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Second Chance Book Club: The Mister, Chapter Three or “Deja View”

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In the grand tradition of renaming characters to reflect where E.L. James nabbed them from, Maxim Trevelyan is now Moss Troldark. Alessia is now Demelssia Carmachi.

And the author is still a real piece of work.

Honestly, as a reader, I feel cheated. I went into this with every intention of being open-minded. And I sat here like, wow, I’m really enjoying this! Sure, the writing isn’t great, but I can ignore terrible writing for a story this gripping!

I should have known the story wasn’t hers.

And what really gets me, deep, deep down, is that she clearly did so much differently from Fifty Shades of Grey based on what critical reviews dinged her for. There’s emphasis on consent, the hero isn’t an abusive and irredeemable douchebag, it just was reading like she understood the reasons people hated her first series and tried to make this some kind of example that yes, she can really write, yes, she can really learn.

The only lesson she didn’t take away from the experience was the part where people were like, “Hey, maybe don’t steal people’s shit.”

So, Moss Troldark gets a phone call while he’s in a cab at the beginning of chapter three. It’s his friend, Joe, whom he fences with, and they have a short conversation about how Moss can’t go fencing that day because now he’s an earl and has to do, quote, “Earl shit.” Moss grumbles to himself about not being able to do whatever he wants anymore, then blames his dead brother.

After a section break, we’re at Loulou’s, the bar where Moss has gone to find a “warm, willing body,” after a long day of work with the guy described as Kit’s “Chief Operating Officer.” Again, I’m not familiar with the peerage or whatever, being from humble swamp stock as I am, but the idea of someone being the CEO of someone else is hilarious because you could yell, “YOU’RE NOT THE CEO OF ME!” at them.

Oliver is slight, with a shock of unruly blond hair and eyes of an indeterminate color that miss nothing. I have never warmed to him. He’s ruthless and ambitious, but he knows his way around a balance sheet and can deal with the numerous personnel who answer to the Earl of Trevethick.

So, write him down as the potential George Warleggan of this story, I guess.

[…] I wonder if Oliver’s loyalty will extend to me or if he might take advantage of my naïveté while I try to come to terms with all my new responsibilities. I just don’t know. But the fact is, I don’t trust him, and I make a mental note to stay circumspect in my dealings with him.

Add another tick to that Warleggan column.

Moss is at least relieved to be able to quit modeling. Because this is an E.L. James book, he refers to his modeling agent, who is a woman, as an “old gorgon.” He says modeling can be boring and he’s not sure he’ll miss it, except for the chance to meet, “hot, skinny women.”

That’s what I want now: a hot, willing woman, skinny or otherwise.

See, it’s okay to put the emphasis on thinness, so long as you make it clear that the hero is DTF a woman who isn’t thin. He’s not going to, okay? It’s just enough that he might.

He spots a woman described as having hazel eyes and long brown glossy hair. She’s doing shots, which is something I’ll bring up later. I mean, it’s already kind of…eh. He’s going to pick up a drunk chick. Her name is Leticia and he takes her back to his place, where she’s extremely sexually aggressive:

“Let’s go to bed, Posh Boy,” she whispers, and kisses me. Hard. No preliminaries. Her coat is still in my hands, and I have to steady myself against the wall to stop us both from falling. Her attack takes me by surprise. Perhaps she’s more pissed than I thought. She tastes of lipstick and Jäggermeister–an intriguing combination.

So, this woman was doing shots of Jäggermeister and he’s like, oh, maybe she’s drunker than I thought. Is that going to stop him from having sex with her? Nope.

There go all the hopes I had for consent in this book.

On the other hand, maybe it’s still a step up, considering he didn’t force her to drink with the goal of gaining consent.

I bet you’re wondering when we were going to hear about the fact that you can see the Thames from his apartment:

“Do you act, too? Great view, by the way,” she says as she glances through the wall of glass that looks out over the Thames.

She asks him if he ever fucked on his piano and he thinks:

Lord, she has a foul mouth.

Like, dude. You have spent the whole book so far fucking everything you catch in a rabbit snare and you’re worried about the woman you brought back to your house using the word that describes exactly the reason you brought her there?

