially unbearable, as it was her brilliant idea to have our heroine masquerade as an imaginary person rather than as herself, one of the hero’s friends whom he’d not seen in many years while away at war.
This book caught my notice because I love a shy heroine and I adore a war veteran, whether male or female. (Historicals, of course, have only males as vets, unless we’re counting lady spies. Wish that were changed. Who’d like to make up a fake country where females are allowed to go to war even in the 1800s and the princess runs away from home and fights for her country, and her commanding officer is the rival for the throne who hates her family, and he discovers her true identity after the war is over and he’s already half in love with her? It writes itself, friends.)
But although I am a huge sucker for the hidden identity trope (I blame you, Johanna Lindsey), I have a strong, strong abhorrence to friends lying to each other. And they are friends. And she’s outright lied to him, just because he didn’t recognize her at first glance because he hadn’t seen her since her sixteenth birthday, and that was seven years earlier. Still, I wanted to give them a chance. I liked what I’d seen of the hero. I liked the heroine, too. It was her friends who made me want to break out the Mr. Hyde in me and go psycho.
The novel progressed and I realized, with horror, that I’d slapped someone after all: myself. Every page I turned was like violence upon me. “I’m gonna slap you now!” *slap* “Did you like it? Good.” *slap* “I’m about to do it again! Keep reading!” *slap* “Keep reading!!” *slap* This continued the entire way through. Why do I do this to myself?
At least Penelope, Cassandra’s cousin, knew she was a selfish bitch and was semi-willing to own it. She was her own person and wanted what she wanted. I can respect that. But Lucy, a duchess and the main character of the first novel in the series, which I had not read, had one of the most enormous cases of too-stupid-to-live-itis (yes, Microsoft Word, please add that term to the dictionary; thank you) that I have ever seen. Somehow, this woman decided it was a marvelous idea to lie to our hero that Cassandra, who is in love with him, is actually a fictional person. She also gave a fake name for herself, because her husband is the hero’s best friend, and if she gives a fake name, then he’ll never connect the dots. It’s not like he’ll ever meet his best friend’s wife in his entire life, right? And what in the world was wrong with saying exactly who Cassandra was? This was never answered to my satisfaction.
From what I gather of the fake names used by Cassandra and Lucy, it is supposed to be a historical romance nod to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. FYI: The book is nothing like it in plot, voice, or spirit. The names seemed to be thrown in without any further logic to it.
Still, I wanted to read on, because I liked the name Julian a lot because Cassandra had genuine regard for Julian and Julian seemed to have genuine regard for Cassandra, who wrote him constantly while he was at war. This trope has been accomplished with a fair amount of success in the past. Why do we need this outrageously stupid manufactured misunderstanding that serves zero purpose? Can we not just see two nice people fall in love, without needless deceit involved?
All the inane subterfuge was stressful as hell, and I couldn’t truly appreciate the story. It’s as though every interaction between the hero and heroine had a dark cloud over it, and within the dark cloud, red blinking flashbulbs spelled out, “Lying, lying, lying.” When you have a dark cloud with red blinking lightbulbs flashing “Lying, lying, lying” over the character’s heads whenever they speak, it’s a bit hard to appreciate their interactions—not that there was much to appreciate in any case, because the whole novel seemed phoned in. I’m sorry to be so harsh, but I don’t know what else to say about a story chock-full of misunderstandings and without a drop of intelligence for anyone.
Just when I thought you were in on the joke, with your characters berating Lucy and Cassandra for their stupid ploy, you just waved your authoring hands and everyone went along with it. No, I’m serious:
“So, let me see if I have the right of it. You’re telling me that you’ve staged this entire house party as a means to get Julian to fall in love with Cass?”
Lucy nodded. “Yes.”
“Only he doesn’t know she’s Cass?” Jane continued.
“Right,” Lucy said. “Though that will be easily clarified later.”
Jane blinked at Lucy. “How exactly do you see that being successful?”
“Details, Jane, details. We’ll worry about that particular bit when the time comes.”
And that time didn’t come for two-thirds of the novel. The agony was intensified by the fact that the hero, who was in love with the heroine, heard that she was in love with a man and never considered it might be himself, so he got angry and surly and my god, make it stop.
The entirety of The Accidental Countess can be summed up in this exchange:
JULIAN: “I’m back from war! Where’s Penelope?”
