CONVERSATION: Redemptions that Worked or Failed for Us
Yesterday we held a conversation about redemption and reparation in the genre. Today we talk about the book redemptions that worked or didn’t work for us.
Janine: What are some examples of books where redemption or reparation felt sincere, meaningful and satisfying? What are examples of books where you felt all the apologies in the world wouldn’t make something okay, or where you didn’t understand how character X could take character Y back after all they’d done?
Effective Reparations
Janine: Mary Balogh has a controversial oldie, Dancing with Clara, in which Clara offers to pay off Freddie’s gambling debts if he’ll marry her. He does, but he’s addicted to gambling as well as an alcoholic, and soon he abandons her in the country to engage in in these activities as well as to cheat on her. Every time Freddie does visit Clara, he apologizes and promises he’ll do better, but he doesn’t. At the end, when he finally gets it and decides he has to make it up to her, he doesn’t make promises; he moves to the country to live with her.
For me that worked—because he’d made so many false promises in the past, the fact that this time, he made the promise to himself, not to Clara, showed me that it was genuine, that he was changing his behavior and was going to take it one day at a time, as many recovering addicts do. But a lot of readers were incensed by the absence of a verbalized commitment.
Sirius: The m/m romance where redemption storyline worked really well for me was Song of the Navigator by Astrid Amara. One of the leads is actually very hurt in the beginning of the story and actions of the other lead definitely are the reason why the other guy was hurt.
But the lead who contributed to the pain of the other main character did not want / did not anticipate that certain things will take place. It still happened and he does try to correct the situation, and does that despite the fact that on the larger scale he had plenty reasons to take some actions. I know I am being cryptic, but in case people may want to read it I don’t want to reveal much. You can read my review too :).
Layla: In Kinsale’s The Shadow and the Star— a troubling book that I nevertheless find very romantic — Samuel has sex with heroine Leda when they are not married. I know some read this scene as a nonconsensual— I don’t! But the whole rest of the book is about him atoning. There is never a really big I’m sorry scene but his actions and behavior show that he’s sorry. I also find it realistic in that book at least, that that type of guy— repressed a product of childhood abuse and trauma, that he’s not that verbal and in touch with his feelings. So his I’m sorry is in his actions which I find romantic.
Rose: A book where the redemption arc felt sincere and meaningful was Sherry Thomas’s The Luckiest Lady in London. Felix was really horrible and he deserved whatever he got from Louisa, but to me it seemed clear that he reflected on what he did and set out to make things right between them by making things better for her in whatever way he could. I know some readers disagree ;). However, if the things he’d done had ended up hurting other people – as they could have – I’m not sure it would have been enough for me. I did appreciate that Louisa didn’t immediately forgive him; in too many books, everything is resolved in a matter of days.
As a redemption and atonement story, Ain’t She Sweet by Susan Elizabeth Phillips also worked for me. Sugar Beth was young and selfish and hurt other people; what she did could have ruined Colin’s life. But it’s clear that everything she’s been through, and a lot of personal reflection, has made her not a *different* person, but a better one. She’s a good person, and it’s a matter of others being able to see it.
Janine: I liked that book a lot but by the end of it I felt that Colin and especially Sugar Beth’s sister Winnie were the ones in need of redemption. Sugar Beth didn’t come close to deserving all the revenge they heaped on her.
Kaetrin: Ain’t She Sweet is my least fave SEP. I did not think Sugar Beth deserved as much forgiveness as she got tbh. I’m team opposite on this one. LOL.
Jayne: With regard to Ain’t She Sweet, I’m definitely on #TeamSugarBeth. She did some wrong but what was heaped onto her head was out of proportion and went on too long, IMO.
I remember one book with atonement as a major element. Lady Gallant by Suzanne Robinson caused a lot of discussion as people debated what the hero *deliberately* does to hurt her, the cruelty he inflicts, and whether or not he redeems himself as he ultimately tries to win back her love. Despite initially shying away given these descriptions, I wound up reading it and the grovel won me over – then. I’ve sometimes wondered if it would still work for me today.
Janine: I never liked Christian from Lady Gallant. He was a royal asshat and on top of that, his reasons for believing Nora was a traitor were nonsensical.
Layla: In Caroline Linden’s When the Marquess was Mine, Georgiana lies to Rob who’s had a head injury and lost his memory. When the truth is revealed he’s very understanding and because he’s fallen in love with her he forgives her. Also all along the writer makes a case for why she did and shows her extreme guilt at the deception.
Another great scene is the one in Pride and Prejudice— And here it’s Elizabeth who has to say I’m sorry to Darcy for misunderstanding and misreading him. He’s also sorry for the manner in which he declares his feelings— but his actions subsequently show her his remorse but also his love. I find that deeply romantic and I like that it’s equal— she’s sorry too.
Forgiveness for Relatives
Rose: KJ Charles has several books in which characters come from awful families and it’s clear that those relationships do not need to be repaired in order for them to be happy. Guy and Amanda telling off their awful aunt in Band Sinister is just what that book called for. In Gilded Cage, when Susan tells James not to gladden his father’s declining year’s, it’s because Lord Dickie deserves it and then some.
An example in which the family reconciliation worked and was needed is Kate Canterbary’s Walsh series and specifically The Spire. For those unfamiliar with it, the Walsh siblings lost their mother as children. Their father then abused them in different ways throughout the rest of their childhood, and remained verbally and physically abusive when they were adults, until his death. His actions leave a mark on all of them, and lead to a lot of unhealthy personal and interpersonal dynamics. Five of them work together in the family’s sustainable architecture firm, while the youngest sister, Erin, is estranged from the family after a massive blowup with the other sister, Shannon, when Erin was a teenager. As the series progresses, readers learn more about the Shannon-Erin relationship, including Shannon’s perspective in The Cornerstone.
