Always Remember (Ravenswood #3) by Mary Balogh
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical romance, regency romance
Series: Ravenswood #3
Pages: 366
Published by Berkley on January 16, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Lady Jennifer Arden and Ben Ellis know that a match between them is out of the question. Yet their hearts yearn for the impossible. Discover a new heartwarming story from New York Times bestselling author and beloved “queen of Regency romance” Mary Balogh.Left unable to walk by a childhood illness, Lady Jennifer, sister of the Duke of Wilby, has grown up to make a happy place for herself in society. Outgoing and cheerful, she has many friends and enjoys the pleasures of high society—even if she cannot dance at balls or stroll in Hyde Park. She is blessed with a large, loving, and protective family. But she secretly dreams of marriage and children, and of walking—and dancing.When Ben Ellis comes across Lady Jennifer as she struggles to walk with the aid of primitive crutches, he instantly understands her yearning. He is a fixer. It is often said of him that he never saw a practical problem he did not have to solve. He wants to help her discover independence and motion—driving a carriage, swimming, even walking a different way. But he must be careful. He is the bastard son of the late Earl of Stratton. Though he was raised with the earl’s family, he knows he does not really belong in the world of the ton.Jennifer is shocked—and intrigued—by Ben’s ideas, and both families are alarmed by the growing friendship and perhaps more that they sense developing between the two. A duke’s sister certainly cannot marry the bastard son of an earl. Except sometimes, love can find a way.

My Review:

At the beginning of the Ravenswood series, back in Remember Love, I compared the late and more or less lamented Earl of Stratton, Caleb Ware, with the late and entirely unlamented Humphrey Westcott, Earl of Riverdale, the discovery of whose marital perfidy kicked off that series, and found both of them wanting in only slightly different ways and degrees.

As that earlier series continued through the stories of all the family members impacted by the lies that were shockingly revealed upon Westcott’s death, the man was never redeemed – not even in memory. In fact, as the impacts of his lies rippled out in the years after his death, the worse a character he became.

Therefore, one of the fascinating things about Caleb Ware, Earl of Stratton, is the way that his memory has been redeemed in the years after his death. Not that he wasn’t unfaithful to his wife from the very beginning of their marriage, and not that he didn’t constantly seek love, approval and attention wherever he went, but the reasons behind his actions become clearer with each book – even though that book is centered around another character entirely.

That is especially true of this third book in the series, after Remember Love and Remember Me, because the male protagonist of this story is Ware’s illegitimate oldest son Ben, whose mother was, as it turns out, truly, the love of Ware’s life.

A woman of his own class who he would have married if he could have, but that would have made her guilty of the same sin as Humphrey Westcott. It would have made Lady Janette Kelliston, who her son only knew as plain ‘Jane Ellis’, a bigamist.

But this is, after all, Ben’s story and not the story of his parents, although his discovery of the truth about that relationship and so much more is a central part of his story. While he does not discover those truths until well into this story, it does set the stage for the things he already does know about himself.

That in spite of his complete and thoroughgoing acceptance by Caleb Ware’s legal family for all of Ben’s life, he is, and always will be, the Earl’s bastard. And therefore, not eligible to marry any of the girls – and now women – he meets as part of his membership in the Ware family.

Which means that when widowed Ben and his three-year-old daughter Joy come to Ravenswood Hall to celebrate the revival of the annual Summer Fete, even though he has marriage on his mind he does not expect to find anyone who would consider him suitable among his family’s aristocratic guests.

Because he is NOT suitable, as the rest of the world is all too willing to remind him. The question is whether he, and the woman with whom he falls in love in spite of all the whispers against it, are willing to damn the consequences and the social opprobrium likely to follow in their wake.

Escape Rating A-: I came into Always Remember with high hopes after a bit of disappointment with Remember Me. I liked the characters of that book well enough, but Lady Philippa Ware was a bit TOO perfect and too privileged to identify with and that affected my reading of her story quite a lot.

