Readers Up #36: Betting on a Duke's Heart
The trope of the young girl flipping frenetically through a racy novel to get to the good bits is well-established. As a young girl myself, I even encountered this trope in an Alice book, where Elizabeth reads the naughty parts of 1001 Nights (!!) to Alice and Pamela at a sleepover. Despite this in-text example--I took all my cues from middle-grade novels--and despite knowing, in my sheltered Mormon-girl way, what Elizabeth was looking for, it never really occurred to me to do the same thing. For one thing, there just weren't any sexy books in our house. It wasn't that Mills & Boon paperbacks and longer, more "serious" romantic endeavors of the Georgette Heyer variety were equally damned by the person buying books for our household (my mother)--it was more that romance, as a notion, didn't exist.
My first forays into on-page romance and sex arrived via romantic fantasy. Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey, Jacqueline Carey, Sharon Shinn, Dave Duncan--these were common in-roads in the pre-YA era, where bookaholic girls jumped from middle-grade fantasy straight into the library's adult shelves. Whether by osmosis from a nascent social Web already populated by genre purists, forewords from adult authors referencing other adult authors, or the confluence of conservative religion and my mother's ideas about Literature™ , the paperback romance stacks never held much allure. Somehow the rough sex in Sky of Swords and the outright assault in The Black Swan seemed more legitimate, swaddled as they were in references to world fairy tales and English history, than the clinch covers and gilded titles a few aisles over. Ah, to be a pre-teen snob! Page-flipping happened only once I'd raced through three volumes of Mage Winds and knew Elspeth's fate; her hooking up with Darkwind was secondary to Herald-Mage drama but suitable for curiously revisiting after the fact.
Of course, now that I'm an adult who has had sex at least once (ed. note: possibly apocryphal), I flip to the horse shit.
Royaline Sing's debut novel for Entangled Publishing, Betting on a Duke's Heart, arrives just in time for fans' return to racetracks across the country. Warm weather, the end of mask mandates, and rising numbers of vaccination spell springtime romance... and railbird flocking. Horse Girl Summer is officially upon us, so why not welcome it with a consummate historical horsewoman? Dina Campbell has a very specific dowry: a fast racehorse. The Duke of Saxton wants to win the English Triple Crown (for selfless reasons, natch--it was his dead father's dream). Clearly a match made at Fasig-Tipton, especially considering the hero's nickname is "The Bareback Duke." Once an amateur jockey, still a gambler, breeder, and trainer, Saxton is an appealing romantic hero for horse-hearted readers; the figure of the horse girl is well-established, but horse boys remain underloved, despite their antecedents in Alec and Agba.
My first forays into on-page romance and sex arrived via romantic fantasy. Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey, Jacqueline Carey, Sharon Shinn, Dave Duncan--these were common in-roads in the pre-YA era, where bookaholic girls jumped from middle-grade fantasy straight into the library's adult shelves. Whether by osmosis from a nascent social Web already populated by genre purists, forewords from adult authors referencing other adult authors, or the confluence of conservative religion and my mother's ideas about Literature™ , the paperback romance stacks never held much allure. Somehow the rough sex in Sky of Swords and the outright assault in The Black Swan seemed more legitimate, swaddled as they were in references to world fairy tales and English history, than the clinch covers and gilded titles a few aisles over. Ah, to be a pre-teen snob! Page-flipping happened only once I'd raced through three volumes of Mage Winds and knew Elspeth's fate; her hooking up with Darkwind was secondary to Herald-Mage drama but suitable for curiously revisiting after the fact.
Of course, now that I'm an adult who has had sex at least once (ed. note: possibly apocryphal), I flip to the horse shit.
Royaline Sing's debut novel for Entangled Publishing, Betting on a Duke's Heart, arrives just in time for fans' return to racetracks across the country. Warm weather, the end of mask mandates, and rising numbers of vaccination spell springtime romance... and railbird flocking. Horse Girl Summer is officially upon us, so why not welcome it with a consummate historical horsewoman? Dina Campbell has a very specific dowry: a fast racehorse. The Duke of Saxton wants to win the English Triple Crown (for selfless reasons, natch--it was his dead father's dream). Clearly a match made at Fasig-Tipton, especially considering the hero's nickname is "The Bareback Duke." Once an amateur jockey, still a gambler, breeder, and trainer, Saxton is an appealing romantic hero for horse-hearted readers; the figure of the horse girl is well-established, but horse boys remain underloved, despite their antecedents in Alec and Agba.
"Oh, I have nothing against horsemen. I just do not think I have a place in a man's life which is already full with horses."
Despite owning and loving horses herself, Dina resists the Duke's charms in part because of something that rings through much of racetrack literature: horse people will choose the horse every time. In our mirroring real lives, this might manifest as two jockeys forced to choose between their careers or their marriage. The scandals, interpersonal entanglements, dubious stewards' decisions, and unbelievable state-to-state statutes undergirding horse racing provide more dramatic plot points and relationship twists than any author could possibly use. In comparison to the year American racing is having so far, Betting on a Duke's Heart is tame. Its plot arc and character development move through other channels, including a rich interweaving of Dina's Indian heritage and an emphasis on the Duke's (mistaken) reliance on his so-called rationality. Page-flippers beware: a serious slow-burn of a book, this particular historical takes awhile to get to the juicy stuff--but once it does, the head-butting of two stubborn smartypants fans flames already lit by lingering glances, all-too-brief touches, and an epigraph for each chapter featuring "The Love Saga of Nala and Damayanti."
Ok, you say. But what about the horse shit?
Who among us doesn't crave manure-scented romance? There's a reason we have the phrase "roll in the hay." With a few exceptions, the bulk of Thoroughbred-centric romance is historical; it seems that the racetrack's meteoric highs and feeding-trough lows are most appealing to mainstream publishers at a safe distance of several decades, most enticing when dressed up in ruffled gowns and silk cravats. Royaline Sing is either a fan herself or a dedicated researcher, since her depictions of historic English racing and her examinations of the people obsessed by Thoroughbreds are sound. Anyone seeking a hero who nerds out over the first automatic starting gates, or a heroine equally moved by blue-blooded stallions and trotting ponies, need look no further. Flashbacks to Saxton's stints as a jockey and conversations revolving around the breeding and training norms of the day ground the story firmly in late-Victorian England and make it worthy of its title pun. The book's length means that there's plenty of room for steamy bedroom scenes, a Ferris wheel ride, mouthwatering Indian food, and--of course--a climactic race.
She had easily stood up for her beloved horse, declaring her pride with her "he goes where I go" motto. And him?
We've talked here before about the natural confluence of romance and racing. If you remain unconvinced, historicals are a great place to start with romance as a genre--and a book as enamored with Thoroughbreds as this one is the perfect gateway for horsey readers nosing suspiciously in the kissing-books section. Thanks to Renée Dahlia, romance and racing maven, for suggesting this title to me (if you haven't already, add her own equestrian historicals to your beach reads). Happy flipping, friends!
Making sure I haven't lost my vaccination card in advance of Saratoga's opening day,
Diana
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