I don’t think I have read a book by Mary Jo Putney which I have not loved. The writer crafts a sensitive, dark but compelling story with a strong female lead.

Fantastic.

I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Diana Lindsay has been sheltered all her life.She wants to see the world as she grows more unhappy with her life at present. She wants to see it with her young son that she is raising by herself. Due to a certain circumstance, she cannot marry. Maybe as a courtesan, she will find protection and happiness. Due to a bad experience in her past, a life as a courtesan may be the answer to her problems. She decides to move to London to find her fortune. Her beauty and charm make her sought after by the richest men of the ton. There is a secret that she carries that make her unmarriagable. Gervase Brandelin, the Viscount St. Aubyn, has spent his life trying to overcome a past from when he was young. He is a spymaster, who has his attention on only one thing. He cannot afford for anything to distract him. When he meets Diana, he knows she can never be his completely.
Diana and Gervase have secrets that will tear them apart. There is a scene that may be disturbing to some readers. I loved the book and how the characters came together. I received this book from Net galley and Kensington Books for a honest review.

Here is my fair and honest review for this ARC. Here is an example why Mary Jo Putney is the star in her genre that she is! Superb story, characters, sensitivity and a depth of histiry that not everyone can portray. One of the best books i have had the pleasure of reading in some time. I do not give out 5 stars easily but this one was an easy decision.

Diana Lindsay finds herself and her son moving to London where she finds herself the cities most desired woman. She knows she can’t marry and only one man Gervase Brandelin, the Viscount St. Aubyn has captured her attention. Gervase has spent his life in service to England, but his past still haunts him that is until he meets Diana. This is a story of two wounded souls both yearning for love and hope for a life filled with happiness. A love that heals the heart and soul, if only they didn’t have secrets and a deadly enemy waiting to tear them apart. A captivating story into the lives of people both with scarred and wounded souls, each looking for redemption and love, finding a love of a lifetime isn’t only a dream if they have the courage to believe in it and live HEA!!! I voluntarily read and reviewed this book.

Ms. Putney has been a long time favorite author. This story is very thought provoking and left me with very mixed feelings. The first paragraph is extremely dark and almost distasteful and seems an aberration as the story picks up in a very different place. Of course she cleverly ties the present to that episode as the story unfolds.
We fast forward to a cold snowy night and a dying woman in search of shelter which she finds in a small cottage. Thanks to the care she receives the woman recovers and tells her hostess a young single mother tales about her life in London as a courtesan. Diana, a young single mother looking for some zing in her life decides to pursue a life as a courtesan. At her first outing she immediately catches the eye of the reclusive Gervase and so begins a relationship.
Even as Diana tries to keep her young son isolated Gervase soon breaches the boundaries that she places between her personal and professional life and against all odds becomes friends with her epileptic son. Gervase's spying activities for his country and on his new girl friend and Napoleonic plots create a nice touch of excitement to the background of Diana and Gervase's romance. There is a nice trail of breadcrumbs for readers to start seeing the threads fall into place even as Diana continues to resist exclusivity.
The author raises many difficult subjects in this story: rape, epilepsy, woman's role in regency England as she weaves a deft tale together but some of the elements of the plot did not feel real to me.

I must admit that I have loved many of Mary Jo Putney’s books, but I found “Dearly Beloved” a difficult read. Whilst her characters of Gervase and Diana are troubled, with many past secrets, I didn’t find the story line as developed. The story follows Gervase, Viscount St Aubyn, in his younger days where he works as a spy for the Foreign Office. He meets a young girl, Mary, after his mistress leaves, and believing her to be a prostitute, rapes her. Whilst they marry, Gervase abandons her. Several years on, he meets Diana, but is unable to offer her marriage. However, Diana’s life is intricately bound to Gervase, of which he is completely unaware.
The storyline is quite clever, but several elements do prevent this book from being a great read. Diana is a strong character and manages to overcome the challenges thrown at her. Gervase, does struggle throughout and for this, I found him a difficult character to warm to. He puts up so many barriers that is with any wonder what Diana found to love. The rape scene, made for uncomfortable reading and whilst pivotal to the story, I wonder if this could have been dealt with differently.
An interesting read but not for the fainthearted. I received an advanced review copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

This story invokes myriad of emotions. This is not a story for the faint-hearted. There are utterly horrific segments. I would credit Mary Jo Putney's writing proficiency to keep me turning the pages.