So, yadda yadda yadda, they start getting down and Leticia is rough, bossy, and she uses her nails a lot, so he decides to tie her to the bed. Here’s my thing with this: she’s drunk. Drunker than he expected her to be. And he’s going to tie her up? Here’s a pro-tip: if a woman is drunk enough that she will let you, a man she has never met before, tie her up in your bedroom? She’s too drunk to consent.

“I won’t hurt you,” I reassure her. That’s not my scene. “I’ll just keep you in line.” But the truth is, I’m worried she’s going to hurt me.

I’m torn about this scene because when you read it all in one sitting, it’s actually funny. She’s enthusiastic with her fingernails and when she gets to his fly, he panics and that’s when he’s like, hey, ha ha, just kidding, let’s tie you up. At the same time, she’s drunk. He is at least tipsy, I presume. So, they shouldn’t be having sex, but they definitely shouldn’t be tying any knots.

But obviously, they do.

I tie the silk around her left wrist and thread it through the slats of the bed’s headboard, and then, taking her right hand, I deftly tie her right wrist to the other end of the restraint.

There are some pretty jarring breaks in here. Like, it’s clear that James wants to write a sex scene, but maybe she got bored and wandered away and forgot to go back and fill stuff in? I’m not kidding. Check this out:

She quirms. “Will you spank me?” Her voice is less than a whisper.

“If you play nice.”

Oh, this is going to be fun.

 

She comes quickly and loudly. Screaming and straining against the silken straps.

I sit up between her thighs, my mouth slick and wet, and I flip her over and slap her arse.

Okay, so first of all, this “flipping someone over when their bodies are restrained in such a way that you would actually dislocate their joints” talk really takes me back to our Fifty Shades of Grey days. But more importantly…where is the stuff that happens between him tying up her hands and her coming? Like, seriously, what is the point of writing just this part of the scene? This section ends with him thrusting into her, and then suddenly there’s another break and he’s watching her sleep. It honestly reads like she planned to go back and fill this stuff in. It’s such a weird stylistic choice. Either you want us to see Moss fuck, or you don’t.

Hey, did you miss characters waking up in a state of panic?

I wake with a start.

He was having a dream about chasing something blue before falling into an abyss, and it scared him awake. It’s a good thing he can see the Thames from his apartment:

The pallid winter sun seeps through the windows as reflections from the Thames play on the ceiling.

I’m glad this detail gets thrown in so often, because I keep mentally shifting the setting to early-19th century Cornwall.

Though Moss thinks Leticia has left, he hears a noise from somewhere in the apartment and he’s like, oh great, now I have to people, which like, honestly? I don’t blame him. Finding out you have to people when you didn’t expect you’d have to people is exhausting, even if you just woke up. I need at least forty-eight hours warning before all human interaction.

So, he puts on his jeans and leaves his room, shirtless, and you guys know what happens.

I’m expecting to see Leticia, but a slight young woman stands in the hallway staring at me. Her eyes are large and dark, reminding me of a startled doe, but she’s dressed in a ghastly blue housecoat, cheap overwashed jeans, old trainers, and a blue headscarf that conceals her hair.

Thank you for explaining what a headscarf does, Moss.

Anyway, he asks her who the hell she is, and the chapter ends.

My impression so far: Before I learned about the Poldark connection, I got to this point and was kind of expecting Alessia would find him with the woman. So, I was kind of surprised when that didn’t happen. It made that whole scene totally pointless. But I wasn’t surprised at all that he was shirtless when he and Alessia met. This chapter was really tiresome because I felt like, okay, we didn’t need to meet a friend who wasn’t even going to end up doing anything in this chapter. We didn’t need to see Moss bring home yet another woman. We didn’t need to hear again about how he never worked and now things have changed. It was just a super repetitive chapter full of stuff we already knew.

And I’m still pissed off about the Poldark thing, especially when I started rewatching Poldark and realized that the one-night-stand from the last chapter was the equivalent of the tavern girl who says mysterious things to Ross and sleeps with him in the first few episodes of season one.