In The Spire, the main source of tension between Erin and her love interest is her refusal to have anything beyond a long-distance relationship with her brothers, and none with her sister. The separation deprives her of love and support from people who care for her and understand what she survived; in my opinion, that book could not have had an HEA without Erin finding her way back to her family in a healthy way. The sisters’ books are my favorites in that series, and are Canterbary’s best work by far (especially The Cornerstone).
Janine: In Mary Balogh’s A Secret Affair, Hannah’s backstory is that ten years earlier she caught her fiancé and her sister (anachronistically named Dawn) having sex in the rosebushes. Neither apologized, and her fiancé actually told her that for him this was a lucky escape–her beauty was only skin deep and he was glad he’d seen that for himself before he married her.
A decade later Hannah invites them to her wedding to Con. Dawn, who also befriended Hannah’s friends and undermined Hannah’s friendships with them until they ended, says she doesn’t feel guilty for the past. Hannah landed on her feet, didn’t she? After all this Hannah still welcomes Dawn (and her husband) back into her life. I recoiled from this. What good is there to having such toxic people in your life in the future? It’s one thing to let go of the past but another to give people who have harmed you carte blanche to harm you more.
Failed Redemption
Rose: A book in which a teenager did something harmful is Rachel Grant’s Cold Evidence, and here there could have been severe repercussions for the other party. By the time they are thrown together again twelve years later, what happened between them has significantly altered their professional and personal lives. Because this is a romantic suspense title, less space was given to their reconciliation – Undine had already recognized that what she did was wrong and has found a way to personally atone for it, but I felt Luke moved on even though they barely discussed it, and didn’t fully trust that it wouldn’t be a subject for future conflict (of course they show up as a happy couple in subsequent books in the series). I still enjoyed Cold Evidence, but it could have been much better.
Layla: I can’t think of a romance I’ve enjoyed where the hero did something truly bad to heroine or vice versa. I mean are there romances where the hero has hit a heroine or taken money or cheated willfully? I guess I wouldn’t find that romantic.
Janine: Yes, definitely. Mary Jo Putney wrote a contemporary romance, The Burning Point, where the hero and heroine married young and had a history with domestic abuse. He hit her. Years later, after he’s had therapy, they reunite. With this one I couldn’t get past the wife beating. Jo Beverley had a book where the hero struck the heroine but I’ve never read it.
Kaetrin: I actually liked The Burning Point. I’m one of the few who did I think. Admittedly it was a long time ago that I read it and my view may be different were I to read it again now. I believed the MMC had done the work (IIRC they spent a long time apart, he took full responsibility and he had been in therapy for some time by the time they started making their way back together), had a handle on his anger issues and would not hit the FMC ever again. At least, I did way back when, when I read it. What he did was wrong wrong wrong—to be clear, I never thought his actions were okay. Just, at the time, I believed he had been successfully redeemed by the author. And like I say, I’m very much in the minority there.
Rose: Maybe someday an author will come along who will manage to write a reparation/atonement story involving past domestic abuse that will work for me, but at the moment I just can’t see that happening. I’m also very happy to leave the rapey heroes in the bodice rippers of old (and in the dark romances I don’t read.)
Janine: Cheating—it really depends. Sometimes it’s worked for me, and sometimes not. I mentioned Balogh’s Dancing with Clara as an example where it worked for me, and there have been others, but not many.
LaVyrle Spencer wrote a few books with cheating. Home Song really did not work for me. Here pre-wedding jitters result in a secret baby. When Tom and Claire find out (something like eighteen years later) that he has a son from that one-night stand, the truth about the cheating also comes out and they separate, which also affects their kids. That book pissed me off because I felt Spencer was harsher on Claire than she was on Tom, portraying her reaction as irrational. On top of that she also criticized Claire for not being a better homemaker! Ugh.
Spencer had another book, Bitter Sweet, with a different angle on infidelity. ERic is married not to Maggie but to another woman. Eric and Maggie were high school sweethearts. Maggie is widowed and Eric’s marriage is falling apart when they meet again and eventually fall back in love, despite the fact that Eric is married. I recall feeling this book would have been lovely if Spencer hadn’t seen fit to completely demonize Eric’s wife.
Rose: Cheating I can deal with if it has meaningful consequences and time for the characters to process what happened and rebuild their relationship. Not Quite a Husband by Sherry Thomas is an example of how to do this right. I recently read Broken Play by Alison Rhymes on KU, and that one was a definite nope for me – Drew’s cheating was extensive, with multiple women and one long-term relationship, and the reasons for it were flimsy. While I liked some of June’s development after finding out, Drew had just gone too far for me, and even if he hadn’t, his growth and atonement needed to be shown more than told. Also, I’d rather not have a threesome as part of the resolution in a book like this. Even if the heroine is into it.
Janine: Yikes.
Even smaller transgressions can reach a point where I can’t get past what happened. In Helen Hoang’s The Heart Principle, Anna lied a lot to protect herself from criticism and rejection. That’s something I can relate to up to a point. But it went on so long and to such lengths here. She lied to every significant character in the book, including herself, deceived and hurt Quan, whom she supposedly loved, as well as another and very vulnerable person to protect herself. No matter how much self-protection she needed, for me it ended up boiling down to the fact that she put her own needs first for the entire book. Ultimately, my issue wasn’t so much that I couldn’t forgive her as that I couldn’t understand why the Quan would be able to place his trust in her again. Anna wasn’t a bad person, but she was cowardly I didn’t trust that she wouldn’t put her fears ahead of other people again, so I also couldn’t trust in Quan’s future happiness.
