While France is one of my favourite settings the country is rarely featured in romances except as a source of villainy and trauma for regencies. Meredith Duran’s latest historical, Wicked Becomes You, thankfully breaks with tradition but even so both of her protagonists are British. When I found out that The Making Of A Duchess by Shana Galen features a French hero and partially takes place in France, I pounced.
1801. Governess Sarah Smith is coerced into into posing as Serafina Artois, the daughter of long-vanished friends of the Harcourts. Her mission is to find evidence that incriminates the French émigré, Julien de Harcourt, Duc de Valère, as a traitor. But just how far does the Foreign Office expect her to take her patriotic loyalties?
Although Julien realises that his frequent trips to France are drawing the attention of the British authorities, he refuses to stop searching for his brothers, missing since the beginning of the Revolution. When Julien discovers that Serafina Artois holds information that may prove of use to his search, he becomes determined to keep her close by his side. Very close.
The pretty cover of The Making Of A Duchess shows a couple standing on a rolling lawn, a lofty, French-style château in the distance behind them. The style of the woman’s robin’s egg blue dress indicates a late 18th century time period. Annoyingly, the back blurb does nothing to correct these impressions. The major part of the story is set in London in 1801, and the late-coming French episode (consisting of 51 pages) takes place in the dark, dangerous (and generic) streets of Paris. Since misleading romance covers are commonplace I was not too surprised, but I was disappointed.
The best portion of the book is its gripping, emotional first chapter in which Revolutionaries (a term not used by the author who invariably prefers “peasants”, and who chooses to write only a single sympathetic “lower class” character – a person devoted to nobles) storm and burn the château of the Harcourts, and only Julien and his mother manage to flee. What this opening promised was the book I had hoped to read, but the rest of the story does not come close to living up to its intensity nor its excitement.
Instead, I got the most witless heroine I can remember reading about in years, shallow plotting that requires swallowing implausible scenarios, and inept foreshadowing that effectively gives away the outcome to any plot questions. The flawed technique grated on me throughout the novel. For example, the resolution to a major plot point concerning the heroine’s background, which has been made much of, is related in a flashback. Although the answer had been telegraphed from the start, its revelation would entail significant emotional and social consequences; yet, the matter is treated like an afterthought.
On the positive side, the prose flows smoothly, and there is a genuine sweetness to the overall tone of the book that felt agreeable and soothed me into toleration. As Sarah is a well-meaning character who does shows nascent signs of brain activity toward the end, I managed to live with her insipidity. Julien is good-natured and kind, making him an appealing beta hero, and the pair’s romance is gentle and pleasant. The use of French is generally correct but not always idiomatic. Which reminds me: why is an aristocrat born in France of French parents called Serafina, not Séraphine?
On closing The Making Of A Duchess I found I had little to say. Its predictability induced some eye-rolling, its sweetness some smiles. Although the French flavour all but disappears under the heavy English Regency overlay, I commend Shana Galen for the refreshing choice of making her hero French. Would I pick up the next book in the trilogy? Depends on the Frenchness-factor. For that rare taste in a romance, I might make an effort to focus on the positives. But not before I have leafed through sample pages in a bookshop.