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54 Comments

  1. Bunny
    Bunny

    Is it just me, or are the names already getting confusing? We already have Trevethick and Trevelyan and Alessia and Leticia. And there’s also Krystyna, whych hys tyoo myny Y’s for my brayn to hyndyle ryt nyow (though that’s probably because I read this much too early in the morning). Not to mention the bizarre “baby-fox”/”the greatest” name mismatch of the male characters. Not even four chapters in and I’m already forgetting who these people are!

    Having never seen Poldark, I don’t have much of a frame of reference regarding the plagiarism aspect. But based on your description … like, really??!! Come ON, EL James, do you not have a single original idea??

    April 18, 2019
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    • MyDog'sPA
      MyDog'sPA

      Come ON, EL James, do you not have a single original idea??

      Obviously she didn’t on FSOG, so, really, what changed here? At what point does one stop expecting a different result after the experimental test is repeated multiple times? It’s not different here: This woman has no talent for original creative thought.

      What she does have a talent for, as someone asked in yesterday’s post of why she’s so successful, is her luck at writing tales of abusive-men-are-turn-ons-in-the-romance-genre. That’s all she knows. That’s all she writes as she has no other reference. She does no research, she just writes what she knows. And she knows abuse, possibly because she lived it. Look at her reign on the FSOG set on the first movie. She was a complete control freak over stuff that wasn’t important (like the expensive suits that had to be in the closets that would never be opened in the shot) She was a complete control freak over dialog that, when spoken aloud, was comical (in spite of a more knowledgeable writer telling her otherwise). So, being a complete control freak, she writes about a complete rapist-stalker-control freak. This is no different.

      But it takes two. The reason she is so rich is that, somehow, her awful writing struck a chord with her readers. They are the ones that made her rich by buying her books. Yes, she romanticized abuse, but her readers ate it up. Great stuff in fantasy, not so much in real life (Men have their fantasies, too, like multiple women in bed at a time. Yeah, like that works in reality. Not.)

      If the readers stopped lapping up the abuse-is-a-turn-on schtick EEL would fade away overnight. But as bad of a writer that she is, she is tapping into something the audience wants.

      Sigh.

      April 18, 2019
      |Reply
      • Tami Marie Alexander
        Tami Marie Alexander

        As a ghostwriter, I have often been asked by clients to write the rich-abusive-guy-and-the-virginal-young-lady trope made popular by FSoG. I refuse. I am an abuse survivor and it turns my stomach with rage that this kind of fantasy exists. I’m not trying to shame anyone but I don’t know a single woman who was abused, or whose daughter was abused, to be a fan of this rancid shit. I don’t know a single feminist who finds it “empowering” and the women who do think it’s “totally romantic” how the young lady winds up changing the abuser is completely delusional. Abusive people do not change simply because they found the love of a good woman.

        And it makes me fume that someone like ELJ is making money hands over fists with crap writing when there are so many other gifted storytellers out there who are more deserving of recognition. James is, at best, a self-aggrandized hack whose only experience with research is to find someone else to plagiarize.

        April 18, 2019
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        • MyDog'sPA
          MyDog'sPA

          Tami, I don’t think the trope was made popular by FSOG as much as she lucked into hitting a nerve in the readers that craved it. FSOG would not have been popular otherwise because the writing is so bad. For the life of me I don’t know why the readers find it ‘romantic.’ But then, I’m a guy so I have no idea.

          April 18, 2019
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        • I have railed against the Alpha Dom Abuse-Hero too many times to count. But I’m hopeful that what looked sexxxxay to a certain demographic of women in 2012 looks very different in the Age of Trump.

          Hopeful. But not by much. I’ve heard too much “It’s a faaaaaantasy!” and “genre/kink shaming!” to be otherwise.

          April 18, 2019
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          • Athena
            Athena

            I feel like there’s a big difference between the Alpha Male romantic trope and what Christian Grey was. Alpha Male’s are usually, at least in my experience with the romance genre, given redeeming features besides being hot and rich. They usually have true soft sides, not the window dressing Christian had. They aren’t fixed by true love, because at their core they don’t need to be fixed. Either they end up feeling safe enough to show that side of themselves, or the love interest spends enough time around them to see it for themselves.

            Christian doesn’t have a soft side. He has an excuse and he uses it constantly to manipulate Ana. Why do you think he told her about his abuse so early in the relationship? It’s supposed to be this moment of trust between the characters, but all I can see is him planting this in Ana’s mind so that he can use it against her any time he needs to get what he wants. And it works. For the rest of the series Ana justifies his behavior because of his tragic backstory and nothing ever gets resolved, just forgotten.