I had a similar issue with Beth O’Leary’s The Road Trip, a reunion story. Dylan and Addie, along with a small group that includes Dylan’s friend Marcus, are stuck in a car together driving to the wedding of a mutual friend. Marcus did all he could to break up Addie and Dylan and eventually succeeded (a few years earlier). Yet despite this, Dylan doesn’t drop Marcus even at the end of the book, and Addie takes Dylan back after all the awful things Marcus did to her. Marcus supposedly reformed during her separation from Dylan, but only recently. Before that he spent two years making it his mission to ruin Addie’s life, and isn’t the nicest person even at the beginning of the trip (two days before the resolution of the romance). I couldn’t forgive Dylan for his spineless disloyalty and didn’t understand why Addie would take him back. Maybe (maybe) Marcus deserved forgiveness, but Addie certainly didn’t deserve to have him in her life. That was not a happy ending for me.
Sirius: Even the most wonderfully written redemption storyline does not work for me sometimes. I marveled at how good of the writers Ilona Andrews duo was when I was reading attempt at redeeming Hugh D’Ambray. They went through every single horrible thing he did and tried to explain it away and I am like oh it works, sort of but after I finished, my memory of those things as they were written in Kate Daniels’ books was still alive for me and now couple years after, all I do when I think of redeemed Hugh is mentally roll my eyes.
I guess what I am saying that I love redemption stories, but not everyone needs to be redeemed for me, some villains should just stay such IMO.
We’d love to hear from all of you about your favorite fictional redemptions and reparations, and about the ones that didn’t work for you. And if you’ve read any of the books we’ve mentioned above, what did you think of the reparations and grovels in them—were they enough or not enough for you?
I already posted about Maisey Yates’s LAST CHANCE REBEL in yesterday’s post, so I won’t repeat it here, but another book with a contrition/atonement/forgiveness arc was Allison Rhymes’s very good debut romance, BROKEN PLAY from earlier this year. After several years of marriage to her brother’s best friend (and the object of her teenage crush), a woman discovers her husband—a professional football player—has been having a long-term affair with another woman. There’s a lot going on in BROKEN PLAY, including the heroine’s backstory that includes being the victim of a violent attack by a stalker, but I thought Rhymes did a great job with the nuances of how a long seemingly happy marriage can paper over enormous unresolved issues. BROKEN PLAY made my favorites of 2022, and I’m looking forward to the next book, BRUTAL PLAY, where the heroine is “the other woman” from the first book. I’m interested in how Rhymes will handle her redemption arc.
@DiscoDollyDeb: Maybe I should try it despite what Rose said about it above. What did you think about the Canterbury books she mentioned (I think you’ve read them)? Those sounded more interesting to me in some ways, though I don’t know if I want to read the whole series.
Not a book, but I read an advice column or something recently that had the real life story of how this woman fell in love with the husband of the woman her husband cheated on her with. So, two married people cheat. Their spouses find out. The spouses start talking, sympathizing with each other, and eventually falling in love. If that happened in a story and those two had sex before they were officially divorced, I think I’d be okay with it. Otherwise, cheating may be a deal-breaker.
As for abuse or a relapse of addiction, I *think* it might work if the abuser immediately recognized that what they did was wrong and went to extensive lengths to make themselves a better person. It would be harder if they hid it for a long time or denied they had a problem. My husband has been in recovery since before I met him, and if he ever had a relapse, I hope I’d stick with him through it as long as he got back on track quickly. In real life, people are flawed but sometimes worth the extra effort. In a book, you’d have to show how they are worth it.
@Janine: Rosa & I have completely opposite reactions to BROKEN PLAY, but as the old saying goes, no two people ever read the same book. I enjoyed BROKEN PLAY. Romance writers have to tread very carefully when they address infidelity—and I thought Rhymes wrote a nuanced analysis of how cheating can impact a marriage and how hard it is to regain trust or even to determine if you’d want to.
I would like to know how all of you remember so much about the characters and plot so many books. Rose mentioned Rachel Grant’s Cold Evidence, which I read in January. I recalled nothing except the title until I looked at the synopsis.
@Kris Bock: The movie In the Mood for Love had that premise. It’s set in Hong Kong I believe, and has gorgeous and excellent actors (Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung), and it’s so beautifully moody and atmospheric, with a lot of rain and Nat King Cole on the soundtrack. I recommend it very highly. It’s not exactly a romance (no HEA) but still a beautiful film.
There was also a historical romance with that premise that came later; I wish I remembered the name of the author. I think it came out in the late 2000s or early 2010s. I’ll see if I can think of it. I didn’t read it because the author wasn’t my cup of tea.
My husband is also in recovery, and was for several years before I met him (he went to rehab while still in high school; it was the first program in the country for kids that young). It’s been thirty years since we started dating and he’s never once had a drink or a joint, so I’m not really worried, but if he did relapse, I would absolutely stick around for a long time before giving up.
Our conversation on the DA loop ranged beyond what’s in these posts, and among other things we debated whether change was really possible. I said that I’m sure a lot of psychologists and therapists would disagree with the idea that it isn’t or they wouldn’t be in their field. And Kaetrin brought up the people who have recovered from addiction.
