Tessa Dare's Cardboard Characters & Surface Settings

How Dare limits character depth and growth by only allowing certain kinds of conflict.

I’m kind of fascinated with Tessa Dare. She writes wallpaper romances. Her novels are pretty popular. On social media, people commonly recommend her as an entry point into historical romance.

In an interview with Publisher’s Weekly in 2012, Sheri Melnick asked: “Why mix so much humor in with the serious emotion?”

Dare responded: “My own romance with Mr. Dare was an exhilarating, whirlwind courtship across two continents, but on one of our very first dates, I ran into a flagpole, face-first. More than a decade later, we’re still laughing about it. So the juxtaposition of comic absurdity and deeply felt emotion just seems real to me, because it mirrors my own life.”

I like this response and it’s true. Juxtaposing deep emotion with humor in romance highlights the range of emotions a couple goes through on the way to solidifying their relationship. It can subvert reader expectations where the scene plays off first as a comedy and then turns into deeper emotional territory. Sometimes sadness or despair hits harder after having laughed.

I would term how Dare uses comedy in fiction as shenanigans. In The Wallflower Wager, Penny breaks into her neighbor’s house to capture her escaped parrot, only to end up on Gabe’s bed as he’s entering from the adjacent room without most of his clothes on. Chase’s ward, Daisy, from The Governess Game, performs a funeral every day for her doll, Millicent. Ash from The Duchess Deal stalks around town at night, earning himself the nickname “the Monster of Mayfair.”

These shenanigans succeed to varying degrees. The Wallflower Wager lacks chemistry and that opening scene fails to set off any smoldering or longing between the characters. I admit to being charmed by the funerals. I skipped Ash’s nighttime wanderings, which serve as fuel for his justification for why his love interest shouldn’t be in love with him as villagers react in horror to his scarred face.

Dare’s revelation for why-we-can’t-be-together is—typically—trauma. Referencing back to the “deeply felt emotion” bit, this is what Dare does. The relationship hang ups stem from this trauma, which I need to explicitly say is still a good way to structure a novel and a thing that happens in real life. People have relationship hang-ups because they have something in their past that guides their present actions. They might act out of fear or anger. My hang up is that Dare uses this almost as a get-out-of-jail-free card. She isn’t interested in exploring how, yes, trauma can explain or motivate characters, but characters still hurt each other. Characters are rarely mean to the point of damaging the relationship or hurting the other person. Even in situations where meanness, anger, and rough edges would probably be the actual response to an interaction between the couple.

This leads me to another tool of hers: characters stating the obvious. Which. Of course characters will discuss the Big Conflict and what their hang ups are. Dare approaches these conversations as if just the acknowledgement of the conflict means these characters can now get over hang ups or sidestep, say, class disparity. In these discussions, Dare limits their emotions and reactions to immediately sympathetic responses. To demonstrate what I mean, I’m gonna re-use a scene I’ve already referenced from The Governess Game. Alex is the governess to Chase’s two wards. Chase is the heir apparent to a duke. She’s approaching spinster status, so she initiates a relationship with him for some sexual experience. In the scene, Alex and Chase take the wards to a museum and Alex recognizes a former employer, Sir Winston, who’d tried to take “liberties” with her in the past. She tells Chase that Sir Winston won’t recognize her and when Sir Winston talks to them and asks who she is, she replies, “I’m just the governess.” Chase then replies, “You are not just the governess. You are not ‘just’ anything.” Then Sir Winston’s like, “Well, of course she’s not ‘just’ the governess. They never are, are they?” Then Chase punches him.

After, Alex rightly berates him and is like, everyone’s going to know now that I am your mistress. Chase counters she’s not his mistress, and it’s at the point in the book where, like, the relationship is tipping into, is this something more? territory. Then Alex says: “Chase, you are a wealthy well-placed man. The heir to a duke. Society will forgive you anything. Women in my position are not so fortunate. We work for our living at the pleasure of the upper classes. The tiniest hint of scandal, and we are ruined. Unemployable, forever. That’s the way English society works.”