            All this to say is good Alpha Male romances may have the guy be a jerk, maybe even give him a justification for it, but then during the book he realizes he’s an ass and makes the choice to be a better person. Not just for the love interest, but because he doesn’t want to be an ass anymore. Christian isn’t an Alpha Male, he’s a spoiled, entitled little prick. But because of FSoG we have a market flooded with unrepentant asses and are being told that’s what’s romantic.

            April 19, 2019
          • MyDog'sPA
            MyDog'sPA

            “It’s a faaaaaantasy!”

            That may be the reason. As my wife explained to me last night, the stalker/rapist/control-freak abuse is perfectly acceptable in a romance novel because the reader has control of the abuse in her mind as she’s reading. In real life the opposite is true, the survivor has no control over the abusive behavior and it gets scary, fast. The trouble is, the abuse described in these novels tends to justify real-life abuse in today’s culture. (Kavanaugh, anyone?)

            So, to me, one has to solve the romanticized abuse if one wants to solve the real-world abuse as they go hand in hand. But that won’t happen in my lifetime, I’m afraid.

            Sigh.

            April 19, 2019
          • Anon
            Anon

            @PA —

            Aside from the plagiarism, my biggest problem with these books and most of the fans is the bleeding over from fantasy to real life. They won’t acknowledge that it’s a fantasy that they enjoy reading but wouldn’t ACTUALLY want IRL.

            I have a lot of fantasies in my head that I definitely do not want to actually happen. I can distinguish them. Most people probably do the same. My head can be a dark place. lol But 50 fans insist that the character is just misunderstood, that he changes and gets better and that makes it all OK. They genuinely wish they had this in real life (and, don’t get me wrong, the money and all would be great — not so much the controlling, abusive behavior).

            The meme that says it would have been a horror story instead of a romance if Christian were ugly and lived in a trailer is spot-on. So many people will excuse terrible behavior because of money or looks (both in this case, but as the president has shown us, you really just have to have money).

            April 19, 2019
          • They also insist it’s what “every woman REALLY wants” and if you don’t, then you are not sex-positive/don’t believe in the power of lurve/want some wimpy guy-

            Hearing that b.s. was why I started 1) writing romance/erotic fiction, 2) blogging about it, and 3) writing the gender-flipped WIP on my site. Because with or without expensive kinky toys, abuse is still abuse.

            April 20, 2019
    • Masha
      Masha

      And there’s also Krystyna, whych hys tyoo myny Y’s for my brayn to hyndyle ryt nyow

      Can I just say, I’m actually Polish, and the name’s fairly common if a tiny bit old-fashioned, so I read it without batting an eye, but now I can’t stop giggling at your comment 😀

      April 21, 2019
      |Reply
      • Ariel
        Ariel

        You took that comment ryight ouyt of myy myouth.

        And now i can’t stop imagining a Polish character in a British setting, whose name is Grazyna and everybody she encouters can’t help but to absolutely butcher her name.

        April 21, 2019
        |Reply
  2. Ren Benton
    Ren Benton

    Is a housecoat something different in British English? Because I’ve done housekeeping, and granny loungewear is not an appropriate uniform.

    I admired your optimism going into this endeavor with an open mind, but my cynicism is an asshole that laughs at shattered dreams.

    April 18, 2019
    |Reply
    • Mel
      Mel

      I was asking the exact same thing in my head. Like, what does she mean by a housecoat because I legitimately am picturing her in that thing you wear over your pyjamas and with the headscarf, I’m just picturing a grandma with scarf over her curlers, in a housecoat and slippers, ready to lay down for the night while her curls set. Not a young girl who is ready to clean.

      April 18, 2019
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      • Anon
        Anon

        Not to mention she’s wearing it with jeans. Did these even make it out of the ’80s? Did they make it TO the ’80s?

        April 18, 2019
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    • S.E. Scott
      S.E. Scott

      maybe it’s regional? the character is from albania so i have no idea what she’d be used to wearing – maybe the housecoat is the closest thing she can find to what she’s comfortable in.