In recent years it’s become very fashionable to say (and believe) that people can’t change. I don’t really believe that. I believe change is very hard, and that most people don’t change, but not that they can’t. Obviously there is a baseline personality that remains constant, but redirecting destructive or self-destructive impulses as well as feeling genuine contrition and apologizing is possible. That doesn’t mean I want to read about all of those behaviors in a romance, but it is possible.
It is interesting how some people (not anyone at DA, to my knowledge) feel that redemption stories mislead people into trusting the wrong person, or sticking around them too long. Maybe they do, I don’t know. But they also give hope, and hope is a hugely important force in the world. Redemption romances helped me get through some truly harrowing bouts with depression. I think that if we (as a society) stop telling these kinds of stories and only tell ourselves that people never change, we will to a certain extent perpetuate these problems. Why would anyone set out to do all the hard work of changing if they didn’t believe that change was possible? It’s very important to believe it can be done, IMO.
@LML: Until relatively recently, I had an excellent memory (I’ve even been asked if it’s eidetic; it’s not). My memory is still very very good when it comes to things I read or heard or ate (yes, ate) during those great memory years. Recent stuff, not so much. I think it’s no coincidence that older books tend to come up in these discussions!
@DiscoDollyDeb: Thanks, I think maybe I’ll take a look at it, especially since Elizabeth O’Roark and Rachel Reid have panned out for me, and you recommended both. What about the Canterbary books?
@Janine: I love Kate Canterbary! Her books are, in various ways, all interconnected (even if very tangentially). so I would recommend starting out by reading the Walsh Family series (in order). There are eight books about six siblings, and there are many subplots, including the one about their awful father and his legacy and how they finally in their different ways come to terms with the damage he caused. Most of her other books don’t feature quite so much family drama, but there’s always workplace competence, emotional growth, wonderful female friendships, and hot sexy times in all her books.
@DiscoDollyDeb: Yes, the Walsh series was the one that Rose said she really liked with regard to family forgiveness (The Cornerstone and The Spire). Do you think (and I should really ask her this too) that the whole series should be read to get the full effect of that reconciliation, or is it okay to read just The Spire and The Cornerstone?
@Janine: I would strongly recommend reading all eight books in order, simply because the family drama doesn’t just come from the siblings’ relationship with their father. Also, Canterbary is very clever about showing scenes from one character’s POV and then showing the same scene, in another book, from a different character’s POV—and you see the events in a whole different light. Although I realize eight books is quite a commitment, I really do think you’ll appreciate the story of the Walsh siblings and their various romantic entanglements if you read the entire series.
POTENT PLEASURES by Eloisa James was a redemption that didn’t work for me. The male lead was so cold and such a jerk to the heroine after he thought he found out something about her. And he spent 1/4 of the book being cutting and the worlds biggest ass. Then he finds out he was wrong and it was “oh, ooops, my bad” book over. I was sobbing for her and wanted nothing more than for her to kick him to the curb way earlier than he “forgave her”. I stopped reading her altogether after i read that book because I realized the Essex sisters had some similar issues and I didn’t need jerk heroes in my book life.
@HK: I haven’t read that one, but the plot you’re describing was a popular one in the 1990s. Often the hero would assume the worst, set out to punish the heroine or get revenge on her, and then learn later on in the book that she was innocent of all wrongdoing and grovel to get her back. I admit I really enjoyed that kind of thing back then, even some very unsophisticated versions of it. But coming out of the 1980s, when a lot of single title historical romance was even worse in terms of hero behavior (like Jayne said in yesterday’s post), it was easier to take this in stride than it would be today.
@HK: Just to add–I think when I enjoyed them it was for a kind of childlike pleasure. When I was a child, if my parents did something I thought was mean or that hurt my feelings or made me angry, I would just think “I’ll run away and then they’ll be sorry.” I think many redemption stories tap into that feeling–one party hurts the other, then loses them or realizes how wrong they were, and then they suffer all the emotions of being sorry and kicking themselves. Just like I wanted my parents to do when I was very young.
I remember there was one book in the 1990s, by Katherine Sutcliffe I think, where the heroine all but starved on the streets after the hero kicked her out, and he eventually found her like that after discovering he was wrong and felt terrible about what he’d done and I think took her back and sheltered her and fed her until the poor waif recovered. A lot of people I knew loved that book! I didn’t though, I thought it went too far. But that was almost exactly my childhood fantasy–I would run away, driven by my parents’ awful behavior, and then I’d starve and nearly die and they’d worry so much about me while I was gone and feel so bad when they found me, and they would be sorry.
I think Mary Balogh is a great example of an author who has used the theme of redemption and forgiveness in a lot of her books. I agree with Janine about about DANCING WITH CLARA and the character of Freddy. For me it hinged on the fact that we got a lot of page space with Freddy’s inner demons. A lot of what he did wasn’t about external malice but he was acting out and I think MB did a good job with showing us what a deep well of self loathing he had going on that it was kinda hard to simply write it off as just bad behavior. So his road to redemption felt satisfying to me.
Another Balogh book where I think the redemption works is LORD CAREW’S BRIDE. It is a sequel to DARK ANGEL. In the first book, Samantha (the heroine in LCB) is a supporting character and cousin of the heroine in DA. Samantha acts really selfishly in the first book. Some of it could be laid at the feet of the villain in that book who shamelessly manipulated her. But she acted with a lack of compassion and honor in her own right against her cousin. So I was NOT a fan of Samantha in that book. But when we get to her own book, a lot like Freddy, she is full of self recrimination and self loathing. Even though her cousin has forgiven her (the cousin is all happily married and she herself was a victim of the same sociopath in the first book) Samantha can’t forgive herself. But MB takes her time and gives us a good road to redemption for Samantha that really worked.
