Title: Surrender to the Marquess Series: Herriard #3
Author: Louise Allen
Published: March 1, 2017
Genre(s): Romance: Historical
Page Count: 288
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:When Lady Sara Herriard's husband dies in a duel, she turns her back on the vagaries of the ton. From now on, she will live as she pleases. She won't change for anyone—certainly not for the infuriating Lucian Avery, Marquess of Cannock!
Lucian must help his sister recover from a disastrous elopement and reluctantly enlists Lady Sara's help. She couldn't be further from the conventional, obedient wife he's expected to marry, but soon all he craves is for her to surrender—and join him in his bed!
The big takeaway from Surrender to the Marquess appears to be that the hero is a Neanderthal whose solution to any conflict or misunderstanding is to challenge the other guy to a duel, and the heroine is a prim and proper widow who is unreasonably anti-dueling. So, naturally, they fall in love and learn to meet in the middle: dueling is not okay, but “friendly” fistfights that leave both parties with broken ribs are fine and just part of being a hot-blooded man.
Um, what?
Firstly, Louise Allen’s portrayal of her heroine, who is of Indian descent, is terrible. I’m not going to hash that out here, but I encourage you to read the relevant section of my review for Tarnised Amongst the Ton, which is about Sara’s older brother (also a person of color).
Secondly, why on earth did the author decide to write an entire romance novel about the pros and cons of dueling? Many romances have their “schtick”–gardening, craft beer brewing, astronomy, whatever. But dueling? Maybe not the greatest idea.
So, the backstory is that Sara’s first husband foolishly got offended by something his best friend said and challenged him to a duel and then died. She is now twenty-four and a widow and thinks duels are barbaric and stupid (I agree). Then there’s Lucian, a red-blooded marquess who strongly believes in defending attacks against the family honor via the time-honored tradition of pistols at dawn. Sara and Lucian have a fundamental disagreement about this issue, and while there are other things going on in Surrender to the Marquess, the gist of the interpersonal conflict in this book seems to come down to the protagonists’ conflicting views over when violence is an appropriate problem-solving technique.
By the end of the book, Lucian learns to curb his impulse to slap his glove in the face of any man who looks at him sideways, and Sara learns to be more accepting of men’s urges to beat other men up. Apparently, people with penises have too much pent-up energy and simply have to release it by breaking their friend’s noses from time to time.
This kind of philosophy contributes to “men are inherently violent” and “boys will be boys” narratives that I categorically reject. If you fail to see anything problematic with unquestioning acceptance that men can and should behave like feral animals whenever they don’t get their way, then fine. Surrender to the Marquess might be the book for you.
But also, this is supposed to be romantic???
‘Love me always?’
‘For always and a day,’ he whispered back. ‘Always, until the tides cease to flow. Always, until the moon no longer shines on the waves.’
Oh dear.
