CBR16 Book 60: "The Beast Takes a Bride" by Julie Anne Long

Page count: 384 pages

Rating: 3.75 stars

Disclaimer: This was an ARC from NetGalley. It hasn't affected my opinions in any way

Spoiler warning - this review will contain some discussion of plot points I found difficult, so you may want to skip some parts of it until you've read the book

Alexandra Bellamy has been taking care of her father and her siblings since her mother died. She has no dowry to speak of and knows her father has massive gambling debts. So when her father announces that the impressive and formidable war hero, Colonel Magnus Brightwall, will not only clear his debts, but pay an additional five thousand pounds for her hand in marriage, she doesn't really have any choice but to accept the offer. Unfortunately, only hours after the ceremony, Magnus witnesses something that makes him convinced his wife has betrayed him, and instead of taking Alexandra with him on his diplomatic posting to Spain, he leaves her in his townhouse in London, with barely any communication between them. 

Their reunion five years later takes place in Newgate prison, where Alexandra has unfortunately found herself imprisoned after being involved in hijinks involving her impulsive cousin, an angry duke and possibly a stolen carriage. Magnus shows up to fetch her, but instead of taking her to the house she's lived in alone for the past five years, he takes her to The Grand Palace of the Thames, where they will stay while he's preparing to sell the townhouse. There are already all sort of rumours swirling because of Magnus and Alexandra's long separation, and now, with this new scandal, Magnus is worried about his reputation. So he's made a plan (without at any point consulting his wife about her thoughts on the matter). 

So Alexandra is basically told that they will appear together in public for enough social events to convince the public that their marriage is strong and loving and clearly gossiping about them is wrong and uncouth. Then Magnus will sell the townhouse, and ship Alexandra off to America, where as long as she agrees to this scheme, she will have a house of her own and a generous allowance. If she says no, he'll cut her off entirely, and she'll be forced to live with one of her siblings, entirely dependent on their charity.

One of my friends put this book down halfway because she was so annoyed at Magnus and the completely outrageous way he treats Alexandra in the beginning, because of his pride and insecurities. She needed me to finish the book and convince me that it was worth finishing and reassure her that she wasn't going to have a rage aneurysm because of Magnus' continued mistreatment of his lovely wife. I question the opinions of readers who feel that Magnus' early behaviour is entirely within reason, and he's correct in treating Alexandra the way he does. I'm a member of Julie Anne Long's fan group on Facebook, and amusingly, on release day (this Tuesday), someone posted a very well-written AITA from Magnus' point of view. Unsurprisingly, most people agreed that he was an A. 

So what was it that kept me from throwing this book across the room (metaphorically, I would never risk my beloved e-readers in such a way) in a fit of rage? It is to Julie Anne Long's credit that she manages to write so well that even when I want to thump him, I also have some sympathy with Magnus. Because get to see what both Alexandra and Magnus are experiencing and thinking, the reader is first of all very aware of the remorse that Alexandra feels about her impulsive actions that led to her being immediately estranged from her husband, but also how conflicted Magnus feels. My main gripe with the story is that while the reader gets insight into his insecurities and tormented thoughts about his wife and his marriage, he never really shares them with his wife. 

PLOT SPOILERS IN THE NEXT BIT:

While the man we meet in the present day of the novel is the impressive Colonel Magnus Brightwell, known for his heroic actions during the Napoleonic war (he even nearly died saving the Duke of Valkirk's life on the battlefield), for most of his life, Magnus has been unwanted and tolerated on sufferance. He was found on the doorstep of a Yorkshire manor house and spent his early life working the worst possible jobs of the household to earn his keep. Because of his rough appearance, he was given the nickname "Beast" early on, and it seems to have stuck with him. No one showed him any affection or kindness, so when he eventually learned to shoot, and won a marksman competition as a teenager, he spent the prize money buying himself a comission to the army, where he rose in the ranks and earned respect and acclaim he'd always dreamed of. So the dude has a chip on his shoulder, and a whole host of insecurities, fair enough.

