Book Review: One Night for Love by Mary Balogh

Imagine it’s your wedding: a sunny spring morning in the English countryside. Your mother has been planning this since you were a toddler, and everyone who’s anyone is there in the church pews. You hear the doors opening in the back, everyone stands, you look down the aisle to see your bride…

And in runs some waifish woman, with unfashionable clothes and windswept hair.

Now also imagine this selfsame ragamuffin who just crashed your wedding…is also your wife. Your wife, who you left for dead on the Peninsula two years before (less than 24 hours after you got married in the first place, might I add). Except she’s clearly not dead, and you, sir, have some explaining to do. Especially to your poor mother.

So, yeah. That’s basically the first couple chapters of One Night for Love (as narrated by me). This is a sweet-yet-dramalicious Regency romance about second chances, skinny dipping, and…something else that starts with S, for the sake of alliteration. And if the opening sequence hooks you, there’s a good chance the rest of it will also be a hit. I don’t really have anything bad to say about what Mary Balogh has done here, honestly. I approve of her writing style, her characterization, the chemistry between the protagonists, and the plot in general. It’s all very well done.

I guess the thing that I liked the most about this book is that it’s less a story about falling in love and more about two people who love each other and are attempting to find out if their relationship could be sustainable. From the moment Lily Doyle stumbles into the church, ruining Neville’s ultra-fancy ton wedding to his best-friend-slash-cousin, there’s not much question of whether their feelings for each other have changed—it’s pretty clear they’re still very much in love. A super-rushed battle-field marriage it might have been, but it was also a love match.

But the question is, now that Lily and Neville are back home in England, under more or less “normal” circumstances, how on earth could this relationship possibly work? The wartime situation blurred the class lines, but Neville was always a noble, with wealth, land, and prestige. Lily, meanwhile, is an independent spirit, daughter of a common soldier, illiterate, unaccomplished, and completely bewildered by Neville’s world. Forget anything else going on between them, it’s enough that these two people are completely incompatible just by virtue of who they were born to be.

Important note: Neville never, ever makes Lily feel bad about her “deficiences.” He thinks she is just fine the way she is, never asks her to change herself or to really be anyone except who she is. So. Important. It’s not good to shame people for things that, actually, they should never be made to feel bad about. Good going, Neville!

She is beautiful. She is everything that is grace and light and joy. He is in love with her. More than that, he loves her. But she can never be the Countess of Kilbourne, except perhaps in name. Cinderellas are fine in the pages of a fairy tale and might except to live happily ever after with their princes. In real life things do not work that way.

Of course, something’s gotta give, and Lily does eventually undergo a less-extreme Pygmalion-style transformation, under the tutelage of Neville’s energetic maiden aunt. But learning how to read and play piano and curtsey properly doesn’t fundamentally change who Lily is; these things only make her more comfortable as she moves through the British aristocracy. Here, I really like that Balogh shows her heroine improving herself for herself. It’s no surprise to anyone (who knows anything about romance novels) that a woman creating a full life for herself, not dependent upon, but possibly including, a man is really what One Night for Love is all about.

“I am all the persons I have ever been,” she said, “and all the experiences I have ever lived. I do not have to make choices. I do not have to deny one identity in order to claim another. I am who I am. I am Lily.”

This, my friends, is why romance is such an important genre.

Now: the drama. Super wonderful character progression aside, I did mention drama at the beginning of this review. That is a thing. Mostly, it consists of secret marriages (not Lily and Neville’s), long-lost children, assassination attempts, and mysterious figures in black cloaks. Yeah, it’s all just a little over the top, especially considering that there’s already quite a bit going on just in the “bare bones” romance between Lily and Neville. But, you know, Balogh is a good writer, so I wasn’t too thrown off by the slightly too theatrical shenanigans.

Plus, I think there’s something fun about story with a lot of side-plot ruckus. Keeps it interesting, you know.

Plus, part two, the wonderfully nuanced and fleshed out romance between Lily and Neville carried One Night for Love. I loved them as a couple, I believed in them, I rooted for them, and I would read this book again—just for the two of them.

“I want you to know something, though, Lily. Not so that you will have one more burden to shoulder, but so that you will know that some things are unchanged and unchangeable. I loved you when I married you. I love you today. I will love you with my dying breath. I have loved you and will love you during every moment between those time spans.”

And with that, I will end this.