Desert Isle Keeper
Once and Always
So many of the “classic” romances I read when I was younger seem dated now, relics of a simpler time when men were men, women were women, and authors could write 150,000-word novels and not get half of the words slashed out by ruthless, pen-wielding editors. But viewed from the perspective of today’s shorter romances, many of those extra words seem superfluous – too much narrative, too much irrelevant description, and far too little action or character development. Not so with Judith McNaught’s Once and Always.
True, Once and Always utilizes many of the stereotypes of older romance fiction. There’s the sweet, innocent, extremely virginal heroine, a girl from an unremarkable upbringing who nevertheless suffers no real difficulty in transforming herself into an Incomparable. There’s the much older, alpha hero – and all of McNaught’s heroes are about as alpha as it’s possible to get – with a tormented past that makes him distrustful of all women, particularly sweet and innocent ones. And then there are some of McNaught’s own typical plot elements. The meddling, strong-willed older woman, in this case the Dowager Duchess of Claremont, appears in most of McNaught’s “classic” books. And McNaught seems to begin every book by depicting the heroine as a child (here it’s kept short, unlike the similar beginning of Paradise, which seems to drag on forever).
The plot isn’t incredibly original, either. Victoria Elizabeth Seaton, raised in a modest cottage in America, loses her parents in a tragic accident. Leaving everything behind except her sister (who plays almost no part in the book’s plot), Victoria goes to England, where her nearest relatives live. There the two sisters part ways, and Victoria encounters Jason Fielding, Marquess of Wakefield. As she arrives at his residence in a farm cart, along with a load of squealing piglets, Jason is not impressed, But the two of them are thrust together by Jason’s father, who once loved Victoria’s mother and thinks Victoria would be perfect for his son. In the best tradition of the scheming, manipulative old men who populate the pages of romance novels, he sends a notice to the newspaper claiming they are engaged, and then pretends to have a heart attack when they try to break off their “engagement.”
Even though Once and Always uses these familiar elements, it’s an incredibly successful book. Why? Most of the credit can be given to the characters, particularly the hero.
Jason is domineering, unkind, and occasionally cruel. Underneath it all, though, he’s as vulnerable a hero as has ever existed in romantic fiction. Years earlier, he was betrayed by his faithless wife, who abducted their small son, Jamie, and ran off with a lover. Unfortunately, both Jamie and his mother were killed when their ship sank, and Jason’s heart has been frozen since that day. Awful though it is to lose one’s wife and beloved child, there’s even more tragedy hidden in Jason’s past. Jason’s appalling history is slowly exposed to the heroine and the reader, and the more we learn about Jason, the more we realize how genuinely awful his life has been. Unlike many romantic heroes, who have become brooding, callous boors because they stubbed their toe ten years ago, Jason’s torment is all too easy to sympathize with.
The heroine is superbly depicted as well. Victoria does, perhaps, suffer from being a little too wonderful. She has a brilliant talent for playing the piano, she tames wild animals armed only with a little food and the overwhelming sweetness of her personality, and she is, of course, stunningly beautiful. A little hint of imperfection somewhere might have made her more believable. Yet she has recently lost her parents, and that note of tragedy, and the stoically brave way in which she deals with it, makes it difficult for the reader to dislike her. She’s a bit overpoweringly good and kind, perhaps, but not incapable of snapping at the hero when he genuinely deserves it. She has a sense of humor, and she’s feisty, but not annoyingly so (unlike the heroine of another McNaught classic, Whitney, My Love). And in another typically McNaughtian twist, she instantly becomes the darling of society, and everyone who meets her adores her. Everyone except the hero, that is.
Reluctant though he is to fall in love, once Jason falls, he falls hard. In a touching love scene, Victoria sees the visible scars of his past, which he’s always taken care to hide, and he cringes in embarrassment, expecting her to react with revulsion. Instead, she kisses the scars, and Jason’s heart is immediately captured. (Never one to avoid reusing a good idea, McNaught penned a similar scene in Kingdom of Dreams, but for my money this one is better.) Of course, there are other obstacles on their way to happiness, including Victoria’s very wimpy former love, who eventually comes all the way from America to find her. And there’s the astoundingly compelling scene in which Jason, believing that Victoria is dead, proves for once and always that he does indeed have a heart.
