The Secret Pearl

The Secret Pearl is far more than a mere romance novel. It is an exquisite love story of two people who fall in love against seemingly impossible odds, and whose love for one another never fades despite being kept apart by circumstances beyond their control. All this occurs amidst the hero and heroine's inauspicious, even sordid, initial meeting where he becomes her first client as a prostitute, and the discovery that he is married to another woman. I believe Mary Balogh took a huge risk in creating a hero who was cheating, but in my opinion, she pulled it off splendidly. Even though I'm not one to condone infidelity, I was never off-put by this part of the story, because she gave the characters so much depth, I couldn't help but show more sympathize. My emotions were stirred right from the opening scene by two characters who are broken in spirit and desperately in need of love.

Fleur is an incredibly strong, courageous woman who responds to every challenge in her life with quiet dignity. She may be quaking inwardly, but only rarely does she allow it show on the outside. In doing so, she has learned to hide her true emotions behind an inscrutable mask, yet somehow, Adam still manages to see past it to find the hurting, frightened woman underneath. I thought the author did an amazing job of expressing Fleur's agonized decision to prostitute herself, and the abject desperation that led her to that choice. Life has taught her that she can depend on no one but herself, and makes her distrustful of nearly everyone, including Adam, even when he's being kind and trying very hard to win back the trust he damaged during their first meeting. It was very difficult to read how afraid Fleur was of Adam, and even more so to have her still wary and questioning his motives after he did so much for her and she had allowed him to get close to her on a few occasions. However, I think she was more afraid of the feelings he stirred in her than she was of the man himself. I also felt that deep down she already knew the answers to the questions she asked, but was guarding her heart against the knowledge that a real relationship between them was impossible due to his marital status. In addition to her strength, I admired Fleur for her indelible patience with Adam's daughter, Pamela, even when she was being bratty, and how she was able to win the little girl over with her unconditional love. I also thoroughly enjoyed the author's beautiful expressions of Fleur's love of music and how she becomes one with it. I'm not sure that I would have what it takes to make some of the choices Fleur did (there were several times I probably would have caved), but I respected her for not choosing the easy path and facing everything life threw at her with her head held high.

Adam is a tantalizingly complex character. He begins the story with a definite air of anger and self-loathing. Even though he used Fleur and in the process was unfaithful to his wife, I can still say with all honesty that he was a very decent, kind, gentle, loving, patient and honorable man. He felt so remorseful over his actions that he spent the entire rest of the story atoning for his one mistake. Adam is a deeply lonely man with terrible physical scars from his time in the war. Through circumstances that were no fault of his own, he had been placed in an untenable position. Although he did everything he could to keep his wife happy and never showed her anything but kindness, he sadly received nothing in return from her except scorn. Adam is a wonderful father to Pamela, and I greatly respected him for maintaining his place of authority in his own household even though his wife tried her hardest to usurp that role and guilt him into letting her have her own way. Adam is a quiet, intellectual man who prefers small gatherings to the huge social event his wife always throws. Aside from his protectiveness and occasional grousing at his valet, Adam leans much more toward being a beta hero. He is a refreshingly intelligent and perceptive man. He is fully understanding of why Fleur is wary of him, and actually sees and appreciates her in a very profound way. Adam is also highly self-sacrificing, allowing his wife to think him the villain when he married her in order to spare her feelings and was also willing to give up his own happiness for the sake of loyalty, honor and responsibility. I thoroughly admired his self-control. Even when he was angry, he didn't shout or rail at everyone, and when it came to his desires, (aside from his one indiscretion) he always behaved very admirably and was a perfect gentleman. Adam was very careful not to say, "I love you," to Fleur for a long time, but he expressed his unquestionable love for her by uttering other equally beautiful, romantic lines and especially through his gallant actions. All in all, Adam was a superb romance hero I'll not soon forget.

After their dispassionate first encounter and all they had to overcome, I couldn't imagine how Mary Balogh was going to create an HEA for this couple. Fleur does warm up to Adam through an almost painfully slow process in which they seem to take two steps forward and one step back, but I wouldn't have traded a minute of it for anything. I love how Ms. Balogh took the time and care to build a relationship that was real, genuine, lasting, and most importantly, not merely based on lust. Adam had to rebuild Fleur's trust and fan the flames of love in very small degrees through his kind, gentle gestures that were always meaningful to Fleur in some way. It took a while to get there, but their first kiss was filled with tenderness and passion, making it so worth the wait. All along the way, Ms. Balogh was masterful at turning simple things like a look, a touch or simply being in each other's presence into a sensuous experience. I was particularly fond of the intertwining pinky fingers, and them holding hands and leaning into each other during a long carriage ride. Their first time making love was beautiful but also very bittersweet, knowing what was coming the next day. When it happened I couldn't help crying, but Adam's pledge to Fleur made me sigh from the sheer perfection of it. Theirs was by far one of the most hauntingly beautiful love stories I've ever read.

