Proof by Seduction
Feb. 1st, 2013 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficTitle: Proof by Seduction
Author: Courtney Milan
Genre: Historical romance
Proof by Seduction is Courtney Milan's first book and it shows. There is a good book in here, but it's ossified in a mountain of cliches. Like with the other books of hers I've read, she has a heroine who is focused on becoming independent and sensitive as to how falling for a powerful man can trap her. Unlike in the other books of hers I've read, the man in this case never won me over.
Jenny Keeble is a woman of unknown birth, raised at a boarding school paid for by an unknown benefactor. At eighteen, she became a man's mistress because it seemed her only way out, only to be abandoned. She now works as a gypsy fortune teller called Madame Esmerelda. Gareth, Lord Blakely, comes into her life because she's been *hem* "advising" his cousin, Ned, and he wants to prove her a fraud.
The problem is, it doesn't feel like Milan is ever really invested in the story of Jenny as faux gypsy. She only appears in costume in the first scene. That's the only time we see a reading, too. We're told she has a number of other clients, but we never see them. It is set up as a test of wills between Jenny and Gareth over her deception, but she flat out admits she's a fraud pretty early on.
Instead, the first hundred or so pages is devoted to burning looks and long internal monologues and Gareth accidentally seeing her in a shift and getting a woody and Gareth barging into her flat and throwing her into walls and then glaring manfully. It's just a bucket o' old school Harlequin cliche, and Gareth comes off as a complete asshole. We learn that he has no social skills and was never loved as a child, but his behavior early on towards a woman with neither physical or social power to fend him off is really distasteful. But Jenny of course is totally into him, which Milan never sold me on. So there's a lot of no, no I mustn't, but I shall going on.
Once we get past the gypsy plot, the tension between them becomes Jenny's determination not to become a mistress again, and Gareth's unwillingness to see that giving her things makes her feel like a whore. Like in Duchess War, Gareth is enormously priveleged and completely unable to envision what life is like for someone like Jenny.
Unfortunately, in this book, despite Jenny's determination to remain independent, in the end, Gareth solves all her problems for her. She's desperately poor for much of the book after a former client robs her--she can't go to the police because she was committing fraud at the time. Well, Gareth swoops in and sends the man to Australia. Then he marries her, and she never has to worry about money again! He also promises to defend her honor from now until the end of time. And though to a perspective native to the timeline, marriage makes her clearly not a mistress, what she was trying so hard to avoid, it does not really obviate the power imbalance she was fighting against. She spends much of the book trying to reinvent herself as an entrepreneur. But in the end, her next career is just wife, which feels like a sell out.
(One point in favor of the ending: I had been expecting to find out, the whole book, that Jenny was secretly the daughter of a baron or something. But no. Her birth, and her benefactor, are never elucidated. Gareth investigates her and even goes to her boarding school at one point, but all he finds out is that she had a really shitty childhood. We're left to just assume that she's somebody's bastard, and whose exactly she is is unimportant.)
The most interesting character in the book is Ned, the credulous cousin. He's like an overenthusiastic puppy. Not very bright, not much of a planner, but very, very enthusiastic. At one point, a plan of his backfires and he ends up compromising a lady. The best scene in the book is when he goes to see her afterwards. He proposes, but rather expects her to turn it down because they barely know each other. Instead, she says well, you've got station, I don't mind your company, are you going to get in the way of my doing what I want? Ned: No. The she says, "You'll do," and they get married. She fails to discover he's a manic depressive with a compulsive gambling habit, but then that's what the next book is for.
In conclusion, I can see Milan's authorly trajectory in this, and had I not just read her most recent work, I might have thought it quite good. But comparatively, it's really, really rough. So I'd say, unless you're a completist, give it a miss.
Author: Courtney Milan
Genre: Historical romance
Proof by Seduction is Courtney Milan's first book and it shows. There is a good book in here, but it's ossified in a mountain of cliches. Like with the other books of hers I've read, she has a heroine who is focused on becoming independent and sensitive as to how falling for a powerful man can trap her. Unlike in the other books of hers I've read, the man in this case never won me over.
Jenny Keeble is a woman of unknown birth, raised at a boarding school paid for by an unknown benefactor. At eighteen, she became a man's mistress because it seemed her only way out, only to be abandoned. She now works as a gypsy fortune teller called Madame Esmerelda. Gareth, Lord Blakely, comes into her life because she's been *hem* "advising" his cousin, Ned, and he wants to prove her a fraud.
The problem is, it doesn't feel like Milan is ever really invested in the story of Jenny as faux gypsy. She only appears in costume in the first scene. That's the only time we see a reading, too. We're told she has a number of other clients, but we never see them. It is set up as a test of wills between Jenny and Gareth over her deception, but she flat out admits she's a fraud pretty early on.
Instead, the first hundred or so pages is devoted to burning looks and long internal monologues and Gareth accidentally seeing her in a shift and getting a woody and Gareth barging into her flat and throwing her into walls and then glaring manfully. It's just a bucket o' old school Harlequin cliche, and Gareth comes off as a complete asshole. We learn that he has no social skills and was never loved as a child, but his behavior early on towards a woman with neither physical or social power to fend him off is really distasteful. But Jenny of course is totally into him, which Milan never sold me on. So there's a lot of no, no I mustn't, but I shall going on.
Once we get past the gypsy plot, the tension between them becomes Jenny's determination not to become a mistress again, and Gareth's unwillingness to see that giving her things makes her feel like a whore. Like in Duchess War, Gareth is enormously priveleged and completely unable to envision what life is like for someone like Jenny.
Unfortunately, in this book, despite Jenny's determination to remain independent, in the end, Gareth solves all her problems for her. She's desperately poor for much of the book after a former client robs her--she can't go to the police because she was committing fraud at the time. Well, Gareth swoops in and sends the man to Australia. Then he marries her, and she never has to worry about money again! He also promises to defend her honor from now until the end of time. And though to a perspective native to the timeline, marriage makes her clearly not a mistress, what she was trying so hard to avoid, it does not really obviate the power imbalance she was fighting against. She spends much of the book trying to reinvent herself as an entrepreneur. But in the end, her next career is just wife, which feels like a sell out.
(One point in favor of the ending: I had been expecting to find out, the whole book, that Jenny was secretly the daughter of a baron or something. But no. Her birth, and her benefactor, are never elucidated. Gareth investigates her and even goes to her boarding school at one point, but all he finds out is that she had a really shitty childhood. We're left to just assume that she's somebody's bastard, and whose exactly she is is unimportant.)
The most interesting character in the book is Ned, the credulous cousin. He's like an overenthusiastic puppy. Not very bright, not much of a planner, but very, very enthusiastic. At one point, a plan of his backfires and he ends up compromising a lady. The best scene in the book is when he goes to see her afterwards. He proposes, but rather expects her to turn it down because they barely know each other. Instead, she says well, you've got station, I don't mind your company, are you going to get in the way of my doing what I want? Ned: No. The she says, "You'll do," and they get married. She fails to discover he's a manic depressive with a compulsive gambling habit, but then that's what the next book is for.
In conclusion, I can see Milan's authorly trajectory in this, and had I not just read her most recent work, I might have thought it quite good. But comparatively, it's really, really rough. So I'd say, unless you're a completist, give it a miss.