REVIEW: Remember That Day by Mary Balogh
Dear Mary Balogh,
For those who have read the Westcott series, it’s been a long wait for Winifred to get her HEA. Remember That Day is something of a crossover book, featuring the Westcotts and the Wares (of Ravenswood) and the cast is enormous. So much so, the author has kindly put a who’s who in the front for people to refer to. I found it helpful to refresh my memory of all the relationships but I was familiar enough with the cast not to have to look at it more than once.
Winifred was adopted by Camille and Joel Cunningham in Someone to Hold. Winifred was left on the steps of the orphanage in Bath as a baby and was estimated to be about a month old at the time. She has no idea of her history and there was no information with her. She was given the name Winifred and a birth date and stayed at the orphanage until she was adopted by her parents at age 9. (I believe “adoption” at that time was not the process it is now.) When we first met her, she was very focused on following the rules and making sure everyone else did so. She believed that was the way to make people love her. After receiving the unconditional love of her family she has learned that she doesn’t need to be perfect or to be so strict with everyone around her. Camille and Joel have a mix of children born to their family and adopted into it – 9 in all at this point, and their family is somewhat chaotic; not about rules and strictures, but about having fun and learning. Winifred is not pretty. She is described as having a “wide forehead” (whatever that means) and while she is not ugly or displeasing to look at, she has no particular beauty. She is plain. She doesn’t have much of a “feminine” figure. But Winifred doesn’t much worry about that. She knows who she is and what she is not and she has no interest in trying to be anything other than herself. She longs for a partner to love her for herself but will be happy with her parents and siblings and their life in Bath if need be.
Winifred has become friends with Owen Ware of Ravenswood but he is not our hero. No – Winifred’s love interest is Colonel Nicholas Ware. Gorgeous and charming and home from the Napoleonic wars, now working in London for the Horse Guards. Winifred thinks perhaps she might fancy Owen and that they might make a comfortable match together. They have a lot in common and get along very well even though there is no particular spark between them – well, she thinks there probably isn’t one, most of the time at least. Winifred is a pacifist. While she understands some wars are necessary she thinks violence is mostly not the answer and the last person she imagined herself with was a soldier (or, as she puts it a “killer”).
Nicholas has been looking for someone to love but has been unsuccessful. He’s decided, at age 34, it’s time to settle down and he figures he’s not going to find his one and only now. His commanding officer has a beautiful daughter who is 29, having been betrothed twice before but each time her fiance died (they were both soldiers) in the war before there could be a wedding. Grace is lovely and demure, everything he might want in a wife and if there’s not really any love between them, well, he hopes it will come in time, after a wedding.
Winifred first lays eyes on Nicholas at the inaugural Trooping of the Colour (I did not know that’s how it started; it was kind of cool to know that, and that it still continues, notwithstanding all of the issues there might be about the existence of the monarchy) and then later at a ball where she is the guest of honour. Her aunt Anna, Duchess of Netherby, has decided that Winifred should have her come out. Winifred is 21 and would rather not be the center of attention but Avery raised his quizzing glass and she had no defense against it. (Same Winifred, same.) Winifred doesn’t exactly make a good impression but Nicholas seeks her out, possibly to find out more about the woman Owen appears to have an interest in. It is obvious however, that Nicholas comes to like Winifred and the way she talks to him as an equal and isn’t all that interested in airs and graces.
Both Winifred (and her entire family) and Grace and her parents are invited to Ravenswood for a couple of weeks in the summer, culminating in the famous (infamous?) summer fete. Nicholas spends time with Winifred but is aware that he’s basically committed to marrying Grace by inviting her and her parents to his family home. Winifred, in the meantime, is wondering if maybe Owen does like her like her after all and may make an offer. It’s not really a love triangle quadrangle. Readers know that it is Winifred and Nicholas but how the couple will extricate themselves from other potential attachments is part of the story.
There is a lovely quiet pacing to Remember That Day that settled over me as I read. I was happy to meander in the story and soak up the atmosphere, enjoying the burgeoning attraction between Nicholas and Winifred. He knows she is plain but by the end of the book (well before that, actually) he sees her as beautiful because of who she is and who she is to him. What he wants more than anything is a true love match. But when he realises he’s in love with Winifred he’s all but betrothed to Grace. Nicholas is an honourable man and he will follow through on his commitments. Conundrum!
I did enjoy catching up with most of the Wares and Westcotts. I didn’t find them all that intrusive into the story even though there are an awful lot of them.
One of the Cunningham children is deaf and doesn’t speak (and he doesn’t read or write either) but Winifred has created a rudimentary kind of sign language to communicate with him on some level. Generally I think Balogh has a somewhat fraught relationship with disability and I’d rather she avoid it altogether. This representation felt somewhat uncomfortable to me but I can’t exactly put my finger on why. It wasn’t the worst representation but I can’t say it was the best either. There is another child who has some past trauma and is oppositional and defiant. He may possibly be neurodiverse but he may not be. The Cunninghams basically take in the children no-one else will take and offer them unconditional love. Which is nice but just slightly saccharine in the idyllic portrayal of it. Owen Ware is interested in perhaps running a farm or community for troubled youth (most likely boys) and helping them work through their traumas and find success in life. He’s very genuine about it but I can’t help feeling just a little apprehensive of where his story will take him, all things considered.
Stephanie Ware is obviously destined for Bertrand Lamarr. She is pretty mean to him in this book for reasons which are not at all clear. She’ll have some work to do to get back into his good graces and she deserves to have to do it. I noticed her description has become more “full figured” than fat, although the word fat was used at least once in the book. I’m not the only DA reviewer who has had some discomfort about the fat representation around Stephanie before but I’m hoping that by the time her book comes around her size (however it is described) will be less of a defining characteristic for her. I detected a change in description of her in Remember that Day which gives me that hope.
Most of the book is Nicholas and Winifred getting to know one another and finding their way clear to be able to be together. That part of the book was, for the most part, delightful to me. It was largely chaste but I don’t read Balogh books for the steamy scenes. I read her books for the emotion and romance and there was plenty of that in Remember That Day. It’s a stronger book than the previous entry in the series, Remember When. However, once the pair were planning their nuptials, the story kind of fizzled a bit. There were some potential conflicts introduced which did not go anywhere (at least one of which ought to have) and so created the suggestion of a potential conflict to be worked out (not minor but not earth-shatteringly significant either) but then didn’t do anything about it. I usually enjoy an epilogue, often the longer the better for me, but here, because of that suggestion of tension to be resolved, it didn’t fully work as an epilogue. I didn’t hate it but it also didn’t have the strength and charm of the rest of the book.
Remember That Day is, for the most part, a fairly quiet romance, wonderfully atmospheric and character-driven. I liked it a lot.
Grade: B/B+
Regards,
Kaetrin
I work in disability studies and have a particular interest disability in genre fiction… and I haven’t felt brave enough to tackle a full paper on Balogh yet, but one of these days I’ll get there. I always feel terribly conflicted about the depictions in her books. Thanks for the review!