On the other hand her most recent book, REMEMBER LOVE, I don’t think the redemption worked well at all. The hero in that one makes a huge public scene that pretty much embarrasses everyone. He was old enough to know better. On the one hand, I thought the way he was treated in the aftermath was pretty bad and there are a lot of ripple effects on the family over the next few years. But I also thought the forgiveness he was finally given wasn’t very satisfying either or quite earned in the way I needed it to be.
And then there is one of my favorite Balogh books, SLIGHTLY DANGEROUS where Christine had been vilified by her husband’s relatives and kinda left to live in genteel poverty and they treated her like dirt, until Wulf exposes all the lies about her and suddenly they are all sorry and she forgives them. Huh. *sucks teeth* for the character of Christine who was so nice she could forgive them, and it works — sort of. I was so bitter on her behalf though.
@TinaNoir: Yes. Balogh definitely has an ongoing theme of forgiveness and redemption in her books. I agree with you that Remember Love did not work as well as some her others. It was far from my favourite of her books. I agree with you about Christine too!!
Broken Play to me was an interesting idea that suffered in the execution. There were a lot of things that seemed contrived to get the characters to where the author wanted them, and I just didn’t buy it. And as I shared in the conversation, I needed to see more of Drew’s transformation and atonement on page.
@LML: I don’t remember everything I read! But some books do stick with me for whatever reason. I also keep a reading log with grades and quick thoughts about each book I read, and use that for reference.
Unexpectedly, Hugh D’Ambrey’s redemption worked for me haha. I was so sceptical going into his book and extremely surprised that I liked him by the end. The key to that was probably that they showed him growing vs trying to explain away his misdeeds by painting him as misunderstood and secretly a good guy all along (the Snape effect). He was a victim of Katie’s father’s abuse and he cones to realize it throughout the course of his book.
Other redemptions I like are those that are built up over several books. Like in Tammara Webber’s Good for You/Here Without You and Erin Satie’s The Young Blood. The formerly assholish heroes retain their personalities and grow over multiple books.
@TinaNoir: I agree re Mary Balogh; forgiveness is a consistent theme in her oeuvre. She also does a lot of reframing at the same time–often in fact the characters who earn forgiveness are good people, it’s just that the other protagonist had a mistaken first impression. When they learn more they realize the other character is a good person.
Excellent point about Freddie. You’re right, all the attention to his inner demons was a good part of what made that book work. What did you think of the resolution? Did you like that he didn’t make a promise to Clara at the end? For me that was a big part of what cemented my belief that he would do better in the future, so it was interesting to me when I saw reviews where readers were unhappy about about that.
I love that whole Dark Angel series, but I actually didn’t feel that Samantha needed much redeeming or that she was being redeemed. Samantha was so young (only eighteen) and was in my eyes more of a victim of Lionel’s than a bad person. I can’t recall if I felt that way by the time I finished Dark Angel or within a chapter or two into Lord Carew’s Bride, but I know that for most of
Dark AngelLord Carew’s Bride I was on her side.(Incidentally, one thing that did annoy me was the way Balogh altered Lionel’s personality from one book to the next. He was a great villain in Dark Angel, manipulative but also very clever about it. In the second book he was a lot less clever and I think it was because he had to be a foil to Hartley rather than to Gabriel. And we also had to see immediately what he was doing to Samantha in Lord Carew’s Bride whereas in Dark Angel it had to be unclear at first. But it still annoyed me; personality transplants always do. Cora also changes, from how she comes across in The Famous Heroine vs. how she comes across in A Christmas Bride.)
I agree 100% re. Remember Love. The more time goes by the less I like that book, and the hero, Devlin, is the main reason why. But with regard to his redemption/reframing, it didn’t work for me because it felt like Balogh tried to paper over his mistake. As the book went on, people went from telling him he did something harmful to telling him it was hard to say who behaved worse, to one of the biggest victims of the situation saying that he’d done the right thing and it was something that needed to be done. It needed to be done about as much as a car needs to lose one of its four wheels, in my opinion.
The thing that annoyed me most is that Balogh tried to keep readers evaluating Devlin’s behavior through a comparison between him and his father and the question of whose behavior was worse. That really annoyed me. Of course the father’s behavior was worse, but I don’t think that lets Devlin off the hook. You can always find someone whose behavior is worse than yours, but that doesn’t necessarily mean your actions are okay.
Re Slightly Dangerous–Christine deserved a lot better from Hermione and Basil (I’ve read that book so many times that I even remember what the side characters are called!) but at the same time, their apology to her was necessary for the story to work. If she hadn’t forgiven them, it would have marred the HEA to an extent, because they were important to her throughout the book. Also, that was Wulfric’s big gesture moment. There was more than one, but that was the biggest. Had Christine not taken them back, it would have been less meaningful and also taken the focus away from how romantic it was and how it helped make her see him differently.
Justin, on the other hand–good riddance to bad news.
@Jo Sav: Great to see you here, I’ve missed you!
Hugh’s redemption only sort of worked for me, I think because I felt they tried to explain every single bad thing he ever did. I disagree with Sirius that it was well done, it was a bit clumsy IMO. They should have made a little more of it be his actual personality and have him work to redirect those behaviors rather than just not having really had those impulses all along.
