Review: WHITNEY, MY LOVE, by Judith McNaugh

The one and only! (Fictiondb)

What a pity this book was my first review!

Published: 1985
Genre: Regency Period, Historical Romance
My Rating: 2 stars
99 in AAR Top 100 List

Whitney Stone is in love with Paul. But, alas! he is not interested in her, so she goes to Paris for a make-over. When she comes back, she has already attracted the attention of another man, the rakish Clayton Westmoreland, Duke of Claymore, who likes her spirit and her liveliness. Kind of Regency ‘Gone with the Wind’, but without the war, isn’t it?

Many people love this book. They think the characters are so intense that they take you into a whirlwind of emotions. ‘Whitney, My Love’ has been in the AAR Top 100 from the beginning, but it’s going down with each passing year, from the 5th place in 1998 to this 99th place in 2013.

I’m one of those that dislike this book. A wilful girl and an overwhelming ‘macho’ are not my cup of tea. Clayton is a rapist –something a little bit usual in the 70s and 80s romances – but without the final groveling. He is so obsessed with the ‘taming’ of this ‘shrew’ –a hateful literary topic from a feminist POV- that he does not respect her, he is groping her all the time, he even buys her to her father! I was not surprised when I read that, in the original version of the book, he even hits her with a riding crop.

What else? The plot moves forward with a lot of stupid misundersdings, and in the end Whitney is more mature, but Clayton keeps on being the same asshole. So, I’m afraid, that their HEA will be full of forgiveness from Whitney’s part.

So, ‘Whitney, My Love’ is part of the Romance canon. It has all the topics that you can easily find in many novels published after this one. So you have to read it to know where this genre comes from and how it was in the past.

The long review of this book, in Spanish, can be found here.