However, for far too much of the book, Magnus (despite claiming to have been in love with her since the first time he saw her) doesn't seem to see Alexandra as a person, a woman with wants and needs and dreams of her own. He was taken in not only by her beauty, but her kindness, charm and unfailing loyalty to her family, but because he was so convinced of his own worthlessness and couldn't possible imagine her actually accepting his suit if she was given any sort of choic, he manipulated the situation so she literally had no choice but to accept him. If she refused him, her family would be destitute. He didn't care about what her life had been like before he literally bought himself a pretty wife. Having not really had any conversations of note with said wife before they married, Magnus had no idea that she had comforted herself with a deeply innocent and chaste infatuation with her brother's tutors for some months before she ever even met Magnus. Both parties were extremely aware that they would never be together, and the romance was never going to end in marriage between a poor scholar and a viscount's daughter. 

Alexandra broke it off as soon as she agreed to marry Magnus, but a few hours after the wedding, she sees her former suitor at the garden gate (where they used to meet and chat - never anything more than that) and he kisses her goodbye. The thing that so upsets Magnus is seeing that for a brief moment, Alexandra doesn't fight back, but lets herself enjoy her first kiss. His sense of betrayal at seeing her chastely say farewell to someone who had offered her solace for a few months is deeply misguided. Not even when Alexandra is entirely honest about the situation, and apologises for her misstep and for having hurt Magnus, is he able to listen to her or understand her. He goes off in a snit to be a diplomat in Spain, leaving his wife to languish alone and rejected in his town house in London. She's the one who has to contend with the rumours and malicious whispers about why they aren't living together, and she has to keep herself and her behaviour above reproach in respect of his precious reputation. The one night she throws caution to the wind and does something ill-advised with her cousin, she ends up arrested. Even when Magnus realises how judgmental he's been, he never actually apologises for his actions and his harsh and cold treatment of Alexandra. Where he could have had an open and honest conversation with his wife, and owned up to being a judgy asshole, he instead manipulates the situation once more, to make it possible for her to "choose him" this time around. Which she does. 

Magnus doesn't think he could ever get a beautiful and accomplished woman like Alexandra by honest means, and since all his life he has had to strategise and scheme to reach his goals, he does the same to get himself a wife. He just never seems to properly acknowledge that this was wrong and that Alexandra deserved so much better. Not better than him, because he is clearly not a bad person, just a proud and prickly one, but she deserved respect, an actual choice and a proper and grovelling apology for having had those choices taken away from her, and then being super harshly judged for saying goodbye to a part of her past and innocently responding to being kissed. She didn't even initiate the kiss, she just allowed it to happen and didn't forcefully push away the young man who kissed her. She never denied what she did, and she was deeply and honestly apologetic immediately after the fact, knowing that what she did was unfortunate and clearly hurtful to Magnus. The fact that he in return never apologises properly to her for his mistreatment of her, both five years ago and early on in the present, left a sour taste in my mouth that keeps me from giving this book a full four stars. 

Pride is clearly a major theme in the story. At one point, Alexandra mentions that she's reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (I was going to get all snippy about how it was published "by a lady" - but this book seems to be set five years after the end of the Napoleonic wars, at which point Ms. Austen had been dead for a few years, and the true identity of the author would have been revealed, so snippiness retracted). I suppose the reader is supposed to draw parallells between Mr. Darcy and Magnus, but while Mr. Darcy initially delivers one of the worst proposals in literary history, he then takes great strides to change, broaden his horizons and makes efforts to be less proud and imperious before he proposes to Elizabeth once more. Magnus just buys himself a wife and seems upset when it is revealed that she had a past and lived a (very innocent) life before she ever met him. 

END SPOILERS

One of the things I enjoy about The Palace of Rogues series is that it's a bit like a long running TV show. Instead of a "mystery of the week", we get a "romance of the week", which introduces new characters and plot beats for a while, but we also get to spend time with recurring characters we've come to know and love. I've seen some reviews complain that they thought the hijinks of the supporting characters took up too much space and detracted from the main romance, but I disagree. If it hadn't been for the delightful other guests at the Grand Palace on the Thames, not to mention ditzy housemaid Dot and handsome footman Ben Pike's slowly developing feelings for one another, I would have rated the book even lower. This is the first time I've rated a book 3.75 stars, and my annoyance at never getting a proper grovelling scene from Magnus is balanced out by several laugh out loud moments involving other residents at the boarding house, not to mention the delightful sequence where Mr. Delacorte takes our protagonists and Dot to a late-night donkey race. 