That said, I think one of the things that really helped with that in my case was that I read the Magic Triumphs before I read Iron and Magic, even though it came out a little later. While it spoiled Hugh and Elara’s book a little bit, it also explained some of that stuff a little more. Even though I rolled my eyes a bit at Hugh’s redemption and how much was explained away (in my view), I went with it because I really enjoyed the dynamic between Hugh and Elara. I hope book two comes out soon! I want more of their romance and I especially want to know about those powers Hugh has and whether he’s related to Kate somehow.
@Rose: I’m a little on the fence about it because of my experience with the Wall series—I think you and DDD both bought those redemptions more than I did, so if you didn’t buy this one, I may not either.
What do you think about reading the Canterbury books? Should I read them all in order or just the ones I’m interested in? Eight books is a big commitment.
@LML: I am all admiration for those who can remember plot and characters of books read years ago. While mid-book, I’m lucky to know the names of the main characters!
@Janine:
Yes, I really did like how Freddy made no promises. In fact, I liked that Freddy’s redemption was a lot of show not tell. He walked his walk in a lot of different ways.
Regards Hugh D’ambray I bought his redemption. And yes a lot of it was how he and Elara played off of each other. But also, I think what brought it home for me was that in Hugh’s book we saw how much of the Kate book revolved around her narrow focus on Roland. Roland was the center of Kate’s world. But away from Kate, and away from Roland’s influence it was good to know that Kate’s world was really rather narrow and that other people had other issues and other magics and other big bads existed. Some people never even heard of Roland. He is not the be all and end all for everybody. So getting out in the bigger world, away from Atlanta and out of Kate’s head, Hugh’s perspective in his own words worked for me.
I hate to compare because it really isn’t 100% comparable but it is like in the Game of Thrones books, I hated Jaime so hard in books 1 and 2. Because I judged him by a single act and based on how he was seen through other people’s eyes, the people with whom I had grown sympathy. In Book 3 when he finally gets his own POV, it is a revelation. His character becomes much more than that one act and much more than how other people saw him. Hearing his own thoughts and getting his own perspective on who he was … didn’t make me like him exactly… but I didn’t quite hate him as much.
I just finished a book where I struggled with the hero as he’d been a villain in earlier books. Unlike my experience with Hugh, this time it only partially worked and by the end of the book I remained at best, equivocal about him. I still can’t put my finger on why Hugh worked for me and Gharek didn’t (quite/entirely).
@TinaNoir: That’s a good point that the book being set in the wider world outside of Atlanta also helped. For me one of the best scenes in the book was the prologue that takes place when Hugh was a child and Voron and Roland found him. That really got across why he would be loyal to Roland and want his love so much.
I’ve never read the Song of Ice and Fire books but they sound much better than the show.
@Kaetrin: What book was that? And what book was the hero a villain in?
@Kareni, often true for me as well.
@Kareni: I confess, I have gotten a plot detail wrong from time to time–sometimes I “remember” something and it turns out it didn’t happen that way. Most of the time when that happens it’s the order of events. It doesn’t happen much, though.
The Jo Beverley book where the hero slapped the heroine was “An Unwilling Bride”. Lots of people found Lucien’s action totally unforgivable, but I had a somewhat different view of what happened and believed it would not happen again. Lucien is a duke’s heir, and he has just found out that he is not the duke’s biological son. He has been forced to marry Beth, the duke’s biological daughter from a brief affair in order for the duke to be sure his grandchild is from his direct bloodline. Lucien is unmoored from who and what he thought he was, resentful of his lack of agency when it came to his marriage, and a bit lost. When he thinks Beth has cheated on him he slaps her, an expression of anger at his father, himself, Beth. The specific action is unforgivable but Lucien’s redemption is shown in his future actions and how he treats his wife. BTW, this book has one of my favorite lines: Beth lies at the start and tells Lucien she is sexually experienced. When he asks how she could let someone take her virginity, Beth says no one took it, she gave it away. I liked that touch of her telling him she was not a pawn but had agency in the decision.
Patricia Gaffney is mentioned in the original post about redemption (“Lily” was OTT and a DNF for me, never tried “Sweet Treason”). “To Have and To Hold”, OTOH, was, I think, a masterful portrait of a redemption arc. Sebastian Verlaine is the opposite of a fake rake, and the first time he has sex with Rachel Wade it is not violent but it is definitely not consensual or romantic. Over the course of the book, however, he sees his past life and character for what it was and becomes a much better version of himself. I thought it interesting that the first book in this trilogy, “To Love and To Cherish” had such a wonderfully good hero (and Christy definitely was proof that a hero can be both good and very sexy), while Sebastian was Christy’s opposite in so many ways yet could still be called the hero by the end.
@Susan/Dc: I loved To Have and to Hold; for many years it was my favorite romance. I reread it recently for a craft discussion with writer friends, and while I still think Gaffney’s psychological acuity in her portrayal of the main characters in that book, as well as her prose, are second to none, I felt at a remove this time and didn’t have the same kind of emotional engagement.
I also noticed a whole lot of OTT stuff on the outskirts of the main relationship; the villains were all OTT; I counted seven of them. Rachel’s vile first husband, the person who murdered him, four friend’s of Sebastian’s and one housemaid. Most were horrible. I think all that OTT darkness was there to make Sebastian a palatable choice for Rachel and for the reader, and that points to more than one issue, of course.
