- Rating: 7.5 out of 10
- Victorian, Historical Romance
- Series: Worth Saga – Book 1 of 7
Courtney Milan always delivers truly strong, unique characters, well beyond the usualrich-young-aristocratic-charming-secretly raunchy-implusive-etc-etc heroines thatpopulate most historical romances. All her heroines have agency, and they’re all strong, capable and financially independent (or working towards being so). In a genre that is half fantasy anyway, it’s refreshing to read women beyond the tropes (hence my safe choice of a Milan novel for my romance pick for Feminist Lit).
She definitely delivers with Judith. Judith Worth has fallen upon hard times, and has had to support her younger brother and sister for the past 8 years. She is the main breadwinner, using her skills to earn enough money to feed, clothe, house and educate her siblings. She is by no means some perfect wonderful older sister, but she’s a hardworking, practical one. I loved that about her. But more than anything else, I love that Judith is proud of her accomplishments, and intelligent enough to recognise that her siblings can and should make their own way in life, whatever that path might be. She’s sensible enough to recognise a need for economy without being whiny about having lost so much.
Her hero is, as with most of Milan’s heroes, a charmer. He’s the Marquess from the title, and has known and loved Judith for years, he’s clever and funny and not chock full of testosterone. The old friends-to-lovers trope is one of my favourites in romances, it always makes the love story that much more convincing when the hero and heroine actually know each other! Because of all the other info we get in the book, Christian’s struggles felt almost secondary to the entire Worth family. There’s still a lot, but then there was a lot of everyone. Judith is the only character that feels entirely like a main character – Once Upon a Marquess was Judith’s story, not Judith-and-Christians.
(Seriously though, why is he on the title anyway? Why is it that the men [and their stupid titles] get to be on the title, even when the book is more about the woman? Though to be fair to Courtney Milan, she very rarely has the men dominating the title)
The writing, as with everything Milan does, was great. There was a lot of humour, especially in the dialogue – one of my very favourite things about the genre, lots of interesting family interaction, and the requisite touch of heartbreak. Milan’s books are slightly heavier than most historicals, but I like that. The entire story feel more real because of it. This book checks all the right boxes.
However, one of the problems is that it tries to check ALL of them.
As some other reviewers on Goodreads have mentioned (see here and here), the book suffers from too much setup – Milan has basically set up the next 3 books, plus established the personality of 5 out of 7 (seven!) main characters in the forthcoming novels and novellas. That’s a lot, to put it very mildly. While I think she’s an accomplished enough writer to do all this and still give us a thoroughly readable book, I could have done with a little less info about Benedict, Camille, Anthony, Theresa AND Daisy, aside from Judith and Christian, our Heroine and Hero. Mind you, Milan has successfully piqued my interest in all these characters – they’re all unique and interesting and I’m definitely looking forward to reading their adventures, so there’s that.
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