Longing by Mary Balogh (1994)

This is a standalone book by Mary Balogh. And boy, was it a saga! The audiobook was 14 hours long and it was really crammed full of events. It was chock-full of action and drama -- if you can use those words to describe a historical romance. While it was set in the 19th century, it wasn't the standard life-in-the-ton romance. Our hero is a Marquis, but it's mainly a story about the effect of the industrial revolution on regular people's lives. The ton is pretty abstract in this book because instead of Regency London or house parties in the countryside, our story takes place in Wales.

This book takes place 50 years after the French revolution during a time when the Industrial Revolution was changing society. This is a time in English history when workers were rioting because of terrible working conditions. For instance, because the price of steel drops, threatening their profits, the local mine owners cut their pay by 10%. (Not that the miners weren't living on the poverty line or anything.) And because only the gentry have voting rights, they can do this with impunity. A big specter that hangs over everything throughout the book was the Charter, a list of demands that the working man are going to present Parliament, asking for things like the vote and fair, safe working conditions and pay. 

Our hero, Alex, inherited a coal mine in Wales when he became the marquis 2 years ago. This is the first time he's ever visited. Our heroine is Sian, the illegitimate daughter of a local earl. Her mother lived and died as a kept woman, an arrangement that Sian refuses to ever enter into. Her husband was a coal miner who died when the tunnel he was working in collapsed. She lives with her grandparents and her uncle. She's being courted by the local union leader (you can call it that but it's not actually a union. They get together and grumble about conditions and talk about how they are going to make the government listen).

Sian and Alex meet when they spy on a local Charter gathering. From the beginning the attraction is immediate, culminating in a steamy kiss. She eventually goes to work for him as his young daughter's governess. (He had no idea that it was her that he is hiring until she walks in the room.

Alex has a problem. Well, he has many problems. But his reception in Wales is not friendly. Because of his neglect, his workers have concluded that he's just like any other mine owner, including his predecessor. Alex is a good hearted man that is appalled the conditions his workers are living and working in. He wants to fix it but he also doesn't want to bankrupt the mine so he listens to terrible advice from the other mind owners, and his agent, the dastardly Mr. Barnes. 

The rival for Shawn affections, Owen, is the epitome of toxic masculinity, all wrapped up in a marshmallow. It's all about how he looks, what other people think about him. I hesitate to call him an abuser because he typifies the mindset of the time period. It wouldn't be considered abuse, even by the women of that time. It's just what a man does with his wife (or at least some men). Balogh is good at not painting him with an evil brush, though. (Unlike Mr. Barnes, who is a real piece.) He is just the typical 19th-century British male who discounts the brains of any female he knows and sees it as his job to teach his wife how to be respectable. (Even if that means taking her across his lap and spanking her.) I didn't like him, but I also saw him as a good man who let bitterness and hatred towards the English to twist his thinking. (There were a couple of times where I really wanted to throttle him because Alex is definitely trying to do the right thing and the man's distrust just stops Owen from being any type of help or solution for the situation of the miners outside of what he had pinned everything on: the Charter. People respected him, but they also feared him, a reputation he honestly earned.

But it's never any real contest for me between the two. Several times throughout the novel, Shawn wishes she was in love with Owen rather than Alex. She cares for him, she values him, and it would probably be enough for her if she had never met Alex. But never once was it a question for me as far as who she should end up with. There were some red flags as far as the toxic masculinity that she was ignoring that were very obvious to me, flags that foreshadowed bad things to come. (I think that I think it's what held her back, those red flags, even if she never acknowledged them to herself until much later.) When things are finally over between them, I honestly didn't feel bad. (Did I mention that he let bitterness and hatred poison his soul?) At the point, he'd done some things that I couldn't forgive.

The title does fit for the book, although not in the way, I expected it would. It never really reached the pining stage that the word longing typically conjures for me. Instead, there is longing throughout this book, on more than just the romantic lead level. Multiple characters are longing for something better, for connection, for love, for hope. I think having longing is something I would ascribe to every character in this book. Unlike a lot of Balogh's books, this is a standalone, and it does feel finished. We leave everyone in a good place. It's not going to be easy, but there's hope in the future, and Alex finally convinces Sian to marry him. In the last couple of pages of the book! (When she agreed to marry him, my response was and annoyed "finally!") I find the trope of the 'fourth quarter conflict/obstacle to happiness' quite annoying and Balogh enacts it here. It wasn't as annoying as it can be. While the whole "you are a marquis, and I am a commoner!" was tiresome, there was a legitimate and understandable reason why they were going to be separated, one based in trauma, so it wasn't as annoying as usual. (But still it was tiresome.)

Overall, it's a solid read. Good character development, an interesting aspect to English history, likable characters. But it's not going to be one that I think I'm going to read again.

My rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.