Guess what Chase says to this? “Then English society needs to do better” (AHHHHHHHHH.) After the exchange, they have sex, and that’s kind of the extent of it. Nobody is ruined. Alex’s anger dissipates and there are no consequences to Chase punching someone else and blowing up Alex’s reputation. Yes, Alex is angry in the moment and articulates the conflict of their relationship: there’s a massive power differential. Chase could absolutely ruin Alex’s relationship and job prospects. This is an interesting conflict. So many missteps could happen here. So much misunderstanding. Good intentions gone awry. Characters hurting each other. Yet, Dare hand-waves away most of the conflict by signaling Chase is one of the good ones, actually. His immediate response puts the blame on society instead of re-thinking his own actions. Dare won’t allow an unsympathetic or raw response from him. Why does she do this? Why not mine the conflict more?

In a 2018 interview with the website Culturess, Cheryl Wassenaar asked Dare: “What were the hardest and easiest parts of writing The Governess Game?”

Dare outlined the hardest parts: “I decided on the book’s basic trope (governess/rake) well before I started writing it. However, the #metoo movement really took off while I was writing it, and suddenly the power dynamics of a relationship between a wealthy, high-ranking employer and his impoverished, lower-class employee felt much more problematic. Which is for the best, of course—#metoo is not only an important conversation in our broader society, but within romance. I wrestled with it a lot, trying to make it clear that both characters were equally matched and the heroine was fully consenting. In the end, I know the book is better for it.”

Is it though? Did Dare really accomplish a thoughtful exploration of an employer/employee relationship? I don’t think so. I kind of blew past the fact Chase would already know how English society functions and that he has a lot more power than Alex. To give him a “revelation” in that moment is an attempt to absolve him of knowingly and potentially risking this woman’s livelihood. It’s like Dare’s pretending the setup isn’t what it is. Alex has her spiel, and she’s the one who initiates the relationship. Chase apparently didn’t know that dukes had so much power. So we’re all good. This entire book treats Chase and Alex’s relationship with kid gloves. Nobody can do anything too bad lest the book veer into “problematic” territory.

I’m coming for Dare on three fronts. First, I mentioned Dare doesn’t let her characters be mean and generates most of her conflict from a character backstory or trauma. How Dare uses trauma limits her characters to cardboard cutouts. She denies them depth by restricting their emotions only to the suitable and sympathetic. Being truly and justly angry with their love interest is a bridge too far. Second, I think what makes this more egregious is Dare’s slapstick humor. Humor that generates pages. Humor that creates this weird tonal whiplash between chasing after an escaped animal and a character relating how they were abused as a child. Third, we have Dare ignoring conflict and then kind of patching it together with statements of “system bad” or don’t worry, these characters are the exception so you don’t have to have any complicated feelings. All of this has the compounding effect of removing most of the grit and humanity out of her characters.

Let’s look at some more examples.

When a Scot Ties the Knot

This is the third book in the Castles Ever After series. (Dare ties the series together by everyone getting a castle, which is a choice.) My biggest gripe with this book is how Dare structures the relationship hurdles. Maddie has anxiety. Logan needs to find a home for several disabled veterans. Maddie has been lying to her family about having a boyfriend, so she doesn’t have to attend balls. Logan lived through war. Maddie wants to be a naturalist painter. Logan doesn’t have a home. Maddie is an English landlord whose family gave her a castle. Logan hates English landlords. Actually Logan, Maddie’s a nice landlord. Logan blackmails Maddie into marrying him so he can get her castle.

I struggle with these mismatched relationship hurdles that are given equal weight. For example, it’s difficult to care about Maddie’s desire to be a naturalist painter in the face of Logan needing a home.

Compare. Maddie considering whether to accept Logan’s proposal. What if she says no?

“All of her acquaintances would know that Maddie had deceived them, and for the silliest of reasons. The gossip would haunt her family for years. And who would commission scientific illustrations from a woman infamous for lies? She could find herself all alone with no means of support.”

Contrast. Logan looking out the window and thinking, while he waits for Maddie to collect herself during their first encounter.

“These were the Highlands his soldiers had known in their youths. The Highlands that had all but disappeared by the time they’d returned from war. Stolen by greedy English landlords—and the occasional fanciful spinster.”