Not all love stories are sweet and free from roughness. This is one of those stories.

Gervase Brandelin, Lord St Aubyn is an anti-hero, not your typical romantic dreamboat. The heroine, Diana Lindsay is compassionate, the hero's antithesis. But their coming together is starkly sensual and a soothing balm to their weary souls and enervated hearts.

I appreciate the issues on health, politics, the wars, the treaties and also mentions of dates and historical figures who helped shaped the world today.

The secondary characters have vastly contributed to the dynamism of the narrative.

This is an eGalley copy from the publisher which I voluntarily read. My review is honest, all opinions are entirely mine.

I did not realise this was a 1990 re-release. That mistake is on me, I got excited when I saw a MJP book on here and requested it like *snaps fingers* that! It wasn't until I started reading that I thought 'wait one hot second, I think this book is my age". I went and looked up the original publication date and I wasn't wrong. It's a fraction older than me. I usually avoid older romances, because often even though they're a great insight into where romance was at the time, they can be problematic from a modern feminist POV.

I kept reading though, because I was really hooked by MJP's gorgeous writing style. No one can turn a phrase quite like the stalwarts of the genre. But I knew I was in trouble when I read, "Surely the down payment he’d given the doxy entitled him to her conscious participation.”

Uh oh.

Then it got worse. The hero raped a woman. Which is bad. To make it worse was she was 14.

So obviously there was no way I was ever going to be able to like the hero. I wasn't even sure I could keep reading. I gave it a noble effort, and even skipped through to the middle of the book and I read a bit from there, but I couldn't finish it.

I know romance in 1990 was a different beast. I understand that, and I don't seek out books to read if I think I'll find them problematic or dislike them. I didn't intend to be in this position.

I won't do a proper review of this book on my Instagram, but I've take a lovely picture of the book and I will post it in about a week and and talk about the bind I got myself in by not realising the OG publication date. I'll make it clear the fault was mine for not seeing that it was a re-release. I'll also use it as an opportunity to ask followers for recs on MJP's newer books. She writes really beautifully, and I'm very keen to read one of her more recently written books.

I'm writing this as feedback, because essentially my feedback bottles down to this:

Please Netgally and publishers, put content warnings at the beginning of books if there are scenes of rape. Especially if you're re-releasing, that's the perfect time to do it. There will still be people who will enjoy this book or for whom it's a tried and true favourite, but new readers deserve the heads up.

Thanks for reading my feedback, I hope you find it fair and useful.

Xx
Feminist Romance

Mary Jo Putney is a master writer. This is a classic story that she has put back in print and one of her earlier works. It shows off her witty sense of humor and her strong sense for female empowerment. Diana embodies all those. She meets her match in Gervase. They begin a dazzling courting dance fraught with steamy scenes and lots of excitement. A wonderful story.t

Diana has been sheltered away in the country when she decides to experience more of the world and find love despite her past. Gervase has worked hard to redeem himself for his past by serving England. When he sees Diana sparks fly but what is Diana hiding from him and will his enemies destroy them? Fast-paced intriguing historical read with lots of drama and suspense. The characters have lots of depth and the story holds your interest throughout. A good read.

Here we meet Gervase Brandelin, with a terrible secret, and Diana Lindsay, with secrets of her own. Diana is tired of hiding away and wants to experience passion with a man. She meets a woman who is a courtesan, and decides to take up this lifestyle to find her freedom. Gervase meets her at her first public appearance, and immediately decides that he must have her. And in the midst of their budding relationship, Gervase is searching for a notorious spy.

This book has quite a shocking start and does not give a very good first impression of Gervase Brandelin. And to be honest, I didn’t really warm up to him further on either. He is quite cold and reserved, except when he is with Diana. She brings out a different part of him. That more passionate part just wasn’t enough for me to redeem the rest of him. He is constantly shifting moods, and Diana never really knows how he is going to be at any specific time. He is also suspicious of her and generally thinks the worst of her actions before he realizes his mistake and tries to make amends.

Diana has already experienced a lot in her life until she made the decision to become a courtesan herself. But she is very naïve about this new world she finds herself in. She did however take her time before succumbing to Gervase’s charms.

