Title: A Summer to Remember Series: Bedwyn Prequels #2
Author: Mary Balogh
Published: August 4, 2002
Genre(s): Romance: Historical
Page Count: 361
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Mary Balogh weaves a tantalizing web of wit and seduction in her new novel—an irresistible tale of two unlikely lovers and one unforgettable summer.
Kit Butler is cool, dangerous, one of London’s mostinfamous bachelors—marriage is the last thing on his mind. But Kit’s family has other plans. Desperate to thwart his father’s matchmaking, Kit needs a bride...fast. Enter Miss Lauren Edgeworth.
A year after being abandoned at the altar, Lauren has determined that marriage is not for her. When these two fiercely independent souls meet, sparks fly—and a deal is hatched. Lauren will masquerade as Kit’s intended if he agrees to provide a passionate, adventurous, unforgettable summer. When summer ends, she will break off the engagement, rendering herself unmarriageable and leaving them both free. Everything is going perfectly—until Kit does the unthinkable: He begins to fall in love. A summer to remember is not enough for him. But how can he convince Lauren to be his...for better, for worse, for the rest of their lives?
So here we are on a nice day in Hyde Park, minding our own business while we take our morning constitutional. And then there’s a terrible commotion—how shocking indeed! We approach, and it turns out there’s a half-naked viscount engaged in fisticuffs with three raggedy commoners. Why, you ask? Well, really dear, it doesn’t matter. Fighting unclothed in public is really not the Done Thing. Tsk tsk. That nasty viscount.
To inform the incurably nosy enquirer, Viscount Ravensberg is fighting because these men were sexually harassing a defenseless young woman:
“And bear in mind for the future that when milkmaids say no they probably mean no. It is a simple fact of language. Yes means yes, no means no.”
Anyway. Amongst the most improper viscount’s audience is Miss Lauren Edgeworth, a respectable young lady who really doesn’t know what to do about the swoony flutters that this entire scene gives her.
The last time we saw Lauren Edgeworth, her long-awaited fairytale wedding was rudely crashed by her fiancé’s long-lost secret wife. (That’s another story for another time, and if you want to know about how that went down, read One Night for Love.) Clearly, Lauren is heartbroken and super not into the concept of matrimony or men. All she wants to do is buy a house somewhere and live in spinsterly bliss and visit her friends every now and then. Problem: her friends probably aren’t going to support this plan. So she goes to London to appease them before she makes her getaway, and then promptly witnesses Kit, Viscount Ravensberg, fighting shirtless in Hyde Park. Oh dear.
Kit, for his part, isn’t having a very nice year. He’s Slightly Tortured, and now must go visit his estranged family and take his place as Dutiful Heir—which includes marrying the woman his family picked out for him (a woman who rejected him three years ago for seemingly no good reason). Kit and his rakeish friends make a bet than he can marry the prim and proper Miss Edgeworth within 6 weeks, but that doesn’t turn out well.
After a few weeks, Kit realizes that Lauren is a person with feelings, a person that he likes, and that it was very terrible of him to reduce her to the object of a wager. Duh, Kit.
He was deeply mortified to realize that in consenting to make a lady—a perfectly innocent lady—the subject of a sordid wager he really had tainted the honor he held so dear. It had seemed faintly amusing at the time, before she had become a person to him.
Kit, being an actually honorable, nice person in spite of his behavior, tries his best to make amends, and he and Lauren come up with a brilliant plan for everyone to get what they want. A fake engagement! As one does. Lauren and Kit will announce an engagement, get Kit back on good terms with his family, and then happily part ways as friends. It’s a win-win.
So then it’s off to Kit’s ancestral estate for…A Summer to Remember.
(See what I did there?)
Okay. So firstly, what I really enjoy about this book is that it’s a very subdued romance. Kit and Lauren’s love story is very chill and sweet and graudal. Kit has a history of uber-passionate emotional affairs that never last long, and what he notices about his relationship with Lauren is how calm and reasonable he feels about all of it.
Kit starts off by liking Lauren as a person, and then comes to see over the course of the summer that she would fit very nicely into his life and be a good partner for him. He desires her, yes, but not in a wild, unreasonable way that isn’t based on anything substantial. He loves her, but he’s not crazy about her. (Compared to his feelings about Lady Frejya, his former lover, who…doesn’t even seem to be a nice person?)
She really would be a perfect wife for him, a perfect countess, a perfect member of his family. He had become convinced during the past few days that he could find contentment with her. As for passion—well, passion had never worked for him. …He would be able to to trust contentment, relax into it, grow old with it. With her.
And Lauren loves Kit in return, more strongly than she thought she was capable of (being a buttoned-up, very proper young lady), but is concerned that she’s keeping him from a more “passionate” relationship with someone else.
I really like all of this, guys. In this book, Mary Balogh tells a happy, nice, romantic tale that…isn’t even that unrealistic. These are some real people dealing with real people problems and trying to see if their lives would fit well together. A Summer to Remember is entirely plausible. There’re family difficulties, personal issues, and romantic issues, but nothing is over the top or absolutely implausible from a “real life” perspective. I totally buy this.
And of course, Lauren, for her part, has her own shit to deal with. Like, for example, a completely shattered heart. The supposed “love of her life” married someone else, after all. Not only that, but when Neville, her fiancé, was removed from the picture, the life she’d wanted so desperately also fell out of her grasp. As an orphan, Lauren spent all her time trying very hard to get people to like her, afraid everyone would abandon her if she didn’t make herself perfectly well-behaved and agreeable. Neville’s family was also her family, and when she couldn’t marry him, she felt that she lost out on a stable home life as well. Now, all she has to look forward to is a life of perpetual aloneness, and she doesn’t even know who she is, since she’s spent so many years suppressing herself in order to be more palatable to everyone else around her. Oops. So for Lauren, this fake engagement is a way to have an adventure before she settles into a boring existence on her own.
A Summer to Remember not only sees Kit and Lauren falling in love with each other, but Lauren Edgeworth falling in love with herself. Spending time with Kit and doing the things he “dares” her to do (like horseback riding, swimming, and tree climbing) gives her the freedom to enjoy herself without the pressure of societal expectations. I really, really, really love that about this book. Once again: romance proves that it is the genre to come to when you’re looking for strong women on a journey towards self-actualization. High five, Mary Balogh!
Sensible, mature adult people figuring out both themselves and their feelings is exactly the content I am here for, and Balogh has (so far) proved to be an author who excels at this type of plotline. I loved the sedate, grown-up tone of the love story. I loved the multifaceted protagonists who worked through real issues without being melodramatic. I loved the friends and family who, ultimately, supported and rallied around Lauren and Kit. A Summer to Remember is quality, top-notch storytelling. I loved it.
Lesson to be learned: don’t judge half-naked viscounts who engage in fistfights in Hyde Park. They might turn out to be great guys.