How is she going to support herself?? Her family has castle money!! Maybe, with the word “could,” Maddie thinks there’s a possibility her family might—disown her? Even without her parents, though, she still has an involved aunt. This is bizarre logic. It’s difficult to care about Maddie’s scientific illustrations, even on the small chance she needs it to support herself.

There’s an extended bit about some lobsters Maddie keeps because she’s waiting for them to mate and she wants to draw the female losing her shell. And of course, the lobsters escape at one point. Sorry if this charmed you, but why is Dare devoting plot to this? Dare could’ve used this time to maybe interrogate the Scottish history she incorporated into her book. The history that challenges her couple and is a huge impediment to their HEA.

Maddie’s letters to Logan in the prologue are from 1808 to 1813. Chapter One is dated April 1817. Maddie becomes an English landlord during the first wave of the Highland clearances. I know Tessa Dare is aware of this because she references in text one of the worst landlords of them all:

“As they neared the baile, Logan drew Maddie to his side. ‘Listen to me. The people here will likely be frightened of you when they see us.’

‘Frightened of you?’

‘No, of you.’

‘Me?’ she asked. ‘But I’m just an English-woman, and not a very big one at that.’

‘That’s precisely why they’ll be terrified,’ he said. ‘Have you ever heard of the Countess of Sutherland?’

‘Of course I’ve heard of her. She’s a fixture in London society. An accomplished painter, too. Quite elegant.’

‘Oh, yes. So accomplished and elegant that she’s become the most ruthless landowner in all the Highlands.’

‘I don’t believe that.’

He sighed with impatience. The lass was so bloody sheltered…She had no idea how the common folk of the Highlands lived. A futile sense of anger swelled in his chest.

‘The countess inherited half of Sutherland when her parents died. In the past few years, her agents have evicted village after village, forcing Scotsmen off the land by the hundreds and thousands. Stealing their farmlands to make way for sheep, burning their cottages to the ground, and offering them little in the way of compensation. Often with the assistance of the British army…Believe me, mo chridhe. The Highlands is the one place on earth where no one will underestimate the ability of a quiet-looking, gently bred Englishwoman to destroy lives.’

‘That’s terrible.’”

The conversation goes on with Logan saying he’ll go ahead and reassure everyone and Maddie playing along like, really? They’re gonna be scared of little ole me? As they get closer, the children come out and gather around Maddie.

“‘What was that you said, Logan? That they’d be frightened of me?’ [Maddie said.]

She reached into her basket and pulled out a handful of sweetmeats, distributed them into the waiting hands of the children.

‘You might have mentioned that they’d know you already,’ he said.

‘And spoil your informative lecture on the evils of the Clearances? That would have been a pity.’”

Logan responds to this scene by being surprised by her, in like an earnest Dashboard-Confessional-You-Have-Stolen-My-Heart way. What is the point of a scene like this? Logan’s reaction is nonsensical. His wife is still an English landlord and he would still be angry about that. He can’t simply be over this because his wife is (like Chase) one of the “good ones.” If that had been me and Maddie had been baiting me and playing dumb, like, I would’ve been even more angry. Logan would’ve been angry. Logan should’ve been angry in this scene. You have two characters with ideological differences who need to address those differences. To answer my question, the point of this scene is Dare signaling to the audience these are all great people and, don’t worry, we talked about the elephant in the room and everything is fine. Like Chase, Maddie already knows about the clearances and is good, thank you very much.

I feel like Dare meets the logistical checkmarks of good writing. I’m team telling-is-good, yet most writers try to show instead of tell. If they can. Show an attribute instead of having another character say, “Maddie is so kind.” If the showing makes more sense than telling. If, say, a character observed their friend hitting a dog when that friend thought they were alone, that would tell you a lot about the character without the narrator in text saying to the audience “Fred had always scared her.”

Dare does both showing and telling here. The telling is from Logan to the audience. She shows us that Maddie has a relationship with these children and brings them little charitable sweets then Logan has this thought: “As he watched her with the tenants’ children his conception of her pushed against its established boundaries. He was forced to add new descriptors to his list. Ones like ‘generous’ and ‘responsible’ and ‘protective.’ She was conquering new places in his understanding, brazenly invading territory he’d rather die than surrender.” (Props to Dare for allowing the English to invade Scottish minds as well as their land.)

