Title: A Warriner to Protect Her Series: Wild Warriners #1
Author: Virginia Heath
Published: April 17, 2017
Genre(s): Romance: Historical
Page Count: 282
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:An heiress in distress and an earl in disgrace...
When heiress Violet Dunston escapes from an abduction, she finds an unlikely protector in Jack Warriner—a member of one of England’s most infamous families. Ensconced with mysterious Jack behind his manor’s walls, soon escape is the last thing on Letty’s mind!
Jack may be an earl, but his father’s exploits have left him with nothing to offer except a tarnished name. He’s turned his back on the ton, but with Letty tempting him day and night, he finds himself contemplating the unthinkable—a society marriage!
This novel is a combination of promising tropes that, unfortunately, fell flat for lack of polish and authorly sophistication.
A Warriner to Protect Her begins with Letty running through the forests of Nottinghamshire, on the run from her murderous uncle. She encounters the Warriner brothers, who are the Regency equivalent of Snow White’s Seven Dwarves. With only a month until her majority (and therefore her freedom), Letty camps out in the Warriner’s Tudor manor and cooks and cleans for them, amazing them all with her perfection.
Letty, obviously, is kind of a Mary Sue. She’s the most beautiful woman in England and she’s fabulously wealthy and also an orphan. Her “secret pain” is that in spite of her social importance, she’s lonely and has no friends or family—she’s therefore really entranced by the four Warriner brothers and their bond. Letty comes across initially as very needy and clueless—she demands special pastries and complains about the disrepair of the house, etc. She’s completely unaware that the Warriners have no money for servants or luxury food items, and she acts like a real ass about it until she figures it out. Then she single-handedly cleans the entire house and learns how to cook in a matter of days! And then if you didn’t have enough evidence about how much of a Mary Sue she is, Letty also magically tames an evil black horse named Satan.
Jack Warriner, on the other hand, is pretty standard romance novel fare. He’s the eldest of the four brothers, and has a lot of responsibility in keeping them all alive. Their feckless father ran up outrageous debts and ruined the family’s reputation in the county, so Jack has to work hard to make more money to keep everything running. Not really sure how realistic it is to see an earl plowing fields and shearing sheep, but okay. Also, Jack is resentful that his mother “abandoned” him when she “selfishly” committed suicide after dealing with his father’s abuse for nearly two decades. There was a lot of shaming of the mother, and I really didn’t care for it—maybe modern authors/readers should have compassion on women of the 18th century, who had little agency and could do little if their husband turned out to be a cruel alcoholic? Anyway.
This all leads to Jack’s tragic backstory and his great Man Pain. Jack is convinced he’s doomed to die alone because Warriner DNA is cursed, and all he’ll ever be is an abusive alcoholic who abuses women and lies to his creditors. Logic, thy name is NOT Jack Warriner. Like, literally, the whole reason Jack refuses to be with Letty is because he feels he has to stay celibate to atone for his parents’ fucked-up marriage? Okayyy.
Beyond that, I don’t think Virginia Heath is very good at writing in the historical context. The dialogue was very snappy and modern. Letty describes Jack as “swoon-worthy” and when being defiant, she tells him to “Deal with it!” It all felt very jarring. I do understand that what passes as “historically accurate” to the modern reader’s ear might not actually be historically accurate, but nevertheless, it is important to cater to reader’s expectations to a certain degree. And I have a hard time remembering it’s a historical novel if there is zero world-building, and the Mary Sue heroine says things are “blush-worthy”. Like…no.
I also think that Heath, like many romance novelists, struggles with what third person limited actually is. Too often, the narration in A Warriner to Protect Her jumps from POV to POV within one scene in a very clunky and technically incorrect manner. It’s a thing known to writers as “head-hopping” and it’s a sign of a sloppy writing/editing. After writing several books, Heath should have learned to be consistent with character POV within a single scene; at the very least, a skilled editor should have caught it. It’s an easy fix. Just don’t do it.
But, at the end of the day, Letty and Jack conquer her evil uncle’s machinations (he wanted her fortune for himself, obviously), and they ride off happily ever after to beget several more Warriners at their musty Tudor home in the forest. Meanwhile, the sequel-bait brothers loom ominously, and Virginia Heath gets to write three more books so that mission No Warriner Left Behind is accomplished. Hooray!
