Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas

Private Arrangements Sherry Thomas Romance novel   2008 Rating: A-

Private Arrangements is author Sherry Thomas's first book, and a very promising debut it is: well written, expertly plotted, and full of complex characterization, both primary and secondary.  I haven't enjoyed a new romance this much in such a long time, I honestly can't remember what the last one was.

This is the story of Lord and Lady Tremaine's most courteous - and disastrous - marriage.   Ten years before they married and, after one night together, separated abruptly and irrevocably.  No Gigi, Lady Tremaine, has decided that a decade is long enough for a never truly extant marriage to last.  She has petitioned for a divorce, and her lawyers have sent word to Camden in New York City where he now resides.  Camden responds in an unexpected fashion.  Instead of handling things through his lawyers, he returns in person to London to offer Gigi his own proposition.  He will grant the divorce if she presents him with an heir.

The idea of intimacy with Camden again after all these years is untenable to Gigi.  The honeymoon was devastating enough, emotionally, and that lasted only one night.  Conceiving a child could conceivably (sorry, couldn't resist) take much longer and keep her interminably under his...control.  She counter-bargains: he can have one year of her life for his scheme, but no longer.  And when that year is up, she will be free to be with Lord Frederick, her fiancé, the kindest and truest man she knows.  Thus begins a second battle of the wills between old lovers who have experience more of hatred and suffering than romance.  

Gigi and Camden's complex history is illuminated little by little, alternating between past and present.  We are introduced to them when they are at their most guilty (and estranged) and then again at their most innocent.  Flashback can be tedious, bu it's used effectively here.  Many authors would sum up the backstory angst, speedily explaining to the reader how tortured the characters are and why, then moving on to the current action, leaving plenty of page space for a suspense sub-plot (complete with evil villain).  Fortunately, Thomas resisted that sort of plotting, preferring instead to show her characters at work then and now sot he reader can see how they've evolved over time.  Not knowing the reason behind the Tremaines' marital discord kept me turning the pages, first speculating as to cause then as to how the eventual break went down, word by word, rejection by rejection.  I was not disappointed.

From her guest reviews at All About Romance, it's apparent that Sherry Thomas is a fan of Judith Ivory.  It shows here.  Her prose is dimensional, elegant, and finely worded (not quite as audible, tangible, or historically evocative as Ivory's but close), her characters are flawed, and her women are emancipated.  Gigi herself is a force to be reckoned with, even as a young girl.  She knows what she wants, and she gets it.  Camden repeatedly describes her as "ruthless," and that is accurate.  She is also blunt and honest about her motives.  Readers seeking tender blossom heroines or martyrs won't like her, but she is unique in a genre filled with passive and enduring females.  Both her strengths and weaknesses are extreme.  Camden is also interesting.  Multi-talented, brilliant, and ambitious, he is a self-made man in an era when gentlemen, especially titled ones, were normally idle.  Given his gentlemanly backstory, his reactions to Gigi's machinations are perhaps a bit out of character in their extremity (his wedding night behavior is more suited to a Christian de Rivers), but they make for an interesting story, nonetheless.  

There is a secondary romance involving Gigi's mother, a woman who has been on a quest for a ducal title for her daughter for decades.   I am not especially partial to secondary romances, but this one was very well done and deftly echoed the conflicts and themes embedded in Gigi and Camden's story.

Ultimately Private Arrangements is a story about redemption and second chances, ones not earned, but given.  It's about people who have failed but then recovered and continued on when it would have been easier to wallow and languish.  I'm a sucker for a character-driven story and for marriages in trouble, and this book has both.  There were also some fun allusions to Laura Kinsale's The Shadow and the Star, a book I'm always happy to be reminded of.   

I bought Private Arrangements new, on the day it was released, and was not really expecting it to live up to the online hype.  Few books do.  I almost always regret impulse purchases (even "planned" ones).  But my $6.99 was well spent here, and I can enthusiastically recommend it to anyone looking for a well written romance out of the usual mold.  I am very excited for Thomas's next book, Delicious, out in July.

tags: books  romance novels  sherry thomas