Reviews for Private Arrangements

The average rating for Private Arrangements based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-07-09 00:00:00 Stephen Heberlein Warning: GIFs and major spoilers ahead! Private Arrangements is the tedious story of horrible people being horrible to each other in horrible circumstances. After reading Sherry Thomas's Ravishing the Heiress, I figured that wangst was her schtick. I hate wangst. I'd rather read about things happening than about people complaining all the time. But since Sherry Thomas has so many glowing reviews, I thought, "Well, maybe some of her wangst is more tolerable than the wangst I just read. Everyone deserves a second chance." And then this book was like: September 19, 2012: The day I decided, NEVER AGAIN. Lessons have been learned, my friends. It wasn't all bad, I suppose. Mostly bad, of course, but a few glimmers of hope in the text kept me reading. Thomas has a very distinctive prose style. She excels at creating an atmospheric sense of despair. This would be well-suited to a horror or suspense novel - or maybe one of those depressing books people like to read about kids with deformities or terminal illnesses (you know the ones) - but really drags down the mood in a romance novel. Every time happiness glimmered on the horizon, the characters dutifully fucked it all up. And the worst thing is that they never really have to fuck it up. They just do. Apparently for the LULZ. It's like the main characters took a blood oath at birth to stand in the way of their own happiness, and in turn, the happiness of all the characters around them and the happiness of any innocent person who happens to read their book. I am the kangaroo. This book is the fucking bird. The Story: Gigi Rowland comes from a family that's mega-rich in trade but not so high in the aristocracy. Her mother, never one to pursue anything but the loftiest ambitions, makes it her life mission to marry Gigi off to a duke. Indeed, Gigi does catch a duke, through less than noble but totes clever means of buying up all his debt and blackmailing him into marriage. Unfortunately, the poor sod dies shortly before the wedding. Or lucky sod, depending on how you look at it. Gigi and her mum think that they're back to square one, but miracle of miracles! The dead duke has a cousin who will inherit the dukedom when his daddy kicks the bucket. The cousin is poor-as-dirt Camden Saybrook, who hogs what Gigi lacks in blue blood but starves for cash where Gigi is rich. Fortunately for Gigi's until then dormant little heart, Camden is super hot and all educated and cultured 'n stuff because his parents had to sweep their kids all over the continent as a result of not having enough money to have a home of their own. She falls in love with him the very day they meet. Okay, so this is looking good. Boy needs money. Girl needs title. They both want to do the horizontal tango. Hearts and butterflies and mix tapes are in their future! Right? Hell to the no. This is a Sherry Thomas book, you naive fool. Naturally, Camden has promised his heart to some boring, fickle girl from some European country I can't bother remembering. The girl's about as inspiring as dry toast, okay? She isn't worth the trouble her presence brought to this book. Even though this girl's actively seeking a wealthy, titled husband in England, Camden feels honor-bound to uphold his adolescent pledges of eternal love. When Gigi points out all the reasons he should insert his Tab A into her Slot B in the marriage bed, Camden's still like, "Even though I masturbate to you, like, constantly, my heart has been pledged to another. Just friends, 'kay?" And Gigi's like: "Oprah and I are NOT buying your shit." So, like any other enterprising Victorian girl, Gigi takes matters into her own hands. With the help of a poorly forged letter and a slight lack of ethics, she tricks Camden into doing exactly what he wants. They promptly set a wedding date. Everything's GLORIOUS, for like a minute, until Camden discovers Gigi's betrayal a day before the wedding. Now, instead of behaving like a fucking HUMAN BEING and confronting Gigi about the deceit directly, Camden literally runs across the village in a fit of angst like an infinitely less cool Forrest Gump and then decides that he must have REVENGE. I'm not sure if Camden got more upset over Gigi's forged letter from the "other woman" saying that Miss Boring was betrothed to another or if he was pissed at himself for being stupid enough to believe it in the first place. Either way, Miss Boring really does get betrothed to someone else, so all the whinging in the world wouldn't have brought Camden to any other place than into Gigi's willing arms. What Gigi did was crappy, but at least she did it out of LOVE for Camden. If he had confronted her before the wedding