CASSANDRA: “She doesn’t want to see you, even though you’re practically engaged.”
JULIAN: “That’s the thing: I don’t want to marry her anymore.”
CASSANDRA: “Oh, that works out beautifully!”
JULIAN: “Who are you, again?”
CASSANDRA: “Your best friend and faithful letter-writer, Cassandra.”
JULIAN: “Cassandra! I love you! Marry me!”
CASSANDRA: “I love you, too, Julian! I have always loved you!!”
-commence sex scene-
The entire story could have been stopped in its tracks with that one exchange in the first chapter. There is nothing else in it. Worthy of a novelette, perhaps, or a novella if you try hard, but when nothing stands between the characters except stupidity, misunderstandings, lack of communication, and general jiggery-pokery, you’re not going to have a novel that reads well.
I should have known. All the Amazon reviews were four and five stars, with effusive praise for the brilliance of the novel. When will you learn, Suzanne? This is your own fault. Now, slap yourself again.
D.
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I don’t even require them to be (too) nice – but yes, there is so much stuff in many romances that serves no purpose other than padding the page count. It makes me appreciate the good ones all the more.
Suzanne, I just wanted to thank you for an extremely entertaining review :).
I’m confused about the plot of this book. I get that there was a lot of lying, but what was the motive for it and how was it pulled off? Also am I right that Penelope and Cassandra are the same person? Or are they different people? And was the switcheroo played up for humor or was it more of a serious take on it?
>Who’d like to make up a fake country where females are allowed to go to war
No need to make up a country; you just need to go to China. I came across this great article about 10 Chinese women who fought in wartime. Actually, there’s a lot more – one of them lead an army of widows. (They met a sad end, but still – widow army!)
http://www.womenofchina.cn/womenofchina/html1/people/history/12/4863-1.htm
@Rose: Yup, many authors do not understand–or perhaps they’re just in denial–that you never include anything in a novel that doesn’t 100% have to be there for progressing the plot. It’s a simple, brutal rule, and as authors, I expect them to suck it up and do it. Suffer in the name of your art and give me a novel that is more than imaginary, fluffed-up tension.
@Sirius: Always glad to serve. :)
@Janine: Penelope is the bitch cousin. There is no reason to lie. There is no motive. It’s all hands waving and dumb excuses and “Won’t it be FUN!” bullshit.
@Kris Bock: That is FANTASTIC information; thank you! I demand more historical romances based on Chinese female warriors. I adored The Hidden Blade and My Beautiful Enemy by Sherry Thomas (two companion novels) and there are nowhere near enough Asian romances accessible to English-speaking markets. I get my fix through South Korean sageuks (historicals) on tv. They do sometimes throw in a female warrior and it’s excellent to see, though the female warrior is rarely the focus, but instead is usually a side character. One of my favorite main characters is the heroine of The Princess’s Man. She’s not a warrior but she’s badass as all get-out: http://www.dramabeans.com/2011/11/the-princesss-man-series-review/
There were also female warriors in Japan. And pretty much EVERY army has had its fair share of cross-dressing female soldiers (I have one particular real life story I’m saving for a book someday). And there were a couple of quite famous female camp followers during the Napoleonic wars who dressed in a female version of their husband’s (or lover’s) unit’s uniform. Someone could have a good deal of fun with that.
Chiming in late, but not only did Chinese women go to war, they were depicted as heroes by the Chinese, in their lifetimes (shortly after) — which is why I think so many of these stories survived.
Smart bitches did a lovely write up about Su Sanniang – widow turned rebel leader during the Taping Rebellion. :)
http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2014/12/su-sanniang-the-bandit-turned-rebel-general/
I still don’t get why Cassandra was pretending to be someone else, but it seems the book didn’t really provide a good explanation, either. Which is mystifying. Romance novels have a long history of successfully writing satisfying hidden identity plots. Like you said, the story practically writes itself if you do it right.
Also, kind of now yearning to read a book without any over-the-top villains or spy plots or super complicated, high concept set-ups. Reading about just two people falling in love sounds really nice.
The most successful pirate captain in history was a Chinese woman , Ching Shih. She established franchises, even. There were other women who sailed as pirates and privateers and merchant sailors/officers and didn’t have to disguise themselves to do it. Anne Bonney and Mary Read were pikers by comparison and they had Calico Jack’s protection.