Again, Dare does this system bad thing. Where, look over here, my characters talked and knows this thing is bad. Maddie and Logan kind of zoom through their relationship and again we get more humor runtime when Dare could’ve explored her actual set up.

I’ve been hard on Maddie so far, so let me come for Logan a bit. Dare does this thing to show a character is good by their association with other groups of people. Children. Disabled people. Animals. Logan shows up with the disabled men of his unit who need a home, hence his reason for blackmailing Maddie into marriage.

“[Logan] indicated his men one by one. ‘On the end there, Callum lost his hand. Rabbie has a leg full of shrapnel. Fyfe wakes screaming every night, and Munro can scarcely sleep at all. Then there’s Grant. He can’t hold onto a memory since Quatre-Bras. Even if he noticed something amiss with you, he’d forget about it in an hour. There’s not a soul in this hall without his own burdens.’”

I’m okay with side characters serving a plot only function. I take issue with these veteran characters being used to sanitize Logan’s reasons for blackmailing Maddie. There’s a bodice ripper element to this novel that Dare won’t engage with. Logan needs to consummate this marriage to legitimize it. This sort of pressure is held at bay because of the veterans needing a home reason. If Maddie throws Logan out, she’s throwing out the disabled veterans. She comes to care for Logan’s men. Dare doesn’t have Logan relying on his political reasoning because then she’d have to reckon with the harm Maddie has wrought. She’d have to write Logan as someone who might be willing to bypass the lines of consent for his larger goal of reclaiming Scottish land. This is heavy stuff. Characters with potentially jagged emotions and reasons. Characters who might act too human.

At the start of this section, I said Dare devotes time to humor over exploring the setting and history she added to this story. If I may be so bold, this level of conflict is out of Dare’s range to handle well or at least her interest. So I understand why she wrote the story she wrote. Where Logan chases after lobsters instead of getting angry with his English landlord wife. But honestly, the book probably would’ve been better if she hadn’t added this history and leaned more into the wallpaper of it all.

The Wallflower Wager

Dare uses the same good-by-association tactic in The Wallflower Wager where Penny’s excessive care for animals spills into her care for humans. Penny’s love for animals means she’s a good person. In these less-than-subtle lines right at the beginning of the book, we get Penny’s belief system:

“Penny believed that education was important, books were vital, women ought to have the vote, and most people were good, deep down. She believed that every last one of God’s creatures—human or otherwise—deserved love.”

A bit to go through here. The education stuff signals to us, the audience, Penny is a progressive woman, but caring about education and the vote are never brought up again. In fact, Penny’s personal experience with formal education is kind of fraught.

“By society’s standards, Penny was lacking in accomplishments. As the daughter of an earl, she’d been given the best possible education. Governesses fluent in three languages, a full two years at finishing school, then private tutors in art, music, dancing.

None of it seemed to take. She’d never found an instrument willing to give up a tune for her, no matter how she strummed, plucked, or begged it. She’d attained only marginal competence in sketching.

And dancing? Impossible.

Penny did, however, emerge from adolescence with unparalleled accomplishment in one pursuit.

Caring.”

We see how Penny didn’t succeed at the education she could access. Of course, people can care about formal education even though they struggle in school or find it’s not for them. You don’t have to even have a positive experience or engage with the thing to advocate for it. That might be why you advocate, because you see a better way. Dare signals to the reader about what kind of character Penny is with no follow through or expanded interest in why she believes education (and the vote I guess) are important. This character is progressive about education, therefore she is more likeable.

The animals though. Penny has collected a menagerie of animals including a highland cow, goat, otter, parrot, cat, and kittens. The animal collector character annoys me because it easily veers into lazy characterization. Generally. The character is nice because they treat animals nicely. Which, can be true. Again, not opposed to things just serving plot functions but there is nothing else to Penny as a character. Even in this animal interest, there aren’t really any scenes where Penny is doctoring animals or helps neighbors with their animal problems or haunts the local stables. I dunno. Something more, I guess. Something more to this thing other than she cares so much. Mainly, this puts her beliefs about the power of love and caring at odds with her love interest.