and talked or yelled it out, I'm sure they still would have decided to fuck like rabbits. What I'm trying to get across is this: The wangst in this book was easily avoidable! Like a romance hero after my own fantasies, Camden pretends that everything's totes cool until the wedding night. He tries to act all dickish but can't quite pull it off until after he screws the daylights out of Gigi. You know, to rid himself of his disgusting lust for her. They have sex, and it's earth-shattering while angels probably cry tears of joy in the heavens, and Gigi's incredibly happy. Enter: Camden taking a massive dump on all things happy the morning after. He curses Gigi, refuses to accept her apologies, and leaves her high and dry for ten years. Yes, because abandoning the wife that you DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO MARRY IN THE FIRST PLACE is totes nobler than the actions of a freaking teenager forging a letter and releasing you from an ill-suited marriage. Even Neil Degrasse Tyson can't make sense of this shit. Ten long, painful years pass until Gigi decides that she's had ENOUGH of her absentee husband. She wants a divorce so she can remarry a younger man who naively worships the ground she walks on. At the age of 29, Gigi is now a seasoned cougar, apparently. If we lived in a fair world, Camden would have granted the divorce and released us from the torturous inanity of this plot. But this is a very UNfair world, so Europe's Wettest Blanket (AKA Camden) returns to London from America to make one last demand of his dear wife. Camden wants an heir before he'll grant her a divorce. Yes, an heir. And then he'll grant her a divorce. Let that sink in. Camden, an educated marquess, wants to knock up the wife he doesn't like, get an heir, and then sentence the kiddo to a life of shame and humiliation by granting a scandalous divorce to the baby's mother. Camden is just like a soap opera villain, only not interesting at all because he's a whiny bitch. I got incredibly bored with the story at this point. It was just a lot of pain and whinging to reach a foregone conclusion. Hate sex ... hate sex ... hate sex ... Sorta/kinda like sex with all the erotic appeal of this: Pointless, boring scenes dedicated to Gigi's mum having not very clever conversations with the single duke down the street. Because the ONE THING this stupid-fest needed was a secondary love story. I love her. I love her not. I love her. I love her not. I love him. I love him not. I love him. I love him not. Stupid angsty quotes that totally don't fit the actual problems these people have, like ... Camden slapped down the towel and caught his own reflection in the mirror above the washbasin. He looked about as happy as the citizenry of Paris on the eve of the Storming of the Bastille, primed for violence and mayhem. Painful separation. Stupid quotes that confirm that this IS NOT romance ... True, there were all sorts of ways he could bludgeon her, with the diminished but still powerful husbandly prerogatives granted him under English law. But in the end, what would it accomplish? A gratuitous scene of Camden hob-nobbing with the Vanderbilts, Astors and Morgans. A rushed and unsatisfactory reunion. And then, god help me, this ... "She turned onto her back and slid a knuckle across her lower lip. "Won't you come to bed and make me pregnant?" The. Fucking. End. I know that Sherry Thomas has a lot of fans. If this kind of story floats your boat, that's great. Sadly, this is just NOT my cup of tea. My reading of this book is a result of a devious Buddy Square Read. Check out Karla, Kerrie, and Sarah's reviews for some more wacky perspectives into the books of Sherry Thomas.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-10-30 00:00:00 Joshua Nelson Jane Feather called this book, "enchanting...An extraordinary, unputdownable love story." You would think a fellow author could conjure up better praise than "unputdownable," but Mary Balogh puts it better. She calls Private Arrangements "a love story of remarkable depth," and that's certainly true. In fact, the first half of Private Arrangements reads very much like a beautiful, artistic indie film. The first moments glimpsed between Gigi and Camden are intimate and sweet and summon a tone of magic. From the moment these two meet we feel the impression that they are soulmates, the kind of kindred spirits who finish each other's sentences and share silent exchanges. Sherry Thomas skillfully conveys their bond by capturing the real life nuances between a man and a woman, the instant connection that a man and a woman feel when they can share a joke in a glance. The silences are as telling as the words. This act in the story is possibly the most romantic I've seen in a romance. So I loved these flashes back. They're integral to the rest of the