The unfolding relationship between Gervase and Diana was interesting to read, and kept me wondering where all of this is going. I enjoyed the writing style, but really couldn’t find myself liking either Gervase or Diana very much. The bulk of their relationship was built on a lie. And when Diana finally revealed her secret to Gervase, it felt a bit too late.

This one I gave a 3.5 rating. This is a reprint of a book written in the 90's. I could barely get past the first part of the book. I normally love MJP books, but this one just wasn't for me. I couldn't like the hero.

Dearly Beloved
by Mary Jo Putney

What an amazing story! I LOVED the angst of it, the emotions and heartache. Through no fault of her own Diana Lindsay was woken, her innocence brutally taken and forcefully married by her crazed preacher father., to Gervase Brandelin who was incoherent at the time, but soon realized his grave error!
This is a compelling gripping read that is not for the faint at heart or with trigger issues. Yes it’s dark and Ms. Putney is a professional at her craft, the storyline needs the darkness so the light can shine through. The road is a difficult one but there is remorse and a happy ending thankfully!

I highly recommend! I received a complimentary copy from the publisher via NetGalley. This is my unbiased opinion.

This is a DNF for me.

It has been reissued from 1990 I believe, but it was crass. Not giving away spoilers but this occurred in the first chapter: The hero rapes someone....in graphic detail. WHAT???? How do I get past seeing him as a rapist for the rest of the book? I realize bodice ripper romances were popular in the 90s, but rape is too much.

I very rarely give less than three stars, even when I do not like the book because I realize the effort that goes into writing a novel, but this book was not for me.

Ohhh man, I am very conflicted! I felt like I was riding a roller coaster when it came to this book. I was IMMEDIATELY sucked into the story, being the dark lover I am. And I continued to be entranced by this story and what was happening. I felt like I was riding the Titan at Six Flags Over Texas – a ride I REFUSE to ride. I just didn’t want this story to end, but I also wanted the truth to come out of either of them. It was frustrating at times with Gervase and Diana.

“”Beauty, like sex, is a double-edged sword. It can make you a victim, or it can help you acquire what you want from life, whether that is love or wealth or power.””

I fell in love with her son and the bond that he was starting to quickly develop with Gervase. But something happens around the third quarter of the book, that I felt I was going on the downslope of a roller coaster. It was like a light switch had been flipped with Gervase and he just frustrated me to no ends and to be honest, it never went away.

“”I am tired of living in fear. I do care about you and it is foolish to try to deny that.””

This was my first time reading one of Mary’s book and I love that this is being republished after being out for so long. I definitely look forward to reading more!

[Excerpt]:

This book is actually not a new release. It originally came out in the 1990s (maybe '92?), and is now being rereleased with an updated cover and, presumably, revised content. After reading this dumpster fire of a novel, I can't really say the rerelease has done any good. I spent way to long reading this novel, and almost all of it was absolutely incensing. 

The only positive thing I have to say about this book is that the writing was very well done. I thought the dialogue, though somewhat cheesy in times of high emotion, was smooth and natural, and the descriptions were vivid. 

That's where my compliments end. The pacing was too slow at times. Nobody cares about Gervase's spy duties. We're here for the romance, not how well France or Italy or Bonaparte is doing in the war. I was beyond bored when large portions of a chapter were taken up by this irrelevant information.

Gervase was an absolute monster. I have no idea how anybody in their right mind could give this novel a good rating. He was a rapist. A self-admitted rapist who did not seem that remorseful, despite his continuous (and lengthy) whining about how horrible he was and how despicable his actions were. You know why I know he wasn't remorseful? Because after finding out the truth, after knowing Diana for months and caring for her so much more than anyone else he'd ever known, HE ATTEMPTS TO RAPE HER A SECOND TIME.

Let me repeat this, in case it's not getting through: AFTER RAPING DIANA AS A FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD BRIDE FORCED INTO MARRIAGE, HE THEN PROCEEDS TO TRY AND RAPE HER A SECOND TIME TEN YEARS LATER.

If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times: Gervase is a fucking monster. 

[Full review on my blog!]

Wow, I feel like I've just been put through a wringer washer! This was such an intense yet fascinating story, with one shock after another, especially at the end. From the very first chapter, you are brought into a situation that leaves you reeling.

All Diana Lindsay wants is to find a man who will love her and make her dreams come true and if she needs to become a courtesan to do so, then so be it. She also has a young son that needs a father! When she comes face to face with Gervase Brandelin, the Viscount St. Aubyn, it's immediate attraction and she soon becomes his mistress.

