Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC of The Proposition by Madeleine Roux in exchange for an honest review. While not the most sensible of books, it was entertaining and had a decent romantic plot. I give this novel three out of five stars.
Clemency Fry has always forsworn marriage, following the advice of a feminist author she read in childhood. However, no matter what her logical head told her, her heart said something different, and she finds herself engaged to Lord Turner Boyle after a romantic courtship. After their engagement and wedding plans are put into place, Turner becomes suddenly cold toward Clemency, and she can’t figure out what she’s done to offend him.
Enter Audric Ferrand, a “hunter of men,” as he calls himself, who’s out to destroy Turner for personal reasons. He appeals to Clemency to aid him in his quest to unmask Boyle for the fraud that he really is. Hesitant at first, Clemency decides to make an alliance with Ferrand to bring down the man that stomped on her heart and used her for personal gain. Along the way, an attraction forms between the two of them, and the only question remains: What will happen when their mission is over?
I found the premise of this book quite delightful: man and woman fall in love while seeking to bring down a dishonorable person. In this case, he was truly dishonorable… if he’d shown some redeeming qualities I might have felt differently. I didn’t find the actual book as fulfilling as I found the idea for the plot; the writing was decent but the plot had some holes, mostly through the characters’ actions.
Audric and Clemency (as a side note, Clemency?! What a name for the poor girl. She was bound to be a feminist thinker with such a virtuous name) fell for each other in really awkward stages, and their romance didn’t flow as smoothly as it could have. One day Clemency is annoyed by him, and the next she’s thinking about kissing him. Audric thinks Clemency’s contrary, forward manner is inappropriate one minute and charming the next. I just didn’t see the leap where either of them recognized the attraction as clearly as I would have liked.
I also found the general plot to be a little bit unclear: Audric and Clemency were going to unmask Turner at “the assembly,” but even now, I’m not totally sure what the assembly was for. There was a surprising twist to the end of the story that I liked, but I’m still not sure why or how it happened and how this particular character engineered it. The logic of the ending just wasn’t totally there for me and you might find that as well.
Now, those are mostly all the negatives of this book, and they really might not bother most readers. I could argue that someone should have seen something about Turner Boyle that was off, but people married their own cousins in those days, so I’m actually not seeing anyone’s ignorance as implausible.
Some positives of The Proposition were the idea in itself; I loved the premise of the book and all-in-all it was a good read. It could be better, but it could be worse. I thought the writing was good; nothing obvious or annoying stood out to me, and it flowed smoothly. I liked, too, that the characters weren’t just “fluff” and that they had some substance to them. Could they have had more substance? Sure. But for a standalone book, I think the character building was perfectly adequate. I did like how Clemency’s innocence of the world was pointed out a couple of times.
All in all, I thought The Proposition by Madeleine Roux was a nice read. I did want to read until the end, and even read while I could have been doing other things. It had a little bit of dirt, right at the end, which was a nice touch. It wasn’t necessarily my favorite romance, but it was certainly far from the bottom of my list. Have you read this title? What did you think?
You can find more of Madeleine Roux’s work here: https://www.madeleine-roux.com/books