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Jul. 30th, 2015 07:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThe other day I was trying to explain to innerbrat why I stayed up until 3 AM reading Rose Lerner's True Pretenses.
BECCA: OK, so the hero of this Regency novel is a JEWISH CON ARTIST, and he and the heroine bond over the fact that she's an upper-class woman who politely gets things done and there are a lot of ways in which being an upper-class woman who manages to get things done within the rules of propriety in Regency England is BASICALLY LIKE being a con artist! And the other thing they bond over is the fact that they both have younger brothers that they mostly raised from when they were small, and now both of their brothers want to go off and have their own lives, and their older siblings are not ready to let them go be adults, so they have shared sibling issues!
DEBI: I would say this book had 'Becca-bait' written all over it, except: is there cross-dressing?
BECCA: THAT IS THE ONLY THING MISSING.
Guys, I really, really liked True Pretenses. It starts off kind of Brothers Bloom, with Ash and his brother Rafe, con artists extraordinaire:
RAFE: I am ready to go straight and stop swindling people. :(
ASH: OK. OK, this is fine. We can handle this, this is fine, we will find you an attractive rich woman to marry and you will be set for life!
So Ash finds Lydia, an attractive and hypothetically rich woman who can't get into her money until she marries, and who really wants to get into her money so she can continue doing charity work and supporting the town's Tory party. Unfortunately, her younger brother is SO DONE with politics and has decided he's not giving any more money to the cause, so until she gets into her own cash she's kind of stuck.
ASH: Hello, we are respectable individuals! Allow me to smoothly matchmake --
RAFE: HI YO LYDIA my brother thinks we should have a marriage of convenience so you can buy me an officer's commission and then get into your money, is that cool?
ASH: *facepalm*
LYDIA: Ummm. Well, OK, I ... see the advantages of this, but ... actually I kind of think Ash is the more attractive one, soooo what if we did the marriage of convenience thing instead?
ASH: UM. I ... you're cute but ... that was not the plan, and -- don't know if want??
Then Ash and Rafe get into a huge fight about the fact that actually Rafe is adopted and Ash never told him!
RAFE: HI YO LYDIA by the way my brother and I are CON ARTISTS and we are also TOTALLY JEWISH and I am LEAVING and never want to see his face AGAIN!
LYDIA: ....well, I feel deeply uncomfortable about all this information. On the other hand: still really want into my money. Ash, I think we can make this work!
ASH: Aren't you worried about the whole con artist thing?
LYDIA: It's true, you could easily blackmail me by telling everyone in the world about my terrible con artist marriage of convenience. On the other hand, I could blackmail you by telling everyone you're Jewish and have also committed many crimes, so we're probably even as far as mutually assured destruction goes.
So Ash and Lydia do the marriage of convenience plot, and it's my favorite kind of marriage of convenience plot, where they're both REALLY ENJOYING THEMSELVES pretending to be googly-eyed over each other, and they're both in on the joke -- but also both aware that the other is not necessarily trustworthy, and definitely aware that the power dynamics have the potential to get really weird in both directions, given, again, the mutually assured destruction/potential blackmail factor, not to mention the huge class and cultural issues.
Let me repeat: I love the class and cultural issues! I love how much of the book is Ash and Lydia actually working at liking each other, around all the weird feelings raised by Ash's background and Lydia's enormous amounts of privilege; I love that Lydia wonders if her attraction to Ash is her creepily fetishizing DANGER AND POVERTY!!, if Ash's attraction to her is as much about her fortune and her lovely house at Netherfields as it is about her as a person. And both of these things are probably a little bit true.
I also am so into how the book throws itself behind the thesis that the accepted way for women to get things politically done in a system where they have many rules to obey and little direct power -- smiling, dropping hints, making people like you -- uses basically all the same skills as being a con artist. Lydia is really good at getting things done! SHE MAKES A WONDERFUL CON ARTIST.
I love the sibling issues -- how all four of them are trying to protect each other and end up stifling each other in different ways. I love that being Jewish means very different things to Ash and Rafe -- that Rafe takes ritual very seriously, and Ash not at all, and both of those things are valid. I love the whole thread about when and where they speak Yiddish; I love that they come from a poor Jewish community in London, that all of Ash's first girlfriends had Jewish names. I love that Ash is like "look, I don't tell people I'm Jewish because they probably say things that will make it hard for me to like them and I like liking people." I love that Lydia, who starts out with all the prejudices of her time, says several things, throughout the book, that make it harder for Ash and Rafe to like her.
