A review by cakt1991
Remember Love by Mary Balogh

emotional hopeful medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

 I haven’t read a Mary Balogh book for a while for a few reasons, one of them being my general apathy toward historical romance in recent years. But with her recent appearance on the Fated Mates podcast and the resulting Twitter discourse around her romance legend status, I was inspired to try her work again. And while Remember Love, the first in her current Ravenswood series, isn’t her best work by any means, I enjoyed it overall. 

The main premise for the series is to follow the drama and various romantic pursuits of various family members, and with it being the first in a series, it does double-duty in setting up the family’s backstory and serving as a standalone love story. And those were actually the strongest elements for me. Devlin, as the protagonist of this book, is deeply impacted by the discovery that his father isn’t as honorable as he grew up thinking. I really appreciated the self-awareness with which the dynamics were written, critiquing the notion that he was wrong to speak out about his father’s infidelity, and it was that action which supposedly brought shame on his family, not the fact that his father chose to sleep with other women while married to his wife to begin with. 

And with Devlin clearly being in the right at the beginning, if a bit naive about the ways of the world, I struggled to see him become so deeply hardened by his experiences in the army. However, his healing process where he realizes that his family does appreciate him and acknowledge the positive in what he did was a positive for me. 

His bond with Ben, his half-brother from a liaison their father had prior to his marriage, was also a highlight for me. I love how Ben so loyally agreed to follow Devlin to the Peninsula, and Ben was there to support Devlin at the worst moments. And while Devlin engaged in liaisons with multiple women while abroad, I loved the fact that Ben ended up finding a woman he liked and sticking with her until the end, even marrying her when she got pregnant. I can’t wait for his story now, to see him find the happiness he deserves. 

What with all the good stuff with the family, I definitely felt the romance got a little neglected. While Balogh’s heroines are usually on the more conventional end of the spectrum, Gwyneth was fairly uninspiring. I liked the young romance between her and Devlin in the beginning, but while I did like the way she supported him after he came back, I felt like this was a case where he’d been through a lot, and she hadn’t changed much at all. This book also falls into the tired trend of the woman having to be celibate during a long parting from her true love, while the man isn’t, and while I sort of give it a pass, as it falls in line with the more “traditional” characters Balogh writes, it would have been more interesting if there had been a way to give Gwyneth more life experience, like having her be married and subsequently widowed, as opposed to on the verge of spinsterhood. 

While this book isn’t the best, it’s to be expected from the first book of an intricate family-oriented romance series. However, if you enjoy slow burn historical romance that has a strong emphasis on family dynamics, I recommend checking this out!