In addition, there were a couple of secondary French characters, Sebastian’s mistress and his chef, who were straight out from central casting; talking stereotypes. I ended up a lot less impressed with the book this time, or rather, from a craft perspective, still blown away by the prose and the psychological acuity of the portrayals of Sebastian and Rachel, but also feeling that the thing didn’t hold together well. I lost interest partway through, although I would like to go through the book sometime and mark up my favorite metaphors and sentence structures, because I do think those are worth studying.
Just to add for anyone who might be interested in checking it out based on what Susan and I have said–take this book with all the trigger warnings in the world.
@Susan/Dc: You’ve also made me interested in the Jo Beverly book. I haven’t read the book, but as you were listing all the people Lucien was angry when he struck Beth, I thought “Surely his mother is one of them?” Because if he thinks Beth cheated on him, and his mom cheated on his dad and that’s why he ended up forced to marry Beth, that would be very logical. Do you think I might like this book?
Like Rose, I didn’t like that part of Cold Evidence, and it made the HEA less believable for me. Overall, the book is still suspenseful and a good read.
Another redemption that didn’t work for me was Practice by Perfect by Julie James. The hero does apologise, but what he does is very bad and I felt like more grovelling was needed. This also bothered me in The Bride Goes Rogue by Joanna Shupe.
@Sydneysider: I agree wholeheartedly about Practice Makes Perfect that the apology was inadequate for the offense.
@Janine: Have to say I’m not sure if you’d like it or even be sure I’d like it if I read it now. I last read both the Beverley and the Gaffney years ago, and, as you point out in your comments about THTH, opinions change over time. I may have been so caught up in the emotions on first reading that I overlooked things that would bother me today or simply didn’t notice when overwhelmed by the Romance. This is similar to how, when I first read a number of Agatha Christie’s mysteries, I was so caught up in solving the crime I didn’t notice the racist and antisemitic comments, but on rereading they were all too apparent. And if you are counting the villains in THTH, you forgot to mention Sebastian’s family – when he visits them you understand how he became what he was, and the scene with his mother and siblings is an inflection point in his new emotional awareness.
As for Lucien’s feelings toward his mother, I think that is part of his sense that his world has blown up around him. The foundation of his sense of self, of who he was and how he fit into his world, turned out to be false. But it is his father he resents more because it is his father forcing him into an unwanted marriage, and he resents Beth because she is the unwanted (and from her POV, unwilling) bride.
I now want to reread both books to see how they hold up, but I recently moved and my books are still packed away in boxes. Maybe sometime in 2023 . . . . .
@Janine: It was the upcoming Grace Draven book, Raven Unveiled. Gharek is a villain in the earlier two books of the series.
@Susan/DC: Good point about Sebastian’s mother and sister. And yes, those scenes do help him (and the reader) make sense of how he reached the point he reached. I don’t know if I would call either of them villains, exactly, but the sister is also an OTT character.
I never got into Jo Beverley because two of the books I tried (Lord of Midnight and The [something or other] Rose) had so many short paragraphs that I felt like the author was talking down to me, not trusting me to be able to understand unless the paragraphs were broken into easily digestible bits. But then I heard that her style didn’t used to be like that (I wonder if some editor forced it on her) and now I’d like to try her again, maybe something earlier where that wasn’t such a noticeable thing. I know a lot of readers loved her, and everyone talked about the Malloren books. I’ve never read any of those.
Re what you mention about Agatha Christie, I think a lot of readers also just weren’t as aware of these issues at that time. These things were so commonplace in books up through the 1990s that it was easy to disregard them. I’m not saying this about you, just about readers of that time in general.
I remember getting into an argument with some people on another site once when I said that The Grand Sophy had some antisemtism in it. They tried to tell me that there was nothing wrong with her portrayal of Goldhanger and that Jews used to be moneylenders because of usury laws and she didn’t make it up. Yes, I said, but that doesn’t mean he’s not striaght out of 1920s Nazi progpanda about Jewish people—greedy, tightfisted, cruel, predatory, dirty, etc. She even gave him a “semitic nose.” I said all this and they still kept arguing with me until I gave up in frustration. It is really hard to convince people when the status quo tells them something else.
(Maili, a Scottish reader, once told me how she tried so hard to convince other readers that Diana Gabaldon’s portrayal of Scotland was woefully inaccurate and they wouldn’t believe her. She said they believed in Gabaldon’s version of Scotland more than in the real thing.)
@Kaetrin: Thanks. I don’t think Draven is for me but some authors do the villain-to-hero transition better than others.
I enjoyed An Unwilling Bride as well. Like Susan, I did believe Lucien would never hurt Beth again ever and – as they appear multiple times in the Company of Rogues series, there’s ample proof of it too.
Janine – what was the Balogh where the heroine had made a pass at her stepson?
@Kaetrin: Are you thinking of Helena making a pass at Gerald in A Precious Jewel? That was his backstory and she was a villainess, but then she gets her own book in A Christmas Bride and is redeemed, so that book is another one that fits our theme here. But maybe you were thinking of Someone Perfect (Estelle and Justin’s book)? Justin’s stepmother made a pass at him as well, and there was no redeeming her.
@Kaetrin: Do you think I would like it? Should I give it a shot?
@Janine: I was thinking of A Christmas Bride. Helena was very remorseful but it was still a bit icky to force a reconciliation – I think Gerald was within his rights to refuse to engage with her.
As to the Jo Beverley, it’s been a very long time since I read it but if you’ve enjoyed other JoBev books then yes, I think it is one of her best.
@Kaetrin: Yes, I agree re Helena. And also the means for the reconciliation weren’t convincing. Gerald and Priss would not have been able to get the opportunity they were given in real life. That also marred it somewhat for me.
