In search of Camille.
http://www.marybalogh.com/
Mary Balogh’s Someone to Hold is the second story in the Westcott family series. This one
happens to be about Camille Westcott and Joel Cunningham. If you’ve read the first in the series, you will know that Camille is the illegitimate product of a bigamist marriage. She has grown up privileged, thinking she was the legitimate daughter of an aristocrat. She’s been surrounded by people who have put her on a pedestal, but it’s a false pedestal and something she hasn’t earned on her own. She’s on that pedestal just because of her birth; she has no other identity. Then her world is shattered when she finds out her father was never legally wed to her mother. She has grown to expect certain things just because she was born into a certain place in the world. Now, everything is falling down around her feet, her friends turn from her and her fiancée breaks their engagement – she doesn’t know who she is. And, that’s what this book basically is – Camille’s search to find herself. Before I go any further I will say this was not one of my favorite Balogh books; I had a problem with Camille. Camille was very unlikable. She was unlikable in the previous story and she still is. She does some odd things to find herself. One of the things she does is find employment at the orphanage her half-sister Anna was employed in. By the way, Anna also grew up in that orphanage. I never quite bought into the idea of Camille finding herself in that orphanage. I didn’t understand her reasoning. Sure, sure, she would have found out what made Anna tick but how she was going to find herself? This didn’t ring true for me. On the up side, Camille gains a certain amount of freedom, which she never had before.
Joel Cunningham is Camille’s love interest, although I couldn’t see any romantic chemistry between the two. Camille was so involved in finding herself without the help of anyone else, that the romance became secondary. I also have to add that I found Camille’s constant declining of help from her family selfish. Not only did she reject Anna’s help, but she cut herself off from her sister Abigail. Abigail had none nothing to deserve Camille’s boo-hoo-pity-me attitude.
Then there’s Joel’s story line. It was just odd. He was an artist who painted portraits of people based on their personalities. He would get to know them and then miraculously come up with these great pieces of art. These pieces of art were quite popular with society, so he was able to make a living at them. But, I found Joel’s story to be a little…searching for right word…boring. Then toward the end of the book, he finds out who his father was and inherits lots of money from a curmudgeonly relative. I thought this was a very contrived. It was the poor-guy-to-rich-guy routine. I was a little surprised to see this device in a Mary Balogh book.
Parents. One of the things that bothered me in the book was Camille’s need to look good in her father’s eyes. And, I will be blunt – her father was a bit of a shite. I can understand how a young Camille would try everything she could think of to win her father’s affection. But, how many times does one have to be kicked in the teeth before one sees that some people are just not worth the bother? Then she forgave him. That had me gritting my teeth. Why Camille had to forgive her father was beyond me. Just because you are family doesn’t mean you have to like them. It’s alright to realize that your father isn’t someone you want to be around. It’s also alright to think that just possibly… maybe… you don’t really like him, let alone love him. I think Camille would have appeared stronger if she had some kind of epiphany about her father and not “forgiven” him. He wasn’t worth the pain. I also never understood why Camille’s mother went into hiding while her children suffered.
For me this story didn’t work. I didn’t particularly care for Camille, I thought the romance was flat and for once I was not able to get lost in a Balogh book. Very disappointed. The only thing I liked about this story was when Camille and her half-sister Anna finally started to accept each other.
Time/Place: Regency England
Sensuality: Warm
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