Even the secondary characters are portrayed with a great deal of depth. Adam's wife, Sybil, acts like a spoiled princess. She has come to think of Adam as a tyrant and doesn't even try to hide her hatred of him. She all but flaunts her own lovers right under his nose, but becomes petulant when she thinks he has taken Fleur as his mistress. There was a part of me that wanted to hate Sybil for how shabbily she treated Adam, but at the same time, I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She too had been something of a victim of circumstances and her heart had been badly broken. She could have chosen to try to be happy, but sadly, had deluded herself into living in a skewed version of reality. Their daughter, Pamela, was a bright child who could be a little bratty in the beginning, but it was clear that she was just in need of some healthy attention. She slowly came around through the patience and love shown her by Adam and Fleur. Adam's half-brother, Thomas, the love of Sybil's life, was a pretty shallow man. It's hard to believe that he and Adam were, at least partially, cut from the same cloth. Fleur's cousin, Matthew, also lives in is own flawed reality, leading him to do some pretty terrible things. He caused no end of grief for poor Fleur, yet without his nasty schemes, she never would have met Adam.

The Secret Pearl is a complex, multi-layered story of love, lies, and deception. I love how Mary Balogh doesn't take the easy road, but instead takes the time to build a romance that is believable and deeply meaningful because of all the hero and heroine had to go through to find that happy ending. This is only my second book by her, but they've been a joy to read, not only for the intricate themes and masterful character development, but also for her lyrical prose. With her exquisitely beautiful writing style, Ms. Balogh is fast on her way to becoming a favorite author. I greatly look forward to continuing to explore her other books, but for now this unique little gem has earned a permanent spot on my keeper shelf to be enjoyed again and again in the years to come. After reading such a remarkable story, it's going to be difficult to move on to another book. show less

This is one of those books I've heard about for years that is ranked up there as one of the best by Mary Balogh. I agree, it was very good, fraught with emotion - though melancholy. A great deal of it is sad, and the way Fleur and Adam meet is unbearably upsetting, but over time we see their complicated relationship turn to one of love. The looming fear of Fleur's arrest or distasteful marriage to her cousin makes the storyline angsty and I had to put it down just to give myself a breather and then return to it. I do recommend it, but this is not a lighthearted romance. This is melodrama with a rich and complex storyline. Not your typical boy meets girl, but it is a touching love story and a worthwhile read. Highly recommended.

"The Secret Pearl" is heartwrenching, tender, and lovely; it is also, as I realized about halfway through the novel, an out-and-out adapation of "Jane Eyre" - the plot is different, but all the characters are there, and with somewhat remarkable fidelity.

In fact, the bare outlines of the plot of Jane Eyre come floating in and out of "The Secret Pearl" - Rochester's disfigurement after the fire is re-written as Adam's Waterloo wounds; mad Bertha is reincarnated as a sickly, bitter wife that Adam treats with the tortured kindness that one expects from Rochester; the half-orphan upbringing and harsh schooling, through which Jane learned self-reliance and ladylike skills, teaches Fleur the same lessons; St. Claire, the too-good-to-be-true show more long lost cousin of Jane's, makes an apperance as the angelic curate, Daniel. Adele, the neglected daughter, finds new life in Pamela & even Miss Ingram makes a brief apperance as Lady Underwood

It's a remarkable sort of homage, in fact, because "The Secret Pearl" reads very much like a standard contemporary romance; the language is modern, the plot has the same blend of adventure and romance that one grows to expect from a modern romance. It's only if you look that the homage to Bronte is clear, but once you see it it's really as touching as the novel itself.

Because Adam and the heroine, Fleur, really do act exactly like Rochester and Jane in a new novel...and the tenor of their romance, the mixture of Adam's painstaking correctness and his sudden flashes of warmth and intimacy, Fleur's whole character which captures exactly the mix of fragility and tremendous strength that makes Jane Eyre such a lovable heroine two hundred years later...Adam calls Fleur a survivor a number of times, and that's exactly why Jane was so remarkable.

They even sometimes have conversations that paraphrase conversations that Jane and Rochester had.