With regard to Jo Beverley, no, I was saying I hadn’t enjoyed her other books, due to too many short paragraphs (often just one sentence) to me in the only two books I tried (Lord of Midnight and The Shattered Rose) but I’ve been told that her writing style evolved and early on she didn’t have so many short paragraphs in her writing. So I would like to try something, but something where the writing doesn’t read like it’s been pre-digested for readers. Can you recommend anything like that? And where should I start?
One of the redemption plot lines that I think works really well is the one in Lois McMaster Bujold’s A Civil Campaign. Miles Vorkosigan is in love with the recently widowed Ekaterin Vorsoisson, but Ekaterin’s marriage was a disaster and she isn’t ready for a new relationship. Miles knows all this, but instead of listening to Ekaterin (who is asking for time to recover), he comes up with a scheme that will give her chance to shine in her chosen profession (landscape design), while allowing him to see her on a regular basis. He hires her to create a public park on Vorkosigan land in the imperial city. Miles believes in Ekaterina’s talents, but his intentions are mixed at best since he plans to subtly court her during their project meetings (thus sneakily doing an end run around her desire to have a chance to recover from her stinker marriage and its traumatic ending). But Miles, being Miles, also blabs to various friends and family members about his hopes for winning Ekaterin and although he tells everyone to be quiet, things come to disastrous head during one of the funniest worst dinners parties ever. Everything that could possibly go wrong, does, and Ekaterin departs hurt and upset — uncertain about whether Miles really values her and her talents or whether he just said he did as way to butter her up.
Miles has a long slog back to redemption but he does by end of the story redeem himself (including by writing to Ekaterin a lovely apology, with no expectation that she will forgive him, and then by doing the necessary work to show that he has learned from his mistakes). There are a lot of reasons that I think this redemption arc works — one is that it feels like a very realistic arc rooted in good intentions that go awry. Miles is a decent person, who does mean well and who has in fact listened carefully to much of what Ekaterin has been saying. He values her and wants to help achieve her professional goals because he believes in her. The problem comes, where he convinces himself in an all too human way that because he does love her and he does want the best for her, Ekaterin will forgive for using her professional dreams to steamroll over her objections to being courted before she is ready. It’s only after the dinner party that he is forced to recognize how problematical his behaviour has been. And from that point on, Miles also realizes that all he can do is apologize and work to be better a person. It is up to Ekaterin to decide whether to accept his apology and to decide whether she will be open to having a relationship with Miles.
Another reason that I think this redemption arc works is because not only do we see the work that Miles does to make amends, we also see Ekaterina’s own process in working through whether she will forgive Miles and whether she wants a relationship with him. Part of Ekaterin’s process involves her reminiscing about her experiences with Miles over the past while (covered in the previous book, Komarr) and part of her process is examining at Miles’ interactions, past and present, with others, especially with other women. This all works to confirm to her, that while Miles is not perfect, he does strive to learn from his mistakes and that he is a fundamentally decent, honourable and kind person.
The comments about Jo Beverley “An Unwilling Bride” caught my attention and I’m jumping in to comment without reading the whole post.
With the (2nd?) caveat that it’s been forever since I read the book – My sympathy was always with Lucien. He didn’t just think she was cheating on him. She deliberately tried to make him think she was cheating. IIRC, she manipulated circumstances to make him think he’d caught her in the act. She had some idea that he’d renounce her and she’d be free of the marriage. So on top of the family circumstances Susan/DC described, he was confronted with “evidence” of infidelity.
In short, I wanted to slap her myself so I wasn’t outraged when Lucien did it. I felt she provoked him to it.
@Kathryn: I’ve only read the Miles prequels (Cordelia and Aral’s books) and that was ages ago, but so many people have recommended the Miles books to me. I need to catch up on that series one of these days. I loved Bujold’s first two Chalion books.
@Janine: ITA with you about Heyer’s The Grand Sophy. Goldhanger is everything greedy and smarmy. There is an undercurrent of sexual as well as financial threat, and it is not independent of his being Jewish but a feature of it. What makes it even worse is that the book was published after WWII and the Holocaust.
@Kathryn:
Totally co-sign on this. Miles’ apology was a thing of beauty. Also another person who walked the walk for their redemption. A Civil Campaign is really a fantastic stealth romance novel.
@Janine:
I heartily recommend the Miles books. Such a wonderful character study who goes through such growth and transformation in the midst of of some really fun space opera and all the while just being pretty awesome. Probably one of my favorite fictional characters hands down.
“In short, I wanted to slap her myself…”
@MaryK, thank you for giving me something to laugh at today. I’m completely out of this discussion because I haven’t read the book, but there are MANY times in my reading that I would like to slap a character or two.
@Susan/DC: I know! It came out in 1950. Shudder. Heyer did take out “semitic nose” and also, I think, “the instincts of his race,” when the book was reprinted in the 1970s but still, ugh. When I read it I actually read an old copy from the library, unexpurgated.
@TinaNoir: Thanks. It sounds so good. Recently I tried rereading the first of the prequels (Barrayar?) and the beginning felt really slow, but I would like to get back to the series.
@Janine: I don’t think you’ll like it— but I did back when I did read it. And I forgave Lucien for the slap also because he was shown as super immature and spoiled at start of book and he really is remorseful after— and he doesn’t ever exhibit anything like that ever again. It seemed in like with a portrait of a spoiled aristocrat whose never told no, but I never got the sense that he’s a violent man or husband.
@Layla: You guys are all making me more interested in it! Why do you think I won’t like it, Layla?