      April 18, 2019
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    • Kyerin
      Kyerin

      I think she means an old fashioned type of dress with buttons down the front, that my granny would have used for doing chores. Kinda like a full coverage apron. What Americans call a housecoat I believe is more commonly referred to in the UK as a bathrobe although I would call it a dressing gown.

      April 18, 2019
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  3. Anon
    Anon

    Did she actually learn any lessons about consent and decent characters or is that default based on the work she stole? I’m thinking the latter because she doesn’t give a crap, and neither do her most ardent fans.

    The skinny women thing … Eel is not exactly a stick figure herself. I think the real problem is she hates herself.

    “Lord, she has a foul mouth.”

    By some miracle, I have managed to collect a decent-sized friend base of ex-pat English people for living in a somewhat redneck Bible Belt city and one thing I can tell you is that they really don’t sweat the cussing. Is Eel really British?

    So, Alessia … His former “daily” gave his address and key to a new “daily” whom he’s never met nor heard of without asking him if it was OK. That seems a little, um, not OK.

    April 18, 2019
    |Reply
    • Tami Marie Alexander
      Tami Marie Alexander

      I learned more profanity from the British than I ever did from being the daughter of a US Marine, the sister of another jarhead, various family members who worked as grease monkeys, and a grandmother who tended bar at a place frequented by blue-collar workers. I think the Scots might have the British beat, though, considering that some will say to their mothers, “I love ya, ya fookin’ cunt!” and then kissing Mum on the cheek before heading off to school.

      As for the “skinny” thing — much like her penchant for making blondes evil — I think you’re right about James hating herself. Maybe that’s why she writes about men abusing women, and why she herself is a control freak. Some messed-up shit going on in EL’s head. To paraphrase the Bard, “Get thee to some therapy.”

      April 18, 2019
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      • H
        H

        I hate to be that person, but Scots are British, they fall under Britain (as much as they might despise that haha)

        April 19, 2019
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        • Anon
          Anon

          Ah! Yes, Scots are British. lol I wasn’t paying much attention to that, but I think she was maybe thinking about my comment about English friends. The ones in my circle are all English specifically.

          April 19, 2019
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        • Dove
          Dove

          I think the Scots need to have another vote for leaving Britain, honestly. Far as I know, the only reason they decided to stay was for the EU… 😛 🙂

          April 19, 2019
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    • Nanani
      Nanani

      “So, Alessia … His former “daily” gave his address and key to a new “daily” whom he’s never met nor heard of without asking him if it was OK. That seems a little, um, not OK.”

      I think there’s probably at least one layer of personal assistant, helper, butler, posh-family-coordinator or something between him and the cleaners. Pretty sure there would have been in the source material?

      April 18, 2019
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      • Kyerin
        Kyerin

        Oh, I was presuming both the cleaners worked for an agency, although that doesn’t seem to have been stated. I feel like a rich dude isn’t going through the small ads to find a cleaner.

        April 18, 2019
        |Reply
        • Anon
          Anon

          Even if it’s an agency, he’s aware enough to know who’s supposed to be in his house. You’d think he’d want to know if a whole brand new person had a key and was letting herself in when no one was there, regardless of his level of poshness! But the idea of this being one of those things that doesn’t quite translate over to modern times is probably it. The character in the time of Poldark probably would have been hired by a house manager. Again why Eel sucks as a writer. You can’t just copy and paste an older time into modern day. You have to make some tweaks!

          Tami — I believe it! They don’t censor language on TV there, either. I hated watching “Coupling” on Netflix because they show the BBC America version and blank out all the “cuss” words (oddly even some that are allowed on US television).

          April 18, 2019
          |Reply
          • Sushi
            Sushi

            Nah, in Poldark, Ross rescued Demelza and wound up giving her a job himself because he didn’t want to send her home to her abusive father (especially because in the books, she was 13 at that point and he’d be accused of kidnapping her if he couldn’t find a proper reason for her to stay). I’m guessing EL skipped it because she really couldn’t think of a way to make it work in a contemporary setting without involving the police, so she just went straight to the bit where she’s his housekeeper, although I’m going to bet there’ll be a scene where her father shows up and tries to drag her home.