The heroine of this entry in the series, Pippa’s now sister-in-law Lady Jennifer Arden, is far from perfect – although she fakes it well. Not the perfect beauty that Pippa absolutely does have, but rather, a perfect amiability – or at least the appearance of it – that allows her to find as much happiness and fulfillment in the life that the lifelong disability that remains after a childhood illness (most likely polio) has left her with as is possible. Which is quite a lot if one puts their mind to it, which Lady Jennifer absolutely does.

So this is a romance between an unconventional hero – at least for a Regency romance – and an equally unusual heroine – for any romance at all. That it is their differences from the others around them that brings them together – even as their differences in social position pulls them apart – that made even the possibilities of this story something I was definitely looking forward to.

Ben Ellis and Lady Jennifer Arden find a bond because they are able to see behind each other’s masks to find the real person within. Both are in positions where they ‘should’ be grateful. He because his father’s family took him in and made him their own – as much as they could and considerably more than he knew he had any right to expect. Lady Jennifer’s entire family has rearranged itself, and continues to do so, in order to make sure that she is taken care of, has as much freedom and opportunity as they believe is safe for her, and in general has a good, well-privileged life with friends and opportunities and someone always available to take care of her.

But they are both in pursuit of the missing pieces in their lives. Ben needs to know about his mother’s family, for the sake of his own identity as well as that of his daughter. Lady Jennifer is twenty-five years old, she needs to find out what her OWN limits are. From her perspective, she has one blighted leg but the rest of her, including most definitely her heart and her brain, are just fine. She is an adult and needs to forge her own path – even if that path is navigated on crutches or in a wheelchair.

Ben sees possibilities for her. She sees answers for him. Together, they forge a path that no one expected, and that some would have preferred they not even begin to try. I half expected the author to contrive a solution that would make Ben legally legitimate no matter the actual circumstances of his birth in order to clear that path, but it made for a much better story that the easy solution was not taken after all, making this a deeply earned HEA that kept me up late because I had to find out how it ended.

Speaking of endings, this could be the ending of the Ravenswood series, but I sincerely hope that it is not. The late – and now reasonably lamented – Earl of Stratton and his Countess had several more children who have yet to find their own HEAs. I’d LOVE to see their stories added to this series!

Remember Love (Ravenswood, #1) by Mary Balogh
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical romance, regency romance
Series: Ravenswood #1
Pages: 400
Published by Berkley on July 12, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The undisputed queen of Regency romance is back with a brand-new story perfect for fans of Bridgerton.
The handsome and charismatic Earl of Stratton, Caleb Ware, has been exposed to the ton for his clandestine affairs—by his own son.
As a child, Devlin Ware thought his family stood for all that was right and good in the world. They were kind, gracious, and shared the beauty of Ravenwood, their grand country estate, by hosting lavish parties for the entire countryside. But at twenty-two, he discovered his whole world was an elaborate illusion, and when Devlin publicly called his family to account for it, he was exiled as a traitor.
So be it. He enlisted in the fight against Napoleon and didn’t look back for six years. But now his father is dead, the Ware family is broken, and as the heir he is being called home. It’s only when Gwyneth Rhys—the woman he loved and then lost after his family banished him—holds out her hand to help him that he is able make the difficult journey and try to piece together his fractured family.
It is Gwyneth’s loyalty, patience, and love that he needs. But is Devlin’s war-hardened heart even capable of offering her love in return?

My Review:

Humphrey Westcott, Earl of Riverdale and Caleb Ware, Earl of Stratton must have been bosom buddies. Possibly literally. Certainly they seem to have been cut from the same despicable cloth. Both were wealthy aristocrats who lived a lie and expected everyone around them to go along with that lie rather than face up to the uncomfortable truth.

Westcott hid his perfidy until after his death, which makes the shocking opening of the Westcott series, Someone to Love, all that much more upsetting. But at least Westcott didn’t require that others go along with his false front because he kept his secret very well hidden indeed.

Caleb Ware, very much on the other hand, needed admiration, approval and even applause from all those who surrounded him. He projected the image of a loving husband and father with a perfect family because he needed people to love him at every turn. Not that there weren’t plenty of men in his position who lived lives completely separate from the wives and families and didn’t care about the winks and nods that followed in their wake.