I have to say. I've had a low opinion of Mary Balogh in the past & this novel revises it. It's clever, but it's also heartfelt and emotionally very subtle. Adam and Fleur are admirable, their love is sincere, it faces real challenges and Balogh constructs a plot that gives it the time to develop and grow before the final, satisfying conclusion. Bravo. show less

Mary Balogh's The Secret Pearl starts off with an emotional wallop with the "brutal deflowering" of the destitute and starving heroine by the "hero." This is a book where the hero basically rapes the heroine and yet is NOT the villian of the story-- the villian is described as being worse. I could not fathom how these two could ever have anything like a HEA ending and it was that curiousity that kept me reading, but Balogh managed to pull it off, just barely. I think it's a testimony to her writing chops that I didn't throw the book even once, though there were countless in the plot where a lesser writer would have blown the whole thing to smithereens. This was not a happy book, despite the happy ending.

I had been impressed by several books by Mary Balogh before, but this one is simply outstanding.

The story starts with a difficult, raw scene of a man using the services of a prostitute in a seedy London hotel. For the first time since he married, Adam Kent, Duke of Ridgeway, is being unfaithful and giving in to the temptation of needs that his wife doesn't fulfil. He hadn't planned to hire the girl's services, but something beyond his own understanding beckons him to her that night.

Fleur was once a Lady, until dreadful events forced her to run away from her home and left her alone and without resources. That night, selling her body is the last choice she has. She accepts her fate with courage and doesn't even flinch or show her disgust show more towards her customer's badly scarred body or his emotionless treatment.

It's too late when Adam Kent realises that Fleur was a virgin who is selling her body as the only alternative to starvation. Moved by what poverty can lead to, the Duke orders his secretary to find Fleur and offer her a post as his daughter's governess.

So it is a surprised and suddenly hopeful Fleur who settles in Willoughby a few days later, unaware that her new employer is her one and only customer. And for a couple of weeks, she allows herself to relax and put both the heavy secrets that sent her away from her home and the dreadful night in London to the back of her mind... until the Duke comes home and she discovers the truth of his identity.

It's difficult to put into words what is so exceptional about The Secret Pearl. It's amazing that someone who appears like an anti-hero in the beginning of the book, a careless man who pays the services of a prostitute despite his married state, and treats her with so much contempt at first, turns out to be a vulnerable, tender, loving and romantic hero. We progressively discover a man who has been badly scarred by life, not just physically but also emotionally, and who still puts his loved ones' happiness before his own. We fear for Fleur when she's cornered, caught between what made her run from her home and the secret that links her to Adam. Her fear of him, seen both through her eyes and Adam's, is remarkably real. The change of feelings between Fleur and Adam, whom she sees as the brutal man who took her virginity in her nightmares, then as the only person who can save her from losing herself completely, flows very naturally until it culminates in one of the most poignant love scenes I've ever read. show less

I think only Mary Balogh could reconcile me to a book that begins with the brutal deflowering of the destitute heroine by the hero. This opening scene is one of the most painful fictional moments I have ever read, at least by a trusted author, and it makes me think, "Nothing can possibly happen in the rest of this book that will ever reconcile me to these two people living happily ever after in romantic bliss." But I think Balogh manages. Just barely--it takes a lot of reiterative reflection and discussion later on, a lot of fear and loathing on the heroine's part and a lot of self-loathing on the hero's, and a lot of time and actions and words to establish trust and respect--but she does it, and by the time I finish the book I believe show more that the opening scene is so painful deliberately, because Mary Balogh does not take physical violation and the power dynamics between men and women lightly, and she wants the reader to understand how devastating certain transactions can be.

This is far from my favorite of Balogh's novels, but this storyline is one of the tropes of romance writing, whatever that says about the genre, and I am glad Balogh has engaged with it, and perhaps in some ways redeemed it. show less

This books, a Mary Balogh classic from 1991, is gripping, dark, and ultimately uplifting.

In the opening chapter, a man hires a young, sad looking woman outside Covent Garden and proceeds to have swift and rather brutal sex with her, realizing only after it's too late that she is a virgin. Afterward, he is haunted by the memory and sends his secretary to track her down. Upon his master's order, the secretary hires her to be a governess to the master's five-year-old daughter. It's hard to know what to think of this man, who turns out to be Adam Kent, the Duke of Ridgeway. We gradually learn, however, that he is a kind, caring, morally decent man married uphappily to a woman who loathes him and cares not a whit for their daughter.

Fleur, show more our heroine, does not realize who her benefactor is until after she's ensconced at the duke's country estate. Her reaction to him is one of loathing and fear, but gradually she learns to trust him and eventually to love him.

The story is sweet but filled with obstacles -- not just romance-novelly frivolous obstacles -- but serious problems. The ultimate HEA is so touching that I found myself puddling up, which almost never happens to me when reading HR.

Highly recommended. show less