Unlike many older romances, the description in general isn’t excessive, although there are a few missteps. The horrifically overblown description of Victoria’s titian hair as “a sheet of wet rubies overlaid with a sheen of gold” makes me cringe every time I read it. And one does grow tired of McNaught’s heroines whispering in an “aching” voice. It makes the reader suspect they could all use a good dose of Robitussin.
But these are minor quibbles. Once and Always is a great book. How much do I like it? Well, I think that’s pretty obvious. You see, my two daughters are named Victoria and Elizabeth.
Book Details
Reviewer: | Marguerite Kraft |
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Review Date: | November 10, 2002 |
Publication Date: | 1992 |
Grade: | A |
Sensuality | Warm |
Book Type: | European Historical Romance |
Review Tags: | age gap |
Price: | $7.99 |
Uh…. Can we reconsider? I know this review is old, I know the book is old. But my DIKs are books that make me happy. They’re rarely perfect, but they’re stories I can return to for comfort. This was painful, and I’m not sure how I got through it. Jason raped Victoria. He’s violent and manipulative and assaults her rather than just have an honest conversation. It’s not romantic in the slightest — he literally breaks down a locked door and threatens her the morning after raping her ON THEIR WEDDING NIGHT. This book should come with warnings, and it shouldn’t be a DIK.
Good for you, HRAficionado, for leaving a comment and helping to repopulate the AAR db.
I’ve not read this book but I have read the three others mentioned by the reviewer. This is an author whose work was beloved at one time (see all the A and B reviews at AAR – and at a time when I believe those kind of grades were more rare than today), but whose HR titles I have read (3) did NOT work for me AT ALL because I hated the heroines (they were TSTL as far as I was concerned); and the two CR I tried were better but nothing special (as far as I was concerned). But I came to this author’s work in the mid 2000s, when Chase and Quinn and Kleypas and Balogh were available to compare to, and not the 1990s, as did many of her fans.
The review above (despite it’s A grade) has enough information in it to cement for me that this is a typical McNaught book and likely wouldn’t work for me. As someone who’s read the book, do you think the rape or violent behavior is historically accurate or just gratuitous? That can make a difference to some readers. Either way, I agree it’s existence (the violence) should be tagged.
TW rape scene described below for anyone reading
Bear with me, this is a little rambly as I usually just read reviews and forums rather than participating… I’d heard great things about McNaught, but yeah, this horrified me. I’m also coming to this having read Kleypas, Quinn, the other Quinn and more modern feminist authors (who I actually don’t think are always better than the stalwarts of the genre), but this was uniquely appalling. Kleypas released Then Came You in 1993, just one year after this and it’s leaps and bounds better. And sure, a lot of books include a trope I think is pretty common in older romance novels — the idea that the woman really does want it, she’s just held back by propriety, so the MMC will kiss her without consent until she basically decides to say screw it and have sex. That wouldn’t fly today, but it’s also not something that really stands out to me as unusual in a book from the 90s. But even the objectionable scene in Kleypas’s It Happened One Autumn was removed in later editions, and it was terrible, yes, but not nearly as bad as this. I didn’t read the review first, just got what was available on my library’s app, but I think I would have been entirely unprepared for the contents of the book.
I would say this was historically accurate. Men treated women as property. Men raped women (men still rape women, obviously, and still treat women as property in marriages), inside and outside of marriages. But — here I’m going to go into detail so please avoid if better for you
— just because it’s historically accurate doesn’t mean it belongs in romance. We don’t actually want all the historically accurate things! We want characters who don’t have their teeth rotting out of their mouths and who actually respect women and aren’t just going to die of smallpox three months later.
Even with the A rating, I probably wouldn’t have said anything because it’s a 20 year old review of a 30 year old book. But I think people really do come here and look at the list of DIKs, especially when they’ve heard about an author and are choosing a first book. And I don’t want anyone, especially survivors of sexual violence, to end up reading this one. If they’re going to read stories that mention rape, I’d much rather they go to a true DIK, like Courtney Milan’s The Governess Affair, which treated the matter with sensitivity and placed the power back in the woman’s hands through consent, not through the ~magic of manipulative love~ or whatever.