And speaking of: wow, how much do I love that even though this takes place in the same town as Sweet Disorder, the protagonists from that book appear a grand total of once, and Phoebe and Lydia super don't like each other and probably never will? I am always so delighted when authors let sympathetic characters genuinely not get along for personality reasons! There's also a really good subplot about how Lydia and one of her friends approach friendship really differently, and have misunderstandings based on their different convictions about what friendship ought to be.
What a good romance novel. Or, more accurately: what a romance novel with 'FOR BECCA' written directly on it, probably in Hebrew letters.
innerbrat why I stayed up until 3 AM reading Rose Lerner's True Pretenses. BECCA: OK, so the hero of this Regency novel is a JEWISH CON ARTIST, and he and the heroine bond over the fact that she's an upper-class woman who politely gets things done and there are a lot of ways in which being an upper-class woman who manages to get things done within the rules of propriety in Regency England is BASICALLY LIKE being a con artist! And the other thing they bond over is the fact that they both have younger brothers that they mostly raised from when they were small, and now both of their brothers want to go off and have their own lives, and their older siblings are not ready to let them go be adults, so they have shared sibling issues!
DEBI: I would say this book had 'Becca-bait' written all over it, except: is there cross-dressing?
BECCA: THAT IS THE ONLY THING MISSING.
Guys, I really, really liked True Pretenses. It starts off kind of Brothers Bloom, with Ash and his brother Rafe, con artists extraordinaire:
RAFE: I am ready to go straight and stop swindling people. :(
ASH: OK. OK, this is fine. We can handle this, this is fine, we will find you an attractive rich woman to marry and you will be set for life!
So Ash finds Lydia, an attractive and hypothetically rich woman who can't get into her money until she marries, and who really wants to get into her money so she can continue doing charity work and supporting the town's Tory party. Unfortunately, her younger brother is SO DONE with politics and has decided he's not giving any more money to the cause, so until she gets into her own cash she's kind of stuck.
ASH: Hello, we are respectable individuals! Allow me to smoothly matchmake --
RAFE: HI YO LYDIA my brother thinks we should have a marriage of convenience so you can buy me an officer's commission and then get into your money, is that cool?
ASH: *facepalm*
LYDIA: Ummm. Well, OK, I ... see the advantages of this, but ... actually I kind of think Ash is the more attractive one, soooo what if we did the marriage of convenience thing instead?
ASH: UM. I ... you're cute but ... that was not the plan, and -- don't know if want??
Then Ash and Rafe get into a huge fight about the fact that actually Rafe is adopted and Ash never told him!
RAFE: HI YO LYDIA by the way my brother and I are CON ARTISTS and we are also TOTALLY JEWISH and I am LEAVING and never want to see his face AGAIN!
LYDIA: ....well, I feel deeply uncomfortable about all this information. On the other hand: still really want into my money. Ash, I think we can make this work!
ASH: Aren't you worried about the whole con artist thing?
LYDIA: It's true, you could easily blackmail me by telling everyone in the world about my terrible con artist marriage of convenience. On the other hand, I could blackmail you by telling everyone you're Jewish and have also committed many crimes, so we're probably even as far as mutually assured destruction goes.
So Ash and Lydia do the marriage of convenience plot, and it's my favorite kind of marriage of convenience plot, where they're both REALLY ENJOYING THEMSELVES pretending to be googly-eyed over each other, and they're both in on the joke -- but also both aware that the other is not necessarily trustworthy, and definitely aware that the power dynamics have the potential to get really weird in both directions, given, again, the mutually assured destruction/potential blackmail factor, not to mention the huge class and cultural issues.
Let me repeat: I love the class and cultural issues! I love how much of the book is Ash and Lydia actually working at liking each other, around all the weird feelings raised by Ash's background and Lydia's enormous amounts of privilege; I love that Lydia wonders if her attraction to Ash is her creepily fetishizing DANGER AND POVERTY!!, if Ash's attraction to her is as much about her fortune and her lovely house at Netherfields as it is about her as a person. And both of these things are probably a little bit true.
I also am so into how the book throws itself behind the thesis that the accepted way for women to get things politically done in a system where they have many rules to obey and little direct power -- smiling, dropping hints, making people like you -- uses basically all the same skills as being a con artist. Lydia is really good at getting things done! SHE MAKES A WONDERFUL CON ARTIST.
I love the sibling issues -- how all four of them are trying to protect each other and end up stifling each other in different ways. I love that being Jewish means very different things to Ash and Rafe -- that Rafe takes ritual very seriously, and Ash not at all, and both of those things are valid. I love the whole thread about when and where they speak Yiddish; I love that they come from a poor Jewish community in London, that all of Ash's first girlfriends had Jewish names. I love that Ash is like "look, I don't tell people I'm Jewish because they probably say things that will make it hard for me to like them and I like liking people." I love that Lydia, who starts out with all the prejudices of her time, says several things, throughout the book, that make it harder for Ash and Rafe to like her.
