Reading Journal Entry: Love of my Life, by Meredith Bond

This Regency goes a little further afield than usual. The heroine, Cassandra, makes a flop in London and escapes to India for social rehabilitation. There she meets the man of her dreams who is, gasp, a half-breed! Bond gets points for trying to delve into the setting and culture but she didn't really succeed in bringing India to life except for a brief, amusing, scene at a temple with anatomically correct statuary. But there's so much more to deal with at the intersection between English and India.... Maybe it's not fair to compare a category romance novel to Booker Prize winner Staying On by Paul Scott, but it's a comparison that's impossible not to make.

Peeves: When the action switches back to England, things kind of fall apart. Bond doesn't do well at portraying the male friendships that develop. Also, Bond consistently uses the term 'Eurasian' to refer to Julian's mother and himself. That's a very modern-sounding term, and in fact it wasn't coined until 1844.


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