I just wanted to add that this book has always disturbed me. When I initially read it in the 90s, I remember being very disturbed by the racism in it. The discussions of the so-called hero’s time in India are troubling. And even in 1990whatever I saw that, even though at the time I overlooked the rapiness. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen discussions of that racism.
You’re totally right. I focused on the rape because on a romance platform I wanted to emphasize that I really, really am disturbed by the idea that rape=romance, but the racism, particularly from the Captain, was awful. Definitely historically accurate (the racism, not the supposed events) but good lord, if I wanted historical accuracy I’d read nonfiction. This is another area where Kleypas has messed it up but been very thoughtful in learning from readers’ responses and edited her books, proving that it’s possible for already-published novels to be updated and improved.
I know no one’s heard from McNaught in a while, so I wouldn’t expect updates, but I’m glad that if anyone looks in the comments here, they’ll know there are huge unaddressed issues and they’ll look elsewhere for a good read.
I didn’t write the review and I haven’t read the book, but this does highlight a problem for a site like this which has 25+ years worth of reviews as part of its database. I don’t know what the answer is – going back and re-reading all the older books to write new reviews or add warnings just isn’t feasible, but hopefully discussions like this will help new readers make an informed decision.
Totally agree that it isn’t feasible to address everything, and I’ll make a point of commenting if I ever read another book like this so that people have warning. You and the other editors do such a phenomenal job here and I don’t mean to suggest that this is on you — like you said, it’s just what happens when you have such a long-lasting and extensive database! I know you’re all volunteers, so I’ll do my best to volunteer my own contributions in cases like this :) It’s the least I can do when I’ve gotten so much from this site.
I think we’ve addressed the issue with this very discussion. (I just really hope the site can last another 25 years without losing the comment threads. ;-)
I agree that this discussion is what a very old – and by now extremely questionable – book needs.
Maybe even a warning when someone comes across it to know. Would a general headline for reviews older than 10 years (or 15, or 20???) that says “REVIEW older than 10 years, CONSIDER CHANGED TIMES, TASTES… or sth better” be doable?
To me in early 90-ies this book was a revelation and I loved it fiercely. I hated the rape and the hero’s cruelty, but at that time, in my culture, this was unfortunately part of how a historical man might be expected to be when grievously mistreated himself. And his redemption was just as cruel. Compared to Shanna, or Sweet Savage Love, it was a huge step forward .So the romance worked then, for me, and clearly many others. Lisa Kleypas never worked this well for me.
I could not read this today, I have grown into a different person, and I am just as fiercely grateful to be here today.
Throwing out this review would negate my journey, and negate all the history of romance that brought us here today, and that AAR lovingly preserved for all of us.
So please, do not go that way!
I don’t see us going back and updating old reviews. Older books have their own history, for better or worse, and to rewrite them with a modern eye would negate the story of romance.
Thank you!
What I would say here – knowing that Dabney is the boss and might disagree! – is that this falls under the category of “We always welcome reviews from readers, even one-offs.”
We had a DB review of Texas Destiny by Lorraine Heath that was given an A in 1999. When I read that book a couple of years ago, I found it very irritating in its erasure of slavery as part of the Confederate heroine’s backstory – she was portrayed as someone who had a lovely life that she lost unfairly and tragically, instead of someone who ruled at the top of a system founded on brutality and was toppled. So I wrote a second review. You can see both here:
The A review: https://allaboutromance.com/book-review/texas-destiny-by-lorraine-heath/
The C- review (me): https://allaboutromance.com/book-review/texas-destiny-2-by-lorraine-heath/
(Sidebar: When this ran, BOY did I get comments. Many people were IRATE with me, saying not all romances had to deal with slavery. To which I say… ok, don’t write a plantation heroine, then? Anyway, those comments are lost from the site changeover.)
I definitely think that many of our old reviews could use a revisit. However, we just don’t have the time or manpower to revisit them. I think you all are doing something important by making it clear in the comments that this is dated. I also think you could submit an alternate review to us that, like my Texas Destiny review, would make sure the old review didn’t stand “unchallenged,” so to speak.
I am up for guest reviews any time!