Gabe is a cold-hearted businessman. He needs Penny to keep her reputation intact because people would pay good money to live next to the daughter of an earl. He’s cheekily known as the “Duke of Ruin,” a play on his last name as he calls in debts and ruins lives. They’re not in the same class. Gabe crawled out of the gutter to get where he is. Again, Dare minimally engages with their class difference that results in only a minor relationship hurdle.

In this scene, Gabe reminds Penny of their class difference and how she has no experience with the real world. This conversation happens two-thirds of the way through the book. Gabe takes Penny to the neighborhood where he grew up to show how rough his childhood was and to emphasize how coddled Penny is. She’s the daughter of an Earl; his mother sold him for a shilling.

[Gabe speaking]: “‘Do not speak to me of homes or comforts or love,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘There is nothing the two of us could share. Nothing.’

[Penny responds]: ‘Why not?’

He tugged at his hair, ‘Look around you. We’re not in Bloom Square, Penny.’

‘I don’t care whether you were born in a gutter or a palace, whether your mother was a beggar or a queen. It doesn’t matter to me.’

‘Perhaps it matters to me, Have you thought of that? You’re so enamored with the idea of deigning to be with a lowborn man, you haven’t stopped to wonder if I want anything to do with a highborn lady.’

‘I thought you didn’t believe in class distinctions.’

‘This isn’t a matter of classes. We come from different worlds. When you were eating buttered toast and jam for your tea, I was starving. While your nursemaid was dressing you in crisp white pinafores, I went without shoes. While you had candles burning in every room, fires laid every night, quilts heaped atop a warmed bed—I shivered in the street, in the dark. Waking at the slightest noise, ready to flee at any moment. I couldn’t trust a soul in the world, and you’ve lived to the age of six-and-twenty believing every problem can be cured with a goddamned kitten.’

‘I do not believe every problem can be cured with a kitten. I do believe in love. And perhaps love can’t cure every problem, but it makes the wounds heal a bit faster, with fewer scars. I understand why you don’t believe that. How could you, if you’ve never known it yourself? But perhaps you should give it a try.’”

Penny then declares her love to Gabe. Gabe is taken aback. I find Penny’s, all you need to do is love approach, the result of Dare refusing to engage with the true conflict between them. Which is a shame because the rose-colored-glasses character paired with the rough-side-of-life character is a fun pairing. Dare could’ve really explored all the snobbery Gabe would’ve faced from the ton. How arbitrary the class distinctions are. How Penny’s sheltered life allows her to think well of the world. Penny’s notion that love can patch over a traumatic childhood. Gabe’s simmering anger towards the upper classes. Gabe’s anger in general. How Penny probably would step in it communication-wise because she truly doesn’t understand what it’s like to go without. Gabe’s assumption that Penny has never, ever faced anything tough. All of this is magnified because of how society perceives each character. There are elements of all these things in the book, but nothing too deep.

What extra sucks about Dare’s lack of engagement with class disparities in relationships is how I feel like she tries to “solve” it. Gabe’s gone through some heavy stuff and he repeatedly accuses Penny of being able to afford a good opinion on life. We then discover Penny’s father’s friend, Mr. Lambert, sexually abused Penny as a child. Now, it’s very true that all children can be vulnerable this way and that being rich doesn’t mean you’ve never been traumatized. It’s just how Dare adds this to Penny’s backstory isn’t thoughtfully done. The best way to describe it, is Penny’s trauma is contained. Very few hints leading up to it. Very few irrational emotions or outburst because of it. Everyone responds to abuse differently, but that’s not what feels like is happening here. It really feels like it was added so Penny has this trauma and Gabe has that trauma. Therefore, Penny has more layers. She’s been through stuff, too. Like an attempt to balance out the trauma scales.

After Penny tells Gabe she loves him and there are some filler chapters, Gabe says he’s going to propose. At a ball, Penny hears her brother is coming to visit. Her brother’s father-in-law was her abuser, Mr. Lambert. She tells Gabe about the abuse. Like I said, the abuse really comes out of nowhere. There’s a vague reference on page 74: “The mere idea of living in that house, sleeping in that room...” is one of the reasons she doesn’t want to move back to the countryside. To avoid a house filled with terrible memories. Weirdly, the abuse circles back to education in a way.

