Almost A Gentleman by Pam Rosenthal

What’s the affirmation for today?

In every task I first seek JOY; all else follows.

I just finished a fabulous book: Almost A Gentleman by Pam Rosenthal. I read the excerpt on the author’s website because we share the same agent and I was looking at my agent’s authors. I read a lot of excerpts from a lot of books of all types, but unless there's a dukely hero and/or a sweet, innocent English heroine, I usually don't buy. This particular excerpt called out to me. Shouted, actually. So I went to Amazon and bought the book, and am I glad I did.

The heroine (Phoebe) is masquerading as a dandy and has been for 3 years--since the death of her abusive husband, her little boy, and her unborn baby in a carriage accident…caused, of course, by her abusive husband, who was trying to terrorize her. Rather than go back into society as a widow and then have to act as women were expected to, plus take another husband, etc., she faked her death and turned herself into Phizz Marston--an enigmatic, stylish gambler desired by both sexes.

The hero (David) is a country earl who is just as passionate about his responsibilities to his earldom and the political issues which affect the common man as he is about his horrifying attraction to Phizz Marston. Don’t worry. He finds out the secret early on, and he wouldn’t have acted on his attraction if Phizz hadn’t turned out to be a woman… In the scene where Phoebe realizes that David knows her secret, she enlists his help to track down the person who has been sending her nasty, threatening notes. Figuring this out so that she will be safe is the external plot of the story and I think the author did a great job of keeping the external plot going at a good pace without eclipsing the internal conflict or letting the latter eclipse the former.

The internal conflict comes from Phoebe’s heartache over having lost her son and not being able to have more children--thanks to the accident--versus David’s desire for a family. That’s why he came to Almacks in London to begin with--to find a bride because his only son is grown and he’d like more children. I don’t think I’m giving anything away there since I figured out early on that there had to be more to Phoebe’s great distress over seeing children than just having lost hers, though David doesn’t find out for some time about the doctor’s prognosis for Phoebe. Also, Phoebe is reluctant to really consider marriage because hers was so awful and she’s been happier masquerading as Marston than she ever was being herself. That’s no wonder since she probably never really got to be herself (this goes back to the way women were supposed to act), so there’s some emotional angst there too, vis-à-vis her willingness to change her entire life to fit David into it.

I wasn’t sure why the book was published as a Kensington Brava, which is an erotic romance line, because I don’t think there was any sex to speak of for the first 200 pages, unlike many erotic romances where the sex can begin on page 1. Once the sex did begin, there was plenty of it to be had, but it didn’t seem forced by the author because Phoebe was a mature woman who had been pretty much sex-starved her entire adult life, and the attraction between Phoebe and David was very intense. (Heck, the attraction between me and David was very intense. Well, okay, one-sided, I guess, but very intense just the same!)

I liked that Phoebe and David were both honorable people because I tend to like honorable people as the hero and heroine. Yes, they had faults, but not nasty ones. I liked that they both had good friends who were there for them (and I especially liked the secondary romance that arose from that). I liked that Phoebe was independent without being one of those stubborn, ridiculously childish, too-stupid-to-live heroines that many historical romances resort to when trying to show a heroine who is headstrong. But what I really liked was the way the author showed the emotional changes that took place in Phoebe.

Rosenthal was very clever in the way she went about this. In the beginning of the book, as soon as we know that Marston is Phoebe, he becomes a she. In other words, when we are introduced to Marston as a man, in the character’s point of view the pronoun is “he.” Marston did this, Marston did that; he always thought this… etc. After we know that Phoebe and Marston are the same person, the pronoun in the character’s point of view is “she.” As Marston, she did this, she thought that. We see the character as Phoebe pretending to be Marston but always really as Phoebe.

But when Phoebe makes the decision to return to her life as Marston, thus giving up a future with David, the pronoun is “he” again. “She” slips once and thinks about David but immediately forces that from her thoughts and is back to “he.” To show how miserable Phoebe appears to be, Rosenthal uses Kate’s (Phoebe’s best friend) point of view, which lets us see Phoebe as an unhappy Marston, but keeps us removed. We are simply observing Martston as he thinks about trivial things such as fashion, but we are not involved in his (or Phoebe's) feelings. Since we know Phoebe so well now, this makes Marston seem to be a separate person who is no longer a part of Phoebe, and therefore, Phoebe seems to no longer relate to Marston as a part of her. I don’t think she ever actually thinks, Gee, I no longer feel like Marston, but we see that she is no longer content in that life.

Bottom line is I loved the way the author wrote this story, though I would have liked to have seen the villains taken to prison. The scandal would have been wonderful!!

But no matter what, I can’t wait to read this author again.