            April 18, 2019
    • Mike
      Mike

      I lived in London for years (very near where this character is set to live as well, just the other side of the river) and, yeah, ‘fuck’ is barely even a bad word over there. They have much more creative curses to worry about than that one! Though I did have cause to spend time with some of the upper class while there, and I will say that the rich people, around other rich people at least, don’t curse outside heated arguments. (I worked at a TV studio in the same part of London that Prince George goes to school in, I encountered a few of the upperclass and even more people who wanted to fit in with them) So this doesn’t add up with my experience there, outside the idea that he may be commenting on her class more so than the actual cursing.

      Classism over there is still very much tied to speech. Accents and word choices tell the people around you if you’re new money or old money, or no money. If you’re from London or elsewhere, and if London, the upperclass parts of London or the poorer parts? So her cursing in front of an upperclass person suggests she’s… not. She’s probably from a neighbouring area like Clapham, or, gasp, EAST London, and just was there at the bar. Which would likely be specifically to pick up rich dudes because Chelsea is actually a pain in the ass to get to by public transport despite being central London. There’s no Tube to Chelsea. And if I had more faith in James as a writer I would think it was a way to convey that information without having to include accents in the dialogue that don’t read well and won’t mean much to her primarily American audience.

      Course she could have just had him think about how she’s out of place, maybe comment on the dress being a rip off of an expensive brand, or have him wonder what she was doing in Chelsea all by herself since she’s clearly not from there… That would have been a lot clearer if that’s what she was actually going for. Despite the wall of text above I don’t think it is. I think she’s just trying to show that he’s better than everyone else despite having mindless sex with dubiously consenting strangers on a regular basis and trying to get out of ever having to work while still wanting to keep the title. And she chooses to do that with him putting down the women he’s choosing to sleep with. Because misogyny.

      April 19, 2019
      |Reply
  4. It’s 2019. Can we please find some other way to describe a woman other than “a startled doe”?

    April 18, 2019
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    • I am a vengeful hamster or a gassy opossum. The most beautiful ladies are purposeful porpoises.

      April 18, 2019
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      • Dove
        Dove

        My supermodels need to be scornful giraffes or smirking sea lions.

        April 18, 2019
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      • Heidi Aphrodite
        Heidi Aphrodite

        I laughed and laughed. I thank you.

        April 24, 2019
        |Reply
      • Ariel
        Ariel

        Buahahaha, perfection!

        April 24, 2019
        |Reply
  5. Maxine
    Maxine

    Honestly I’m still shipping Maxim with Caroline because I love the angst of childhood friends and falling for his dead brother’s wife and she’s pregnant with his baby.

    Also because he’s had waaay more interaction with her than the supposed “love interest” #maxoline

    April 18, 2019
    |Reply
    • Ishi
      Ishi

      Yes! This story is MUCH more interesting than “Rich peer falls for foreign housekeeper” with a dose of “manipulating sister-in-law” on the side.

      I’d be happy to read a story about a man dealing with the emotional fallout of falling in love with his brother’s widow while she’s carrying a posthumous baby.

      April 18, 2019
      |Reply
      • Tami Alexander
        Tami Alexander

        I’m going to say Caroline gets jealous seeing MAXim with Alessia and tries to claim the baby is his. Condoms are not a foolproof means of birth control. It could cause a scandal but if she wants to keep her position and the man she really loved all along (but settled for Kit), I would not put it past her. Because she’s going to be Teh Evol Blonde.

        April 18, 2019
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        • Ren Benton
          Ren Benton

          A DNA test to determine paternity between brothers would be useless, so it would be he said/she said regarding whether they were having sex at the right time, and since he’s apparently single-dickedly sustaining the condom industry, his protestations of innocence would be for naught. It wouldn’t further Caroline’s romantic aspirations (unless manipulation turns him on, which wouldn’t surprise me here), but it would be a decent revenge plot.

          April 18, 2019
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          • Seventhstar
            Seventhstar

            Actually, a paternity test can distinguish between two brothers, provided they aren’t identical twins. The odds that you’d get a false result are still pretty low.

            I don’t know if they’d have access to Troldark’s bro’s DNA, though; a false result could be a plot point.