“Finishing schools ostensibly existed to instruct young ladies in playing the harpsichord and painting with watercolors. However, the lecture the matrons give most frequently had nothing to do with art of music. The topic was virtue. The importance of staying pure, of never allowing gentlemen to take liberties before marriage. Not a kiss, not a touch. Without her innocence, a young lady was worthless.”

The way the text is actually written feels like Penny should be against formal education. Education for highborn ladies isn’t designed for a woman to work or be deeply educated in a subject. These women didn’t become embroiderers to sell something or learn French to translate. These skills adorned them. What Mary Wollstonecraft called a “careful education.” There were debates and real critiques of the education women received. This, paired with the abuse, could’ve worked better. What if Penny hated formalized education? Does she really want other young girls to feel impure the way she did? What are they teaching at these finishing schools? If she stays an advocate, maybe she pushes for a thorough, informative education. Dare had the makings of tying together Penny’s belief system, feelings of impurity, and abuse. And yet.

Back to Gabe and Penny. Consider this scene, where Gabe calls Penny sheltered. She concedes yes she hasn’t felt intense hunger the way he had growing up. She says she knows people find her ridiculous and Gabe counters not ridiculous, only naïve.

[Penny responds:] “‘I’m not so sheltered and naïve as you imagine.’”

He could only laugh.

‘I’m being sincere.’ She picked at a blade of grass. ‘My youth wasn’t idyllic, either.’

‘Let me guess. Beau Brummell snubbed you at a party once. I can only imagine how the nightmares haunt you to this day.’

‘You know nothing of my life.’

‘So there were more trials, were there?’ He flipped the shilling into the air again, catching it easily. ‘The milliner’s ran out of pink ribbon.’

‘Stop being cruel.’

‘The world is cruel. This world is, anyway. Tell me, Your Ladyship, what is it like in your fairytale land?’

…‘I may not have known poverty, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t known pain.’

Again, I think this is an interesting setup. Penny is sheltered, yet the cruelty of Gabe’s past comes out in these barbs, taunting Penny. The presence of one person’s pain doesn’t negate the pain felt by someone else. This could be a bigger conflict between the two of them, where Gabe minimizes Penny’s pain in the face of all he faced in childhood.

Right after Penny says that part that she’s known pain, Gabe immediately (of course) realizes he’s being an ass and before he can say something, the otter escapes. Then Gabe ogles Penny as she jumps into the river to go after the otter on the next page. Do you know what this reminded me of? I read this review of Aquaman where the reviewer said the movie was made up of people having conversations and then a fight scene interrupts them. Just a way to move your story along, I guess. It’s not bad to interrupt conversations and there’s tension to explore with the conversation held in limbo. Gabe was being an ass. Penny would still have feelings and thoughts about this. I’m not saying “just have a conversation” because sometimes talking about the things that hurt us is hard. But Dare moves beyond this emotional scene with shenanigans and never addresses this conversation or some sort of ramifications from it again.

I can’t help but compare The Wallflower Wager to Lord of Secrets by Alyssa Everett. The premise of that novel is, why won’t David have sex with his wife Rosalie? That’s the hook on Goodreads. Most readers will guess there’s something in David’s past. And there is. Spoilers—it’s CSA as well, where David’s aunt groomed and abused him. He likewise struggles with feelings of shame. This influences so much of his life and it affects him at any time. The way trauma does. It hits somebody whether they’re prepared for it or not. There isn’t a narrative neatness to how he’s reacting to Rosalie. He runs hot and cold with her. He reacts with seeming irrationality. Until you know about his aunt and then it makes sense. It really is a thoughtful exploration of how past abuse can influence every part of your life.

Does Tessa Dare Ever Get it Right?

Ya. Kind of.

