Title: A Daring Arrangement Series: Four Hundred #1
Author: Joanna Shupe
Published: October 31, 2017
Genre(s): Romance: Historical
Page Count: 384
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Lady Honora Parker must get engaged as soon as possible, and only a particular type of man will do. Nora seeks a mate so abhorrent, so completely unacceptable, that her father will reject the match—leaving her free to marry the artist she desires. Who then is the most appalling man in Manhattan? The wealthy, devilishly handsome financier, Julius Hatcher, of course….
Julius is intrigued by Nora’s ruse and decides to play along. But to Nora’s horror, Julius transforms himself into the perfect fiancé, charming the very people she hoped he would offend. It seems Julius has a secret plan all his own—one that will solve a dark mystery from his past, and perhaps turn him into the kind of man Nora could truly love.
Joanna Shupe’s A Daring Arrangement seems to have everything a good romance might need: a fake engagement, a headstrong heroine, an impossibly handsome hero, and even an “unusual” setting: Gilded Age New York City. And yet? I wasn’t too impressed. This book is competently written and goes through all the motions, doing everything a proper romance should. But it lacked that certain something—oomph, pizzazz, polish, depth. Whatever.
I guess what I’m getting at is this: Joanna Shupe knows her genre, she knows the tropes, but she didn’t elevate anything in A Daring Arrangement to the point where it stood out from a variety of other romances working with similar tropes.
The story is this. Lady Honora is in love with an impoverished painter, and that’s just not going to work with her father, an earl. So he packs her off to the States so she can think about her life and her choices. Nora just really wants to go back to England and marry Robert, her One True Love. Her plan to do this? Marry an absolutely reprehensible, scandalous American upstart so that her father has no choice but to bring her back home for her own good. Enter Julius, a reprehensible and scandalous American upstart.
Like…okay. I understand that Romance Logic is different than your typical real world logic. I accept this. But doesn’t this seem silly to you? Why on earth would you think that “ruining” yourself by running around with Julius, a bad marriage prospect, would suddenly change your father’s mind about Robert, another bad marriage prospect? What is most likely to happen here is that the earl is going to force Nora to marry Julius, the man who ruined her, and then make her stay in New York forever.
Ay.
But, in any case. Julius agrees to this fake engagement scenario because he has goals of his own: to expose the men who contributed to his father’s financial downfall and ultimate suicide. Betrothal to a bona fide British noblewoman will open doors he otherwise wouldn’t be able to unlock. Fine, fine.
The problem here is that Shupe sets up this plot, but then it goes absolutely nowhere! All of a sudden, Julius decides to change his behavior, so Nora’s plan of becoming notorious goes nowhere. And the mysterious men who effed-up his late father’s life aren’t exactly volunteering information regarding their dastardly deeds.
So…there’s no revenge, there’s no scandal. Instead, A Daring Arrangement, for all intents and purposes, becomes a regular ole book about two engaged people doing things together. Which…is boring. And that was super disappointing. Look, if you want to write a book about a fake relationship, you have to sell it. The trope is pretty wacky. And if you’re promising scandal and revenge, don’t under-deliver. There are a lot of tepid romance novels out there already. Give me zest!
Now, to be fair to the author, there is some truly bananapants stuff that happens towards the end of the book. Nora’s English lover, Robert, makes a sudden appearance, and he’s clearing unhinged and on a homicidal bender. Julius’s mother and sister are…a whole lot. The problem was that, compared to the more-or-less tame nature of the first 75% of the book, the drama in the final quarter seemed odd. “Insane” ex-boyfriends and Rasputin-like religious zealots/conmen can’t just be dropped into the mix willy-nilly. (Especially if the Rasputin-like preacher is only mentioned in a single paragraph in the epilogue!!!)
So. The plot in A Daring Arrangement is weird and uneven. To go along with that, the characterization is fairly shallow, and the writing was good but not great. As I said in the beginning, this book is competent. It achieves its purpose: to tell a love story. But all the other trappings and hallmarks of a good, high-quality romance novel are missing here.
