#also that louisa is so much higher ranked than janet and lacey...

[caithyra]

Review: The Hanover Square Affair (Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries #1) by Ashley Gardner

So, I’m binging on historical fiction and thought that maybe I’ll make a few reviews. This particular review came about because the author trained the readers to read a certain way and then did not realize the implications when the a reader would read the whole book that way and not just the scenes the author wanted them to read like that.

I am of course talking about the character of Louisa Brandon, who is, according to the summary of the fifth book in this series, Captain Lacey’s good friend even after five books, even though he should have cut her out his life years before the this book and at least have cursed her out and never talked to her again halfway through this book. Yeah.

Quick Spoiler-free Review: 4/10. First Person POV but with little interior life of the POV character beyond complaints. The mystery ended up being of secondary concern to the Louisa annoyance for me in the end. All the characters and the narrative cannot stop praising Louisa Brandon when they should hate her. The first two chapters are basically filler because the characters speak in cryptic remarks instead of like normal people... You get the idea.

But let me rant a bit about Louisa Brandon. And I will do so in a way that’ll hopefully be helpful for other writers who might make the same mistake.

SPOILERS AHOY (But not of the mystery’s conclusion, because that’s got nothing to do with it)!

Basically, we are told to read more into what the characters say/write than what they say at face value, which is a given in mystery stories, but in this particular story, doing such means understanding the solution of several parts of the mystery (a maid obviously being infatuated with her murdered master while claiming she was not; a missing girl’s letters to a friend mentioning something in a previous letter yet the previous letter does not contain it, suggesting that her friend left a letter between out to hide this something, but the friend refuses to admit it).

Now, for some backstory about Captain Gabriel Lacey, Louisa Brandon, Aloysius Brandon and Janet Clarke. This is a very abbreviated, as close to spoiler-free version, I could get:

Basically, Louisa is married to Aloysius Brandon. Aloysius, Lacey’s commander, took Lacey under his wing during the wars in the army and they became the best of friends (Lacey continually thinks about how they loved, yes, using that word, each other). Janet was the wife of a lower ranked soldier who died, and became Lacey’s lover, and they were happy. At some point, Louisa’s honor was threatened, Lacey did some calling out, Aloysius became jealous and sent Lacey on a suicide mission, Janet (some point before the suicide mission, I think, I was sort of glazing over by this time) went home to take care of a sick sister (no promises made between her and Lacey) and married Clarke (who died before the start of this book), Lacey now hates Aloysius but could not take him down without ruining Louisa as well so he now lives on half-pay and most of his thoughts are about how much everything costs and how depressed he is and how his temper gets away from him (he’s been traumatized, betrayed and discarded, basically, by the Brandons).

Also, Louisa continues to hound Lacey to forgive her husband so that everything can go back to the way it were before when Lacey loved her husband and her.

Anyway, in this book, Lacey runs into Janet, who is being courted by another former soldier from his troops, and they rekindle their relationship. Lacey is happy when he is with Janet, and he talks to Janet about everything and she cheers him up when he’s depressed and whatnot (like, sex with her literally brings him out of his melancholic spells, and she apparently always had this ability and did it back in the army days too).

Then, some chapters later, we get this scene which begins with Janet and Lacey making love and then Janet breaking up with him:

She looked down and away. “Mrs. Brandon told me what you have become. I can’t be a burden around your neck, Gabriel. I won’t. You have burdens enough of your own.”

I stilled, anger filling me. “What I have become? Dear God, what the devil did she tell you?”

“That you are hurt. That you were broken.”

And then Lacey’s anger and pride takes over and yadda, yadda and then his female neighbor (who eavesdropped) who steals from him (even when she’s come into a larger amount of money, which he arranged for her) says that Louisa Brandon was right, that Janet was just using him (hello pot, calling someone a kettle when Janet’s not a kettle) and being a burden and whatnot (even though this is never, ever shown in the text. All Janet is shown to want in the text is a happy relationship with a husband who cherishes her, which Lacey most certainly does. It’s everyone else who says that she wants something Lacey can’t give, not Janet nor her behaviour at any point in the book).