I recently re-read The Duchess Deal and find the tension between a man who desperately wants to fuck his wife and not wanting to read too much into her responses a good conflict for Dare. It has the usual hijinks. Ash prowls around at night to be a menace (even when I first read this book I skimmed these parts so my memory on what he did in these scenes isn’t great.) Emma’s feral cat attacks Ash before they can consummate the marriage. The servants abandon Ash and Emma without a carriage in hopes the forced proximity will create romantic feelings.

Ash got injured at Waterloo and now has scars on half his face and down his torso. His previous fiancée couldn’t get past his looks and informed him they would only have sex to produce an heir. Emma slept with her first boyfriend and when her minister father discovered them, he threw her out of her house. She lost a toe to frostbite walking from her little English town to London. To eat, she finds a job as a seamstress.

I have some hang ups about this book. I think Beauty and the Beast retellings where the beast character is a disabled person is in bad taste. Typically, they’re facially scarred. Amanda Quick’s Ravished pulls this off better because the beastly part of him is not his scar but his reputation that he might’ve murdered his fiancé.

The book opens on Emma arriving at Ash’s house in a garish wedding dress and demanding payment for the dress. Ash’s ex-fiancé never paid her and Emma needs money for coal. Ash proposes and Emma opts for payment for the dress over marriage to a duke. He visits her shop the next day to push his suit. In this scene he’s walking her home.

“He stroked a callus on the tip of her second finger. It made him angry. A gentleman’s daughter should have soft hands, but life had hardened her in these small ways. He had disturbing fancies of lifting her hand to his lips and kissing all that hurt away.

She sucked in her breath, as if she could read his thoughts. Or maybe her own thoughts had startled her.

She withdrew her hand. ‘What is your aim? Simply to torment me further?’

‘No, that is not my aim. Though I suspect, over time, it will be an unavoidable consequence.’

She gave a little growl.

Ash found it wickedly arousing. Not that he would tell her so. He was too distracted by the way she hugged herself and shivered. ‘Where is your cloak?’

‘I left it at your house yesterday.’

‘Well. I hope that teaches you a lesson about making dramatic exits.’”

Ash and Emma’s back and forth generates chemistry. I think a weakness of authors who write witty dialogue well is an overreliance on it; however, these characters are charming to each other. Endearing, if you will. The overall tone and premise of this book works. I think. I include this example because I think there are set-ups and stories where Dare can flourish. With the type of conflict Dare’s willing to investigate, something more interpersonal and not setting focused, lands much better.

What’s interesting as I re-read this example is that it’s not like Dare does what I’ve been critiquing her for. I think this one works better because she draws on a history for its set dressing only, instead of trying to integrate some part of history in a hand-wave-y way. Ash and Emma aren’t that mean to each other, yet the backstory and motivations are woven in better compared to the other books I referenced. Ash is scarred and it’s kind of his big hang up and consistent thought loop why Emma couldn’t be reacting out of pleasure when they have sex. He keeps her at arm’s length as best as he can. Emma pushes him to accept that she’s attracted to him. These are good internal stakes.

In Conclusion

A lot of the things I criticized Dare for I find in other historical romance novels. Readers will trip over themselves saying a book “models healthy relationships” and it will contain some questionable character actions, like dubious consent, manipulation, cruelty. Readers seem to glaze over these actions because the author doesn’t really give those actions weight in the narrative. You know, explore in text the thing you set up. It might be unfair of me to reference Sherry Thomas as a counterpoint, but I’m going to.

In The Luckiest Lady in London, Felix has crafted his persona into “The Ideal Gentleman” for several reasons, but one of them is to keep his future wife at arm’s length. He won’t marry for love. Not after witnessing his parents’ debacle of a marriage. When he comes across Louise, a social climber who’s her family’s best chance at making a match and therefore money, they see beyond the artifice each has cultivated. Louise knows how to present herself to best advantage: she styles her hair a certain way, she wears a bust enhancer, she targets the men most likely to be charmed by her. When she first meets Felix, she’s terrified he’ll see right through her. She knows she could never land him, a man whose income is one hundred thousand pounds a year, so he’s kind of in on her secret. They have this immediate pull and predictably Louise’s resolution that she can’t and therefore won’t chase Felix, intrigues him. After she says no to being his mistress, Felix, propelled by feelings he hasn’t reflected on, asks her to marry him. They get married halfway through the book. Felix, after he performs a grand romantic gesture for his new wife, panics at how much she interests him. He decides to show his wife how little he cares by mocking her physical desire for him while they have sex.