The previous book in the series, My Season of Scandal, is my favourite Julie Anne Long book since my all-time favourite, most beloved What I Did for a Duke. The previous one before that, To Tame a Wild Rogue, was also delightful and a five-star read for me (if a lower five-star than My Season of Scandal). They can't all be winners. I'm still very happy I was granted an ARC of this (thank you, Netgalley!) and am happy that the series is clearly continuing for a while yet. 

Judging a book by its cover: I have mentioned before that I find a lot of the covers of this series just plain bad. Thankfully, this is one of the better ones. I feel the cover artist could have made more of an effort not to make Magnus' trousers look like blue jeans, but I guess we can't have everything. Alexandra looks pretty much as described in the book, and the shade of lilac she's wearing is lovely. 

Rating the Palace of Rogues series

1. My Season of Scandal - 5 stars

2. To Tame a Wild Rogue - 5 stars

3. After Dark with the Duke - 4 stars

4. Lady Derring Takes a Lover - 4 stars

5. The Beast Takes A Bride - 3.75 stars

6. You Were Made to Be Mine - 3.5 stars

7. Angel in a Devil's Arms - 3.5 stars

8. I'm Only Wicked with You - 3 stars

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 59: "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup" by John Carreyrou

Page count: 352 pages

Audio book length: 11 hrs 37 minutes

Rating: 4 stars

Nowhere Book Bingo: From a genre you've never read (true crime)

CBR16 Bingo: Fiasco (Theranos was a massive fraud and a fiasco)

I've owned this book since 2020 and am pretty sure I picked it up in an e-book sale because of the many Cannonball reviews I've read about it over the years. Not being particularly interested in the tech world or medical science, and certainly, not someone who reads a lot of business news, I didn't really hear about this case as it was unfolding, and I'm aware that there have been podcasts, a documentary and a mini-series starring Amanda Seyfried about the scandal, but this book was pretty much forgotten in my e-book collection until the Nowhere Books bingo required me to find a book from a genre I've never read.

Readers of my reviews will know that I have certain genres I prefer - romance, fantasy, YA, the occasional mystery or sci-fi novel. If I read nonfiction, it's usually historical biographies, celebrity autobiographies or something I need to read for work. Nevertheless, I like to challenge myself, so over the years I've read a LOT of different books in so many different genres. It was genuinely a challenge to come up with one I hadn't already tried. My husband suggested I look up subgenres of nonfiction, as it was clear that was where I'd find something that might fit the bill. When True Crime came up, I realised that would work. I know that lots of people find True Crime fascinating, but I just don't really see the appeal in exploring grisly murder cases or other horrific crimes. This book, which I remembered that I had on my shelf didn't seem to involve any murders, so it would probably not traumatise me too much. 

John Carreyrou is the journalist who wrote the Wall Street Journal articles which began to expose Elizabeth Holmes as a fraud and brought attention to the very shady business practices of her tech company Theranos. He later developed his thorough research into this book, where he details how Miss Holmes, a young and charming Stanford dropout managed to bamboozle the tech and business world for years, promising her company could deliver quick, accurate and almost pain-free blood tests with devices so small and portable they would be possible for the public to have in their homes. At one point, Theranos was valued at 10 billion dollars, without ever having actually managed to produce the testing machines or blood testing results they were promising.

Holmes was beautiful and persuasive, and clearly excellent at fundraising for her company. Along with her boyfriend, Sunny Balwani, who was COO of Theranos, they managed to perpetrate their fraud for so long by intimidating and threatening their employees, firing anyone who spoke up about their suspicions of underhanded dealings, and because very few of their investors actually understood the science behind what they were trying to do. Holmes was featured in a number of highly flattering articles, and the board of directors of Theranos at various points included several senators, former secretaries of state (including Henry Kissinger), a former secretary of defence, an admiral, and a general - all seduced by Holmes' promising tale of deception. 

Once Carreyrou started investigating the case, he had a hard time finding people willing to talk to him, since Holmes and Balwani made all their employees sign iron-clad NDAs and were fiercely litigious towards anyone they thought might be a threat to their company. However, Carreyrou were able to publish several critical articles, which again led to investigations into Theranos' business practices and inspections of their laboratories. The results were disastrous for the company, proving that not only were the test results their labs produced extremely unreliable and could endanger patients because of it, but they were mostly using equipment from other producers to get their results since none of the proprietary machines made by Theranos worked at all. They had not only misled their investors, they had put countless patients' lives in danger with their inaccurate blood tests. 