Both have dark secrets that can destroy what they have and once they come out in the open, it almost seems impossible that they will be able to overcome it all....but love and passion are very strong emotions and forgiveness is another one.

This is not a lighthearted story but one of deep, dark emotions and filled with angst. One must also realize that these things happen quite often and we can't keep our heads buried in the sand and pretend that it doesn't happen.

I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.

This is an older Mary Jo Putney book, one I had forgotten that I had read. As a book of its times, it is a difficult read, given the circumstances of the marriage of the H/h, which starts off the book. Gervase is not the most appealing man in the world, and Mary, the child bride, has her own difficult road to follow. Fast forward to the romance between Gervase and a woman called Diana, a would-be courtesan who decides to seek that profession to support her child, and what we think we understand becomes upended. All of Putney's books that I have read are compelling, with intact worlds and sympathetic characters. This one is more challenging, and victims of sexual assault might one to skip it. Still, I read it to the end and was pleased to see the hard-won HEA. When reading books of this period, I always remember that women had few choices and marriage was forever (or until death). What people did with those choices seems foreign to our modern eyes, but those choices make for great reading. (I received an ARC from NetGalley. Opinions mine.)

When I requested this ARC from Netgalley, I didn't realize that DEARLY BELOVED was a reissue of a previously published title (and one that I'd already read!). Originally published in 1990, the book has a second copyright of 2019, which suggests some updating was done for this reissue. But I didn't have a copy of the first, and so couldn't make a comparison.

The story seems very much in that transitional Mary Jo Putney vein: her old-skool hero, Gervase, does something at the start of the story that today's readers will mostly find irredeemable <spoiler> he rapes (or, in older terms, inflicts forced sex on) Mary, the young girl into whose inn bedroom he mistakenly fumbles and is forced to marry </spoiler>. Such actions were not uncommon for 70s and 80s historical romance heroes, alas. What Putney does is give the hero psychological background and baggage to explain said behavior, to make him more sympathetic to readers. In the 90s', that technique worked. In 2018, post #metoo, not so much.

Our heroine is Diana, a widow who rescues a woman from a winter storm, a woman who turns out to be an ex-courtesan. After a year of living with Maddy, Diana gets up her courage and asks her about how she came to be a "woman of ill repute," and what it was like to live such a life. It's clear that Putney has drawn on actual historical accounts (Harriette Wilson makes a cameo appearance in the story), as Maddy talks about both the upsides and downsides of the profession, especially the influence some mistresses of higher ranked men wielded, and the intellectual atmosphere of their salons. Diana, whose past life & scandals we don't hear much about, except that "even the most modest of respectable marriages was out of her grasp," is intrigued by the idea of going to London and seeing if she can find a modicum of power herself, since all of her life she's been the victim of men. She isn't vengeful, though; no, what she wants is to find "one man, one who would love and protect her in spit of her past, one who could initiate her into the profane, earthly delights that Madeline had described." I remember being pleased by how sexually curious and accepting of sexual longings Putney was when I first read this book, back in 2010, and I still appreciate that aspect of the story.

In London, during her first night on the "market," Diana meets Gervase, and the two are immediately drawn to one another. In wonderful Putney style, the two spar verbally as Gervase attempts to convince Diana to become his mistress, and Diana insists on getting to know him before taking any such step. And Gervase accidentally encounters Diana's young son, and becomes friends with him. The problems come when each of their pasts comes back to haunt their burgeoning romance, and each (especially Diana) responds in ways that aren't likely to endear them to readers, never mind to one another.

I applaud Putney's efforts to tackle issues of sexual trauma, and to evoke empathy for both its victims and its perpetrators. But this storyline feels better left back in the 1990s than brought forward to 2019.

Over the years i’ve read more than 20 books by the author and of course I had to read this one as well.
As usual, the story is so engaging that you won’t want to put it down till you finish reading it. Yes, it’s old school and of course there are things happening that we don’t agree nowadays but bare in mind that it is a historical romance story and it does touch the time settings with everything that happened then.
I loved the writing as always, I loved the characters and moreover because they weren’t high ranking and their love story deserved the time and heartbreaking moments because no real love will go untouched by obstacles and heartbreaking past or situations.
I always recommend the author’s books to my friends.