To recap, I joined a readalong with Bookstooge of a book with a cover that looks like this:
and whose author looks like this:
… which gives you a better sense of what the book is like than the cover does, really.
Barbara Cartland turned out a book every two weeks for the last twenty years of her life. Keep that in mind.
So, I finished this book pretty quickly. I was expecting a formulaic romance, and that’s what I got. The book does not drag. I can’t say I was super invested in it emotionally, but that’s because I’m a cynical middle-aged woman. And when Richard thinks to himself,
Oh, God, he loved her so much.
page 109
… I believed him. Behold the magic of Barbara Cartland!
Now, this book remains a first draft, and there are some first draft-y things in it, such as a shawl starting out as “lace” in one chapter, and getting transformed into “green silk” in the next. My favorite of these “first draft” moments is this one:
But now — how can I bear to be his wife knowing that he is already be in love with someone else?
page 106
I mean, I can relate. The most comical and confusing typos always show up in my most emotional scenes … and I always get so carried away when re-reading the scenes, that I can never catch them myself.
So, all in all, this was a not-terrible romance novel that read sort of like an outline, because it basically was an outline. If the book had been re-written to be much longer, then I feel certain that many of the minor plot holes/historical vaguenesses would have been ironed out, plus the potential emotional heft might have been successfully deepened to actual emotional heft. But, every author has to say “done” at some point, and in Cartland’s case, that was after whipping up the first draft, because that was her business model. She let readers take care of the historical details and the emotions, handling them with suspended disbelief and imagination. And that’s fair.
There was only one thing I did not like: the angry almost-kiss. (“Almost” because the couple are interrupted by a maid, so they don’t actually kiss except once at the very end of the book.) Anyway … “angry” and “kissing,” they do not go well together, no precious, they do not. I do not want Tiana’s marriage to be the kind of relationship where Richard ever kisses her angrily. And in fact, in most of the book, that is quite out of line with his character. It just happens in one scene, where they both lost their tempers “horribly” (actually quite mildly), and then were nearly overcome with passion. I don’t know why this is a romance trope. I guess I’ve missed something during my four decades of living. But, tip for you guys, in the middle of a fight is not the greatest time to start kissing your beloved.
Out of Babel Books 
😂 so funny! I can’t believe Barbara Cartland wrote a book every two weeks for twenty years. A formula was the only way to do it, I guess, but even then, wow! Twenty years is a long time to maintain that pace. The picture of the author is gold! 😆
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Right? I feel like the dog really makes the picture.
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Yes!
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Glad you survived just fine 😀 It’s interesting that you were able to look at so many other parts of this book, because for me I was swept away because I was expecting to hate it, and hate it terribly and I didn’t. Which is why next December I hope to read a full length novel of hers and not one of these post-humous outlines. But it was a great intro, that’s for sure.
I was amazed at how even in this outline, she was able to convince me of X, Y and Z. I never rolled my eyes or felt “no way”.
You obviously also looked at this from a writer’s perspective. Do you do that with all your reads? Or just sometimes or are there criteria?
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Yeah, I mean, like you, I had low expectations. That’s why I didn’t hate it. I got a lot more generous when I found out in what context the book was written. I have definitely read romances that were less clean, and that had more belief-straining premises. Including more stupid misunderstandings.
I can’t turn off consuming content as a writer. You might say it’s a curse. But it doesn’t prevent me from enjoying things, as long as they are just telling a story and not preachin’.
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By the way, I can’t figure out how to like comments with this new format that just rolled out.
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Do you not see the “like” button on the comment?
If not, what kind of device are you using and what O/S?
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There is a like button when I visit the post as a reader, but historically, I have liked comments when replying to them via my author dashboard. That doesn’t seem to be an option any more.
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I do know that WP has made some massive changes to the dashboard recently.
I use the notification bell in the reader to like comments, or on the site itself. I have no experience doing it from any dashboard, so I’ve got nothing for you, sorry.
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NP. I was just letting you know why I wasn’t liking your comments temporarily. Now I have to use a workaround.
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