It was a fascinating story, and I will probably check out the HBO documentary and the mini-series at some point as well. Now, having read this, I can't really think of any genres I haven't tried at least once.

Judging a book by its cover: Some editions of this book feature a gloved hand holding up a tiny vial of blood, but my edition, and most that I've seen, have this fully black cover with the bold red title. Not exactly the most exciting, but the contents of the book more than might up for it.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 58: "Much Ado About Nada" by Uzma Jalaluddin

Page count: 320 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Smart Bitches Summer Bingo: Retelling (modern retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion)

CBR16 Bingo: Bollywood (set in Canada with desi protagonists)

The absolutely last place Nada Syed wants to be is the big annual Muslim convention in downtown Toronto. She is nearly 30 years old, single and lives at home with her parents and two brothers. If she goes to the convention, there is a high chance that she'll run into her old mentor, formerly her mother's best friend. She might also run into her mentor's son, her former business partner, who promised to help her launch an advice app, but stole her ideas and launched a rival app of his own shortly before the official release, making Nada's app a dud. 

Now Nada's friend Haleema is getting married, and her fiancée Zayn's parents run the convention. Haleema obviously wants to introduce her future husband to her maid of honour. What no one knows, because Nada has made very sure not to tell anyone, is that while she's never met him, she knows of him from his brother Baz, who will also be at the convention. Nada hasn't seen Baz for six years, and they have a long and complicated past between them, some of it romantic. When they finally do meet again, Baz treats her like a stranger, which she can understand, but it still hurts. During the days of the convention, their paths keep crossing, and with each new meeting, Nada can't help but wonder what would have happened if she's given them a proper chance all those years ago, instead of breaking both Baz' and her own heart.

Jalaluddin's first novel, Ayesha at Last, was a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, set in Canada. Her second novel, Hana Khan Carries On, had a lot of elements from You've Got Mail. In this novel, Jalaluddin takes inspiration from Persuasion, and even includes some direct references to the characters and some quotes. It, therefore, shouldn't come as a surprise to the reader that Nada and Baz have a past, and that there are unresolved issues between them, as well as regret and longing colouring their current interactions. 

Nada and Baz first met when they were eleven, at Sunday school. Baz was the new boy and Nada became his relentless bully, trying to gain popularity and fit in. It's pretty bold of the author to show such a negative side of Nada as early as chapter two. By the time Nada and Baz meet again, she has realised how badly she acted and apologises to Baz, who forgives her. They become friends, and later, when they are students together, romantic feelings spring up between them. But they are young and inexperienced, and Nada's parents disapprove of their relationship, so they have to date in secret. Having to lie to everyone she knows and keeping Baz secret from her friends and family is difficult, and in the end, Nada's insecurities and doubt lead to them breaking up.

While Nada's parents indirectly contribute to Nada and Baz's breakup, they are not portrayed as bad people. They care a lot about their three children, who all have challenges in different ways. Nada's elder brother got divorced and has joint custody of twin girls, but still lives in a small apartment in his parents' house. Nada is worried that he is depressed and unable to move on with his life. She takes him to a dating event during the convention to help him meet new women, and maybe get a new chance at love. Nada's younger brother has a rare genetic disease that makes him wheelchair-bound, but despite his parents' protectiveness, he clearly has ambitions and plans for the future that don't involve living at home forever.

The need to change and move forward with one's life is a major theme in the book. Nada and her brothers all need to make some changes and take steps to better their futures. Nada realises that she also has to deal with her former professional failure, and after many years of being depressed and dejected, she is finally getting new ideas and possible plans for new and useful apps to develop. 

Normally I'm not a big fan of second chance romances, but as with the novel it's homaging, this was really sweet. I also liked the subplot with Baz and Zayn's Muslim boyband, and their adoring audience throwing extra hijabs on the stage to show their enthusiasm. While I wouldn't say Jalaluddin has achieved pre-order status yet, she is absolutely someone whose books I would probably pay full price for, since I've now read and really liked three of her novels. I'm already looking forward to seeing what she will do next.                                                      

Judging a book by its cover: All of Jalaluddin's covers have fairly different designs, yet each of them also features a woman with a hijab, so there's certainly no doubt that she writes about Muslims. Of the three books I've read, I think I prefer Hana Khan Carries On to this one, but they are all nice. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read