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Feb. 25th, 2016 06:09 pmListen To the Moon is not my favorite of Rose Lerner's books, but I'm fascinated by it because it's probably the least wish-fulfillment-y romance novel that I've ever read.
None of the protagonists are upper-class, which already is rare enough; the hero is John Toogood, a middle-aged valet with a stellar work ethic who lost his job as a result of the shenanigans in Sweet Disorder, the first book in the series (one thing I really like about Rose Lerner: her willingness to explore the fact that one person's happily ever after might be SUPER UNPLEASANT AND INCONVENIENT for other people) and the heroine is Sukey Grimes, a maid making ends meet with various boarding-house gigs around town.
Soon John is offered a position as a butler in the vicar's house, but the vicar wants his butler to be married for reasons of morals, so John and Sukey must make a marriage of convenience!
...this is pretty much the only tropey thing that happens in the book. The rest of the plot is a remarkably down-to-earth story about navigating a marriage: like, how do you deal when your husband is your boss? What about differences in age, personality, class, background? (Neither of them might be nobles, but the class difference between a trained valet to a high-ranking nobleman and a small-town maid-of-all-work who tidies up for boarders not much better-off than her is in fact NOT SMALL.) How do you make a life for yourself around the edges of a workday that goes from five AM to ten PM, every day, in a job that requires your individuality to be as sublimated as possible? And even if you make a life for yourself, how do you then manage to successfully include somebody else in it?
There's very little escapism in this book; Sukey and John's romance is not going to be magically lift them out of a life of labor, nor would they expect it to. Which doesn't mean they don't find happiness, of course, because it is a romance novel. (Also, Rose Lerner seems determined to make up for the lack of tropiness by putting in about twice as many sex scenes as in any other book of hers I've read.)
I also really appreciated the subplot non-romance, in which a middle-class white man pursues a working-class woman of color who informs him that their relationship is a bad idea, rallies support around her from colleagues who agree that their relationship is a bad idea, and then in fact successfully goes on NOT TO HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM.
I am somewhat amazed this got published by a traditional publisher and I hope we will start seeing many more like it. DOWN WITH DUKES.
None of the protagonists are upper-class, which already is rare enough; the hero is John Toogood, a middle-aged valet with a stellar work ethic who lost his job as a result of the shenanigans in Sweet Disorder, the first book in the series (one thing I really like about Rose Lerner: her willingness to explore the fact that one person's happily ever after might be SUPER UNPLEASANT AND INCONVENIENT for other people) and the heroine is Sukey Grimes, a maid making ends meet with various boarding-house gigs around town.
Soon John is offered a position as a butler in the vicar's house, but the vicar wants his butler to be married for reasons of morals, so John and Sukey must make a marriage of convenience!
...this is pretty much the only tropey thing that happens in the book. The rest of the plot is a remarkably down-to-earth story about navigating a marriage: like, how do you deal when your husband is your boss? What about differences in age, personality, class, background? (Neither of them might be nobles, but the class difference between a trained valet to a high-ranking nobleman and a small-town maid-of-all-work who tidies up for boarders not much better-off than her is in fact NOT SMALL.) How do you make a life for yourself around the edges of a workday that goes from five AM to ten PM, every day, in a job that requires your individuality to be as sublimated as possible? And even if you make a life for yourself, how do you then manage to successfully include somebody else in it?
There's very little escapism in this book; Sukey and John's romance is not going to be magically lift them out of a life of labor, nor would they expect it to. Which doesn't mean they don't find happiness, of course, because it is a romance novel. (Also, Rose Lerner seems determined to make up for the lack of tropiness by putting in about twice as many sex scenes as in any other book of hers I've read.)
I also really appreciated the subplot non-romance, in which a middle-class white man pursues a working-class woman of color who informs him that their relationship is a bad idea, rallies support around her from colleagues who agree that their relationship is a bad idea, and then in fact successfully goes on NOT TO HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM.
I am somewhat amazed this got published by a traditional publisher and I hope we will start seeing many more like it. DOWN WITH DUKES.