story, and they were placed ideally in the book to describe current events. (Don't worry, the flashbacks stop, they're not endless, LOL.) So it's all the more tragic when that communion is shattered. Both parties are to blame, but when we see, as we must, the sad straits to which the Tremaines come, two people once in love now unable to stop hurting each other, we feel the pain that Gigi and Camden must feel. Again, the author is brilliant at proving all her claims (aka "showing"). Gigi is meant to be intelligent and strong, and we see this in her actions and words, in the vulnerable heart of her that she protects so carefully. She is a real woman that we have all met at one point, not a manufactured heroine too stubborn or stupid to live or ridiculously naive. She is a proud woman, at once her strength and weakness. Likewise, we come to know Camden with his intelligence and calm, his humility and humor, his quiet dignity and strength. He's not arrogant or overbearing (though he can surely be aggressive/firm when the needs calls for it) and not led by the nose into the heroine's tricks or drama. At one point, he even makes light of a man flying into a jealous rage when a rival for the heroine's attentions is dangled before him-- which I found amusing, because we all have seen that device in historical romance. He is a very real hero, whom we probably all have met at one point or another. He makes mistakes and despite himself he's not invulnerable, though he's not a rake or resistant to love for the sake of resistance. Their histories have made the characters who they are, and they are not overdramatic or contrived. The ice between Camden and Gigi, the cold, polite relationship is Victorian British to the core and the barbs traded between them intelligent and biting. This is the first time I've seen this done right. This is the cut direct delivered with a smile, but the book is prevented from becoming too bleak or depressing because not only we do read about the longing and undying attraction, despite all, between these two, but we're promised an end in sight, a HEA. Needless to say, Thomas has done her research-- if you need proof, she drops a paragraph on the economics of the times, the only point in the novel where she reveals her research outright. She also roots us in the period with little windows into the time in a way that we can relate. We read a telegram from Camden to his mother-in-law, and it is as long-suffering as any modern man could be. At another point, instead of a description, we read a building plaque directly, Thomas illustrating the story herself. However, she remains firmly in the period. I particularly like that she doesn't try to make Gigi a modern woman from 2008 suffering the 1800s. In fact, Camden even looks back at medieval times as we would his time, saying something along the lines of, "Too bad we've made so much progress." That was a brilliant touch. Gigi exploits her advantages as much as he. Thomas also reminds us that the Victorians were human. Many authors research the strict accepted social norms of the times, but few realize they were flaunted just as the norms of today are. They laughed, they loved. Oscar Wilde would have approved. Thomas' style is another point in favor. She has a very elegant, spare style that suits the story far better than the purple prose we often find in romance. She is concise without verging into colloquial or informal, she's succinct in the way that Hemingway was, never too wordy. I also loved her physical descriptions of the characters because instead of using vague descriptors like "deep-set eyes" or a "bright eyes," she tells us a character has a chin like "Michelangelo's David" and we immediately have a concrete visual. She writes clever dialogue too, if I haven't mentioned that yet, that modern readers can understand without feeling dumbed down or too anachronistic. As for the plot, this is a relationship drama. There is no suspense or action to power the plot, but Thomas makes smashing-good drama of these characters' lives. The book is emotional not because of any manufactured devices, but because of the real pains that these characters suffer, the depths to which they plumb the human character when they're breaking up, when they're loving, hurting, parting, all of it, almost like Susan Wiggs if she wrote historical. In short, Thomas brings subtlety, a touch of realism, and human drama back into romance. She's a breath of fresh air in the romance genre, and I just hope I enjoy her next book as much. I should also mention that there's a current of heated tension between Gigi and Camden. However, while there are bedroom scenes, they are short and sensual. They are definitely not pages long, but enough details are conveyed to move the story as they are meant to do (and satisfy most readers, LOL). ;)