Title: Blackthorne’s Bride
Author: Joan Johnston
Series: Mail-Order Brides/Bitter Creek Historical #4
Flawed upon closer inspection…only a fraction of a larger world
I would like to thank Joan Johnston, Dell at Penguin Random House, and NetGalley for allowing me to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Josephine Wentworth despises the Duke of Blackthorne. He’d saved her life, nursed her back to health, and promised to return her to her family—then shut her up in one of his deteriorating properties in the middle of nowhere to become a slave—or rather, a maid-of-all-work—under the most spiteful woman she’d ever known. What’s worse, he’d sent his young nephews to the same place under the “care” of a heartless governess. And he left them all there to rot for two years, never visiting or communicating in any way.
When a Pinkerton agent shows up on the doorstep and reveals unforeseeable circumstances had resulted in her becoming a very wealth heiress, Josie begins to scheme. Her first priority is to get the boys she’d come to love far away from their abusers. If she found some way to exact vengeance on the Dastardly Duke along the way—icing on the cake.
I was in love with this book as I was reading it, but when I was done and began writing this review, I realized it wasn’t that great.
I don’t recall reading much of Johnston in the past, she’s not an author I collect at this time, but I’m familiar with her name—because it’s everywhere. I saw the book available for request on NetGalley, was intrigued by the blurb, and decided to give it a shot, thinking there has to be a reason for her immense popularity.
I wanted to call this book “classic,” but I think I mean more that it’s traditional. The characters, the plot, the tone felt like the majority of historical romances I’ve read. It makes me wonder, should I read more of Johnston’s work, if it would all blend together eventually. I’d bet it would.
From what I can tell, a good portion of Johnston’s work revolves around the fictional town of Bitter Creek and its residents, namely the Creeds. This book is only the latest installment in that line, with three direct predecessors and umpteen relatives. The series to which it directly ties is the Mail-Order Brides series, though I’ve seen it called the Bitter Creek Historical series as well. If you have absolutely no curiosity whatsoever and have no sense at all of a bigger picture, I suppose this story could be read as a stand alone…but it’s made very plain that this was only one short chapter in a bigger story, and I became very annoyed with the token backstories for characters who already have their own novels. I didn’t need recaps for them to understand Josie’s story. How the sisters came to be with their husbands wasn’t relevant. How much their husbands cherished them wasn’t relevant. It was fluffy, cheesy fan service.
Josie’s memories and thoughts of the past were fragmented, and I never felt that I truly understood what had happened in her life to bring her to the present. Her parents’ deaths, the orphanage, her uncle, heading west, and whatever the Great Fire of Chicago had to do with any of it—I couldn’t put it together in a cohesive, linear timeline if I was asked to. I never felt completely familiar with Blackthorne’s past, either; there seemed to be a LOT left unsaid about his family. The circumstances of his parents’ and brother’s deaths seemed suspicious, but that could just be the nature of throwaway explanations. And what was with his uncle Alex? Why did the Creeds dislike him so much? Why did Blackthorne condemn him for fighting for his rightful inheritance? Just…wtf?
We were told the bits that were influencing Josie and Blackthorne’s decisions, and that’s it. Sure, viewpoint and perception is a matter of keeping in character—but at some point, in order to have complete arcs, the characters need to see beyond themselves and discover the truth of the world around them. It’s called maturity. There was some, I’ll grant you, when Blackthorne finally realized he hadn’t been grieving his wife, he’d simply had his head stuck up his ass, as well as when Josie realized Blackthorne wasn’t heartless, simply ignorant and arrogant. But not enough.
I liked Josie and Blackthorne as characters in a general sense. At heart, they were both kind and noble. But objectively, they were incredibly selfish, reactive, and presumptuous. I’d like to think those flaws were curbed by the end, but I’m not confident they were reformed. To her credit, Josie had most wanted to save the boys from further cruelty, but though there were several things she could have done to achieve that, she’d decided to kidnap them. Also to her credit, she never actually did so—out of spite, anyway. She did eventually steal them away—but as to that, WHY didn’t she just leave some sort of message for her husband? She had no time to waste, but she also had a Pinkerton detective at her disposal. If she was so conflicted about it, if she had wanted to consult Blackthorne before taking off, if she hadn’t wanted to leave him altogether, she could have done things differently. The reasoning for how that final sequence of events played out is flimsy. Ah, well. Dramatic storytelling.
I’m not sure I can judge the plot itself, because it was so dependent upon the characters behaving precisely as they did, as I just ranted above. It was character-driven, I’ll give it that, but perhaps not in a good way. I’m not sure we needed the subplot with Seaton and Lark. It’s purpose was to get Blackthorne and Josie moving in the right direction—literally—give Blackthorne more reason to doubt his friend—aka create shallow, presumptuous drama—and separate him from Josie so that she could run…but with some brainstorming and tweaking, I think Seaton and Lark’s side track could have been removed and the same ends met.
Despite all this, I wouldn’t say Johnston is a bad writer. She’s far too popular for that notion to have any credence. But this is definitely not the book I would choose as an introduction to her work.