But Ware needed to have it all. A perfect family at his country home, and a mistress or two, or three, in London. When he brought his current mistress to his country estate and flaunted his affair in front of his friends and family he expected everyone to turn the same blind eye that they always had. And when one member of his family refused to turn that blind eye, and refused to sweep the entire tawdry incident under the rug for the sake of peace and not rocking the family boat – he likewise refused to take responsibility for his actions. And the rest of the family punished the young man who could not stand idly by after learning that his oh-so-perfect father, his hero, had feet of clay up to the knees – or perhaps a bit higher.

And that’s what kicks this story into a higher gear – that the expected pattern of the lives of not just the Earl and his heir are knocked off course – but that the entire family’s future is irrevocably altered over the course of one disastrous night.

The aftermath of which makes for a much more fascinating – and occasionally dangerous – life than anyone would have expected for the heir to an earldom – and for the woman he once expected to be his bride.

Escape Rating A-: The Ravenswood series is off to a heartbreaking but eventually heartwarming and redemptive start in this opening entry in the series. It has the potential for all the elements that made the Westcott series so fascinating, with Devlin Ware’s condemnation of his father’s behavior and his family’s complicity drastically altering ALL their lives.

What makes the initial break in the story such a huge change is that it encompasses both Devlin’s sharply learned lesson that his father is not worthy of being anyone’s hero, and that the rest of his family would rather keep lying to themselves and each other than try to fix what’s broken. That Caleb Ware is the one who behaved so very badly but Devlin Ware is the one who gets punished for it puts the hypocrisy of the whole mess on disgusting display.

But Caleb eventually does get his just desserts, while Devlin immediately gets a commission in the infantry. During the worst of the fighting of the bitter Napoleonic Wars. From one perspective, it’s the making of him, while in the other it represents the shattering of his heart into pieces so tiny that Devlin is no longer certain he even possesses such an organ.

The heartbreak for Devlin’s family is that the only way he can survive the hell of his war is to compartmentalize his feelings for his family and reject all contact with any of them – except for his father’s bastard son who is serving as his batman. It’s a cold, hard, bitter road that he walks – but he does survive it.

Only to return home after Napoleon’s surrender, two years after his father’s death, to do his duty yet again and pick up the reins of the earldom that he has inherited. He has done his best to cut his family out of his heart, but Devlin Ware is a man who has always done his duty – and taking up the mantle of the Earl of Stratton is his duty.

Once Devlin is back in the place he once called home, doing his best to fit himself into the place that is his duty, he tries to convince himself that it is out of duty alone and not the emotions he swears he’s no longer capable of feeling. He eventually learns that duty does not have to mean burden, and that if he allows himself to feel all the things that he locked away during his war, his peace can be filled with not just true peace, but also real love and belonging.

In the end I enjoyed Remember Love because it is a story where the life that’s supposed to happen gets pushed aside for a life that is harder and darker but in the end much more real, and that’s the same thing that made the Westcott series so fascinating. Young Devlin, before he left, was a bit of a prig. He meant well and generally did well but could really be a self-righteous young man. He’s much more interesting when he’s much less sure of things – as well as a whole lot more approachable and loveable.

Gwyneth Rhys, the heroine of this romance, doesn’t pine. She doesn’t wallow. But what she does is know herself, her strengths, her weaknesses and those situations up with which she will not put. She is not going to change to suit a man, but she does deal pragmatically with the life she has.

The character who turned out to be a complete surprise was Devlin’s mother, the Dowager Countess. The woman who did her best not to know about her husband’s frequent infidelities until he brought them to her very door. At first, she seems weak in that she didn’t protest her husband’s affairs and actually participated in her son’s banishment. It’s only when she acknowledges to Devlin that she did the best she could with the cards she was dealt because women were forced to lie all the time to survive. She lied to herself because that is what she and women like her were trained to do practically from the cradle.

It makes Devlin think. It makes the reader think. And it makes the reader wonder – or at least this reader wonder – whether or not all that much has really changed.

Remember Love is the first book in the Ravenswood series. Now that Devlin is back home and has found his own HEA, I wonder what will happen next in the slightly altered lives of his family and friends in the coming entries in the series. Hopefully we’ll see sometime next year!