Title: The Bargain Series: Regency #1
Author: Mary Jo Putney
Published: October 1, 1988
Genre(s): Romance: Historical
Page Count: 352
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Forced to wed to keep her inheritance, independent Lady Jocelyn Kendal finds an outrageous solution: she proposes marriage to Major David Lancaster, an officer dying from his Waterloo wounds. In return for making her his wife, she will provide for his governess sister. But after the bargain is struck and the marriage is made, the major makes a shocking, miraculous recovery. Though they agree to an annulment, such matters take time. . .time enough for David to realize he is irrevocably in love with his wife.
Haunted by her past, Jocelyn refuses to trust the desire David ignites in her. She never counted on a real husband, least of all one who would entice her to be a real wife. But some bargains are made to be broken--and his skilled courtship is impossible to resist...
You can always count on me to pick up a marriage-of-convenience romance, and so obviously I was going to pick up Mary Jo Putney’s The Bargain sooner or later, especially when I found a copy for 50 cents at a library sale. This Regency romance is one of the author’s first books, with an original publication date of 1988. It’s also my first time with this author. And all I’m really going to say about that is that I seriously hope the author’s writing has improved in the last 30 years.
What I really like about The Bargain is that the titular bargain is pretty unusual, even in a genre that abounds with marriages of convenience. The protagonists, Jocelyn and David, get married for their mutual benefit and not out of love. Standard stuff, especially in 1814, but what struck me about this novel was that the “benefit” Jocelyn gets out of the marriage is that David is, literally, on his deathbed and probably won’t live out 48 hours. I’ve never read a romance where one protagonist is banking on the other dying!
Of course, David doesn’t die, and that’s when things get sticky. Jocelyn is the most unavailable of emotionally unavailable heroines, the reasons for which are the Big Secret that throws conflict into the plot. Eventually, everything is resolves and our pair end up quite happy with each other in spite of the fact the marriage wasn’t meant to last a week.
As I said, The Bargain was originally published in 1988, which was the tail-end of the infamous Bodice Ripper era. Interestingly, this book didn’t seem dated at all. It’s a thoroughly modern romance, and I wouldn’t have found it odd to read the exact same book today in 2018. I think that was nice, to see an older romance hold up so well. (Granted, I love Old School romance a lot and wouldn’t have complained in that case either.) Based on this, I’m willing to bet that Putney was ahead of her time in certain respects, and that interests me in the rest of her novels.
Now, why did I only give this 2/5 stars? Simple: The Bargain is very poorly written. The ideals are there, and the book is full of potential. But nothing comes together as it should.
The entire second half of the novel is full of tension and drama and a couple of Big Reveals. But they’re sloppy and awkward, and read like the work of an amateur. The plot doesn’t unfold like a well-wrought story; it’s slapped against the reader’s face like a clumsy fish. As we all know, a good idea only gets you so far, and in this case, that wasn’t too far at all.
Sadly, The Bargain held a lot of promise that it never delivered on.