Afterwards Louise thinks, “she had never before been dealt such deliberate cruelty. He had meant to humiliate her. He had meant to mock her desire for him. And he had meant to show, once and for all, how little he cared for her.” Louise walks away from Felix without another word.

This is how Felix reacts: “Felix stood in place for what seemed half the night. He’d always known that he was every inch his mother’s son. But still he was stunned by his own viciousness. Being The Ideal Gentleman meant that his cruelty was treated like a piece of ancient weaponry at a private museum, an object kept inside a glass cabinet, sometimes studied in the abstract, but rarely handled and never actually wielded…All he wanted was to spend the foreseeable future in her arms—make love, make her laugh, then make love again…He grimaced. This was why he must never allow himself to love…When he finally took himself to his observatory, clouds had rolled in. But there he remained until dawn, under a sky he could no longer see.”

This comes on page 164 out of 295. The rest of the novel is reconciling this act of cruelty. It’s Felix going on a journey that maybe how he’s reacted to his parents’ marriage is damaging. I added ellipses in the scene I related, but there’s so many turns in his feelings. This man is cruel. This man is conflicted. This man is desperately in love.

Another part of me wonders if my big hang up is with wallpapers. I will admit, most of them aren’t for me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think all wallpapers can’t succeed. I get the stories aren’t grounded so much in the actual history or setting, so the setting is more on what’s not there. You don’t have phones or the internet. You don’t have cars. You can pull a particular conflict from history like, we need to marry for financial reasons and then spend the rest of the book with a man who’s like, oh no I’m falling in love with my wife. With this receded setting it can become more about the characters while still enjoying the hint of another time. The restrictions of another time. The good wallpapers (Anne Mallory) I’ve read, focus their story on the couple and their chemistry. I make this final argument because I think there is a world where Tessa Dare succeeds. If you’re going to downplay the setting and history of your story, then the focus then should be on character. Their thoughts, actions, emotions, enemies, friends, personal histories.

Superficially, Dare has these ingredients. I can name Penny’s friends and backstory. I understand that Penny and Gabe are in a romance together. Dare succeeds when her characters have chemistry. When they don’t, then everything I’ve complained becomes glaring. That she balks at a deeper character study undermines the story she’s trying to tell. Dare uses character trauma to explain away all the bad deeds a character could potentially do. Yes, a person’s or character’s actions become much clearer when they reveal some personal history. Yes, maybe someone would be mad, but then learning the reason behind it softens the anger BUT that anger and hurt are still there. This can be messy. Characters still hurt each other deeply because of past trauma. Characters have to work to apologize, build trust, change, or acknowledge their own past because of trauma. It’s boring to not let the rough edges of a character’s past cut their present relationship.

And the humor. I’ve burned through several Jennifer Crusie novels in the past couple of weeks and she does hijinks the way I think Dare attempts to. In Faking It one of the final scenes has Clea, a gold-digger, hiding several people in a closet as she doesn’t want the man she’s trying to marry to see all these people. Explaining the set up is silly, yet in the book everyone acts in character and it’s funny because we know these characters. Tilda would start coming onto Davey not knowing that Rabbit the financial advisor is in the closet as well. Rabbit’s dying on the inside because he’s only just learned Clea’s a gold-digger and he’s in love with her. Davey wants to reciprocate Tilda’s come-ons but wants to listen to Clea’s conversation with the man she’s trying to marry. This kind of humor is a horrific tightrope where the situation isn’t really believable, but the author’s tight grip on tone, humor, and character makes it work. Dare’s escaped lobsters don’t do this kind of character work or emotional revelation.

I think Dare’s use of “system-bad” bums me out the most because she has the ingredients for a compelling, challenging novel and then doesn’t write that novel. You don’t need to tell me employers harassing their employees is bad. That the Highland clearances are evil. Show me. Show how this impacts your characters or don’t engage with this history. Take a sliver of a history and dive deep into character and relationships. If you’re gonna go the wallpaper route, then I think that might be the only way to be successful with it.