The Heiress and the Rake

books:


	• Dancing with Clara (Signet Regency Romance) Mary Balogh Signet, 1994 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Wonderful!!!

The story is wonderful and original. The characters have depth. They're good, bad, pathetic, absolutely real. If all romances were like this, we'd be drowning in books.

Not a mere romance

It seems that Balogh delights, and indeed revels, in taking the most difficult and painful of premises and weaving them into romance. Yet one will be hard pressed to call this a mere romance. Freddie, the hero, is handsome, a wastrel, and a rake in the true sense; drinking, womanizing, gambling... he just cannot seem to get out of a way of life even he detests. However, the truth is that he is not a bad person, but just weak. As if Freddie's anguish was not enough, we also have to deal with Clara's. She is a lonely, plain, and wealthy cripple who Freddie marries to pay off his debts. Her trouble is that she knows why Freddie has married her, and she knows what type of person Freddie is, but, because he takes such pains to be kind to her, she begins to fall in love with him anyway. This story is not easy to read. Indeed, I almost felt myself cringe to see Freddie make a fool of himself, to see him smiling and telling Clara lies that she knows are lies. Balogh does not shy away from making this story realistic. Freddie does not immediately reform (caution to all you folk who hold marriage sacred: adultery galore) but we are made to know that, with Clara's love and help, he will reform.

After reading this book, you are not left with that cherished feeling you have when you are done reading an exceptionally good romance. You know, the one that leaves a smile upon your lips, that leaves you floating through the remainder of the day, the reason that many of us will continue to read romance for the rest of our lives. Rather, you are left with an impression of having lived a lifetime, a lifetime of anguished loneliness, and of having attained peace and hope at last.

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Not her finest....

I am a huge Mary Balogh fan, but this one was not her finest.

The hero was a womanizing rake who had a gambling problem, a drinking problem, and a fidelity problem. I thought he was a very dislikable person that I had trouble feeling any empathy towards.

The heroine was a wimpy type of woman....obediant, subserviant, and self depracating. I did feel some empathy towards her as I learned how her father had overprotected and sheltered her.

This just wasn't very good love story. The hero cheats on Clara throughout the book without any real hope that in the future he'll be any different. I love a great rake book as well as the next girl.....but I like my rakes REFORMED!

Let me suggest...A Precious Jewel, The Temporary Wife, More than a Mistress, and The Secret Pearl...these are Balogh at her best!

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The Heiress and the Rake

Mary Balogh's novels are almost always streets ahead of the competition writing Regencies today. Her characters have great depth and she often explores themes around broken relationships, trust and disability. "Dancing With Clara" is one of her older novels, now out of print and quite hard to find, but it's a really good read if you can get hold of a copy.

Like many of her other novels, one of the main characters in this story is disabled. Clara has been weak since an illness as a child in India and she can't walk - she has to be carried everywhere or use a wheelchair. She's 26 and an heiress but is plain, almost ugly, and lives a restricted life in Bath because of her disability and because her now-dead Father taught her to be very careful of her health.

However Clara isn't the only person with disabilities in this story - the hero, Frederick Sullivan, also has his own problems although these are of his mind, not his body. He is deeply in debt, lives the life of a rake including gambling, womanising and some drinking, and has recently caused a huge family rift because of his behaviour. He knows he's in serious trouble over his money problems and his only option seems to be to marry an heiress; unfortunately the picking of decent heiresses in Bath is slim.

Clara and Freddie embark on a marriage of convenience for both of them. Clara knows he is a fortune hunter but he is her chance to possess something of beauty and not to feel along; Freddie hides his fear of the future and of the huge step he has taken by declaring his love for Clara - which she of course knows is lies. How can these two people make something of their situation? Can Freddie be reformed? Is there hope of Clara having more of a life than as an invalid?

In some ways it is clear that this is an earlier story by Mary Balogh. I found Freddie's raking, although explained well, difficult to reconcile with a hero - and I was also very amazed at Clara's forbearance and perseverance amazing. A side character, Sir Archibald Vinney, appears to be an early draft of Wulfric Bedwyn (heir to a Dukedom, silver eyes, quizzing glass) and his foil in this story, Harriet, seems a rather mousy and unfinished character. However the main story, that of Clara learning about herself and Freddie, and Freddie learning about his failings and understanding the strength within Clara, is excellent. This isn't one of Mary Balogh's best stories but it still deserves five stars as it's so much better than most of the other books of this genre out there.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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