            April 18, 2019
      • Transpacific visitor
        Transpacific visitor

        @ Ishi … If you do want to read a ‘falling in love with your brother’s pregnant ex’ story – that I guarantee will be better than anything churned out by ELJ – I can heartily recommend Vicar’s Daughter to Viscount’s Lady, by Louise Allen.

        It is a M&B Regency title, but it’s one of the better examples of the genre

        June 6, 2019
        |Reply
  6. Sushi
    Sushi

    Oliver already definitely sounds like he’s gonna be the George of this. I suppose the real tell will be if it turns out he cheated Kit out of a bunch of money and then marries Caroline, and I just realised that’s going to be confusing if Eel brings in the Poldark Caroline. Perhaps she won’t bother. Poldark Caroline has way too much personality.

    April 18, 2019
    |Reply
  7. Tami Marie Alexander
    Tami Marie Alexander

    Well, I was right about one thing: James had a second chance and…yeah.

    So, who do you think will be cast as the leads in this POS film adaptation?

    April 18, 2019
    |Reply
    • Coco
      Coco

      Taron Edgerton as Maxim
      Jameela Jamil as Caroline
      Eliza Dushku as Alessia (because I remember reading that her family is Albanian, and to cut off any complaints about her age they can throw in a line of dialogue about how « yes, very sad, very hard young girls in old country. Is why they call it old country. »)
      Nicholas Hoult as Scheming Buiness Manager (but he has to wear the same curly wig that he did in The Favourite)
      Olivia Colman as EL James / Narrator

      April 18, 2019
      |Reply
      • Sigyn
        Sigyn

        I hope Eliza Dushku isn’t in it; I like her far too much.

        April 18, 2019
        |Reply
        • Anon
          Anon

          I’m with Sigyn. Eliza is better than this. She’s also taking a break from acting and working on a counseling degree in Boston right now. And having a baby!

          April 19, 2019
          |Reply
      • H. Savinien
        H. Savinien

        Jameela Jamil wouldn’t do it. She’s got zero patience for body-shaming and misogyny, so there’s no way she’d work with ELJ or associate with one of her properties.

        April 20, 2019
        |Reply
      • Transpacific visitor
        Transpacific visitor

        OMG … you got me with the mental image of Nicholas Hoult wearing that 18thC wig from The Favourite in a modern romantic drama :’D :’D :’D

        It’s not how I was picturing Oliver (who I’ve contrarily decided to like, just because the hero has decided to dislike him for *absolutely no reason*), but I bow to your greater vision

        June 6, 2019
        |Reply
  8. Sigyn
    Sigyn

    “Earl shit”. Okay. Like what? Or doesn’t Erika know what earls do? I bet she doesn’t.

    Oh man, I can’t wait for someone in the SCA to get their hands on this and rip those bits to pieces.

    Oh look, a *man* who is an Evil Blond. I like Oliver, again out of spite.

    I wish the “old gorgon” would turn Moss to stone.

    A woman named Leticia who is sexually aggressive. Is that because non-White women are more “vulgar/animalistic” or something? I don’t like it. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but Leticia is a common Latina name (in my area, at least).

    April 18, 2019
    |Reply
    • AMS
      AMS

      In fairness although Leticia is not a common name in the UK we do have a famous soap actress called Letitia Dean who is white so maybe it was inspired by her? She hasn’t been in Poldark, mind.

      April 19, 2019
      |Reply
  9. Jenny (but not Jenny Trout)
    Jenny (but not Jenny Trout)

    I’m enjoying watching Poldark and reading the recaps. This chapter was pointless. But I’m learning what not to do in stories. 🙂

    April 18, 2019
    |Reply
    • NavigatorBR
      NavigatorBR

      That’s actually the real secret point to these books for everyone who has taste, learn what not to do.

      April 19, 2019
      |Reply
      • Anon
        Anon

        I learn a lot about writing from poorly-written books. There is some value to them in that sense.

        April 19, 2019
        |Reply
  10. Cristin
    Cristin

    Jesus. I couldn’t even read the whole post without being like – so they live in Escala Super Badass Highrise in this too, just on the Thames. I mean. It’s the same apartment from 50 somewhere else…HOW is that woman making money?

    May 6, 2019
    |Reply

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