And speaking of: wow, how much do I love that even though this takes place in the same town as Sweet Disorder, the protagonists from that book appear a grand total of once, and Phoebe and Lydia super don't like each other and probably never will? I am always so delighted when authors let sympathetic characters genuinely not get along for personality reasons! There's also a really good subplot about how Lydia and one of her friends approach friendship really differently, and have misunderstandings based on their different convictions about what friendship ought to be.
What a good romance novel. Or, more accurately: what a romance novel with 'FOR BECCA' written directly on it, probably in Hebrew letters.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-30 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-30 11:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-05 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-05 11:14 pm (UTC)(Unless of course there is no hero and it's just heroines, ALSO GOOD.)
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Date: 2015-07-30 02:33 pm (UTC)... I JUST BOUGHT FIVE BAGS OF BOOKS AT THE BOOK SALE.
I am always so delighted when authors let sympathetic characters genuinely not get along for personality reasons!
Yesss. So often in romance trilogies/series, everybody ends up one big happy family. Which can be nice! But it does get a bit much after a while.
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Date: 2015-07-30 11:46 pm (UTC)Yes, right?? I love seeing characters that I (the reader) love annoying the heck out of other characters; it's such a good way to break down those awful 'good person/bad person' dichotomies you see in fiction, where there's only one way to be a good person, and all the good people like each other.
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Date: 2015-07-30 03:02 pm (UTC)[the wishlist is a holding area for books I can't justify buying yet due to already having hundreds of books bought and not read, but I try to trickle some through every so often]
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Date: 2015-07-30 11:43 pm (UTC)[Oh, so many books though. SO MANY.]
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Date: 2015-07-30 03:51 pm (UTC)Is Ash's name Asher?
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Date: 2015-07-30 11:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-30 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-30 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-30 05:57 pm (UTC)http://deadline.com/2015/07/little-women-series-michael-weatherly-cw-1201487185/
it's some kind of perfect storm of fannish trainwreck
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Date: 2015-07-30 11:38 pm (UTC)Wow. I am incredibly ... is excited the word? Let's go with excited. I can't WAIT for Spunky Grimdark Jo and Beth Who Is Too Good For This World to get in a fight over whether it's OK to kill other people to survive!!!
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Date: 2015-07-30 11:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-30 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-31 01:37 am (UTC)SOLD. I love those too.
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Date: 2015-07-31 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-31 03:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-31 11:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-31 02:39 pm (UTC)Once you might get away with, but three times probably wouldn't work over here as they have specific investigation units tracking that sort of thing.
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Date: 2015-07-31 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-02 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-01 12:39 pm (UTC)Spoilers:
1) Yeah, I definitely read this book for four solid hours last night and then got up this morning and finished it immediately.
2) I have already recommended it to a friend with the words "this guy is basically Eliot Spencer from Leverage except a different kind of criminal and with a brother and explicitly Jewish soooo THIS IS FOR YOU"
3) We're going to get a tie-in novel where Jamie finds his handsome gardener, right? Maybe straight-to-epub? And perhaps also a novel that's just about Abigail and what's-her-face the busom friend maids who have made a match? Also one about the woman who works in the coffeeshop! GIVE THESE BOOKS TO ME, ROSE LERNER, I WILL JUST SHOVEL MONEY AT YOU.
4) This was a very good book thank you
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Date: 2015-08-02 09:54 pm (UTC)I would read that tie-in novel! I would read tie-in novels about basically ALL the side characters, honestly -- the lesbian maids, the coffeeshop girl, Rafe, Lydia's former BFF and her FORBIDDEN CROSS-POLITICAL LOVE ...
To be fair I think the next one in the series is not about any of those people, but it IS about a maid and a butler and NO ONE IS SECRETLY NOBILITY (to the best of my knowledge) and I am mad excited about that because NO ONE writes Regency romances that don't involve rich people!
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Date: 2015-08-02 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-02 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-02 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-03 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-07 11:00 am (UTC)I'm kind of keen on Rose Lerner too, now: her Tumblr seems awesome, and she got stuck in to the fight over this appalling-sounding book. ICYMI? http://roselerner.tumblr.com/post/125859575893/letter-to-the-rwa-board-regarding-for-such-a-time
ETA: I should have said before I posted that the link contains discussion of a romance novel that seems to be straight-up Nazi apologism: if you'd prefer not to see it then I would hate for you to go in without warning. I'm sorry!
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Date: 2015-08-07 11:54 am (UTC)Also, yeeeeeeah, I am aware of that particular monstrosity. I was fond of Rose Lerner beforehand already just from having read these two books and what I've seen of her around the internet, but this has solidified that further.