But look at that scene and read it with the knowledge that what isn’t said, but implied, is just as important as it is with the letters and maid.

So... The wife of a superior officer of Janet’s late husband/future husband/lover, who is also richer and of higher social status, basically tells Janet to abandon her lover because he’s too broken to carry the burden of Janet (who happens to be the only good woman in this entire book who unreservedly made Lacey happy).

How, may I ask, did the topic even arise to discuss between the two of them? Like, how? The only reason why anything pertaining to such a thing would come up is if they discussed Lacey and Janet hinted that she rekindled their relationship, and then Louisa went ham on breaking them up, uncaring as to what their relationship truly is (at this point, it has only been shown as positive to Lacey, with the only negative being the period they were broken up), since there’s no way Janet could (or would) tell anyone but her most intimate friend details, and Louisa is not that friend.

Louisa really, really don’t want any other woman in Lacey’s life, is what I got from that scene. And it is reinforced as instead of comforting himself with Janet and talking to Janet, Lacey then derives comfort and talks to Louisa. Who is married, and not showing any inclination to leave her husband, not even temporarily, for an affair.

And then the last scene of the book compares Louisa’s forgiveness of Lacey with God’s forgiveness as she kisses his brow (still being married and in love with the man who tried to kill Lacey in a fit of jealousy and sent Lacey into a life of half-poverty). Both by Louisa and Lacey.

And it hit me that Louisa is just like those Female Best Friends (tm) of boyfriends who are totes friends with the girlfriends, they just try to monopolize the boyfriend’s time, suggest to one or the other that they are incompatible/better/worse than the other/spread rumors in social circles and so on. Heck, Louisa might be a full blown narcissist forcing her husband and Lacey to play pick-me games (hence why she wants them to reconcile; it is easier to play them against one another if they actually interact).

Basically, by the end, I believed that Louisa Brandon loves having Lacey and her husband fight over her as an ego boost, and she doesn’t care how she must ruin Lacey’s life to keep it that way (after all, being obsessed in a one-way infatuation with her is better than being in a loving relationship with any other [lesser] woman, in Louisa’s opinion, according to my read on the situation).

I went online to read reviews to see if anyone else caught it.

And then I found out that in the fifth book’s summary, Louisa is still Lacey’s good friend.

Wat.

So, apparently I read the book wrong, then? After following the instructions in the supposed main plot of the mystery? Or this is a “slow burn romance” in which Louisa systematically depriving Lacey of options over a period of many books is considered romantic, and that I should somehow root for their relationship?

Or maybe the author just didn’t realize what she wrote, when she wrote the Janet break up scene and the comparison between Louisa and God by Louisa herself, and with Louisa coming out on top (giving the forgiveness Lacey worries God will deny him). Also, there was very little hints (if any, I don’t remember any except exclaimations) that Lacey had any religious leanings until he went to GodLouisa for forgiveness.

And that, I think, is where other writers can learn from the mistake of trying to take the expedient option (Janet referring to Louisa as an authority on what poor, broken Lacey needs), which implies things that the author never meant, instead of actually doing the work to show what was meant (showing that Janet uses Lacey, have Janet break up with Lacey in favor of her future husband because she was just having a bit of fun or something, actually have Janet tell Lacey that he can’t give her what she needs in a husband, et cetera. There are so many other options than “Louisa, who is a third-party whom we never tell our intimate details to yet somehow is an expert on you and our relationship told me to break up with you!”).

Also, the way the female characters were written (except Saint Louisa) was... Yeah, it wasn’t great.

Also, a sixteen year old street prostitute is not practically elderly in her profession, OMG! Plenty of women in their 40s and 50s walked the streets! I do not know any sex work history in which the workers that walked public streets were considered old at sixteen!

And that was one of many other iffy, ahistorical things in this book (chiefly, because it was so unnecessary, being that Janet wouldn’t tell Louisa any pertinent details to make Louisa’s meddling justified and not just a fit of possessive jealousy. Like, imagine telling your late spouse’s boss’ wife the intimate relationship you have with a former employee of her husband’s that quit after the husband abused him, and then going “alright!” when she tells you to break up with him).