Historical romance

After a scandal between the families puts Anne Pym and her sisters in a socially precarious position, Simon Rushford, Earl of Underwood aims to resolve this reputational damage by making her his Countess. A whole bunch of light, entirely consensual femdom ensues while Anne adjusts to this marriage and comes into her own, with the rest of the plot conflict being driven by Anne attempting to live up to her own expectations as much as those of others, and Simon being a bit dumb. 

This is one of those 3.5 star situations, where its good parts were somewhat smothered by its problems. That’s not to say I hated the book, even if I was exasperated with it (and the characters) at times. Its main flaw is that it’s under done, but in the sense that it desperately needed more book to fill out what it was trying to do. Waite can write, with a particular knack for sex scenes, but the flow of individual pieces is very choppy. However, as far as erotica and hand under the covers reading, it executes what it is trying to do sincerely and with enough story and commitment to physical realism to underline it’s trying to take its own material seriously.

Other than that, though, the conflict here is probably the book’s weakest part. There’s plenty of problems for the heroine to solve, such as finding her feet in society, managing various scandals, and reconciling herself to things she can’t have, but we take until the last third of the book before there’s any real challenge. Capital R Romance (as a genre) has a beat structure and theme that isn’t being hewed to very hard here. Particularly germaine to abandoning forumula, the hero is a kind of gormless easy going individual who seems to exist to be agreeable and reassuring, but also cause most of the fuck ups. He is certainly very earnest, but also very stupid in a way that’s never particularly explored, essentially leaving the other half of the potential plot conflict entirely unaddressed. 

Particularly notable is that he is an utter dumb-dumb about sex, to the extent that a first major point of drama in the relationship is that he is flabbergasted to discover that a change in costume is enough to render his wife attractive. Nevertheless, his Madonna/Whore complex causes no further dysfunction in their love life and does nothing to change his opinion of her when he discovers she likes fucking him. This is a bit of a head scratcher that he is very bought into the idea of duty, proprietary and the fragility of women of his social class, but has none of the drawbacks this is usually packaged with in real life. 

Instead, Simon is written like someone who would be startled to discover carriages that aren’t painted red can still go fast. Inversely, Anne’s makeover from debutante pastels to bright colours (this being all it takes for Simon to realize she is hot) is in no way an effort to dress for his benefit, a purely happy accident. She likes fucking her husband, once he shows an interest in her, but her love for him never shifts from an increasingly appreciative check list. Additional tinkering could have taken this from Anne reacting to things and concluding it could be much worse, to her own example being a more traditional catalyst of change in her partner as well. 

Still, the main conceit the book is built on is pretty refreshing. Anne is a plausible sexually dominant, including approaching the inevitable historical romance virginity loss scene with full enthusiasm instead of a rather cliche reticence. Inversely, I enjoyed her hesitancy in figuring out her new social milieu and reconciling the real fact that dominants are not magic fountains of universal confidence. The plot, had it held together a little better, had its interesting points and avoided a lot of the more irksome versions of the tropes it explored. 

But I would have liked to see Simon ever have to confront the fact that he caused not only most of the problems in this book, but is largely insulated by his privilege in a way others are not. We are supposed to treat his marriage to Anne as some sort of mutual sacrifice, but in reality, he gives her a very difficult job entirely for his benefit. At no point does his terrible decision making process ever cause him real consequences, largely because Anne keeps dealing with it for him. No lessons are learned, Simon shall be Simon until he dies. 

This earnest range of fuck ups even starts with the prior book in this series, where we are told he plays an accidental part in the leaking of someone’s nude painting. The scandal from that is what puts Anne in a position where marriage to her is a sort of rescue, but even so she also represents a convenient solution to his feeling of obligation to marry someone out of duty. Then, once their sex life is off and humming we discover actually he knocked up his last mistress, but once again Anne is dealing with the worst of it entirely to his advantage. I am not even asking for a comeuppance. It’s just that Simon is never significantly impacted by any of this, and always less than Anne.

Indeed Simon does not get so much as a side eye from being surprised all the unprotected sex he had with other women he wasn’t married to resulted in pregnancy and then this secret being mismanaged by him. He talks about not being as slutty as his brother, and this, by his measure, seems to have been enough in his mind and nobody confronts him about this because the book keeps very modern sensibilities. No sex, no matter how irresponsible, is to be shamed. So, instead, he is briefly flustered by the mess, then Anne solves his problem, he then wanders off to play with the new baby. 

The strongest conflict, found in the last third of the book, doesn’t really concern Simon at all, just Anne putting up with a lot for her cousin (heroine from the last book) and confronting finding out something about herself that will impact their life together, rattling her confidence in the process.  This, about three months into their marriage (timelines are a bit rushed, it might have been max a year), puts a bit of a damper on their sex life while she deals with her feelings about that. It’s here you see where this would be a better book if Waite had given it more time. We could have built into this better about what sudden sexual dysfunction means to Anne. Instead, problem established we lurch into a happy ending by way of a pegging scene and then a time skip. 

Honestly, the pegging prose itself was well done, and so rare to find that I can forgive a lot. Nevertheless, it’s that ongoing choppiness of flow here that makes this scene nice but bewildering, rather than fantastic. What could have been an additional escalation becomes simply a dildo out of left field. 

To emphasize on how bizarre this is, nothing to this point suggests anything more sexually adventurous on Simon’s part than oral sex. A bit of editing could have handled this better, dropping the more complicated kink sooner into his perspective or maybe exploring that as part of the Madonna/Whore thing we started with. Instead we are left head scratching. How does Simon know about butt stuff, a historically realtively supressed sex act even compared to oral? We never get much insight, but for plot convenience he has a porn image to share with his wife as a way of guide and the firm belief this is just what Anne needs. Is this a secret vulnerable fantasy he dwelled on, revealed only as an act of trust? Did he do this loads with those prior partners? No, it’s pretty much just Simon doing Simon things.

By his logic, if Anne is feeling depressed enough she doesn’t want to do PiV, clearly what Simon thinks will cheer her up is putting a dildo in his butt. Tahdah, no more pressure on her to be wet enough to penetrate! Luckily, as pretty much every other hare brained idea of Simon’s so far, it goes great. 

About the only thing I can say to Simon’s credit is that he always does the wrong thing, but says the right thing afterwards. He offers Anne no help figuring out posh society, but cheerfully reminds her she is doing great while watching her struggle from the sidelines. He drops a surprise baby in her lap, fluffs about in a panic until Anne rescues him and then turns into instant perfect modern dad so the audience can coo over baby time. When Anne is sad because of a thing she has learned that impacts their sex life he says something supportive about centering her feelings not his. And then he offers her his butthole in this trying time. 

This is probably something of a pattern with how the book treats solving problems. When Simon played a part in harming Anne and her family, his solution to marry her is treated rather like a unilaterally good thing, rather than either excessive to what had been actually asked of him (and a gift with considerable strings). When the impregnated former mistress shows up on the doorstep, Anne in turn adds her to the household with a job, purely so Simon can get more time with the baby, and we are supposed to assume that this is a lovely, gracious thing to do to the other woman and not, again, a hard job that asks her to continue to subordinate herself to both main characters for a problem largely caused by Simon. The pegging at the end is almost a rule of thirds conclusion of this pattern. The problem of being unable to feel as aroused because of a very real point of stress is treated like Anne’s problem that Simon tenderly solves. In reality, it’s Simon saying “here is a sex act we can do when you aren’t as horny that will still benefit me”.

Simon adds to Anne’s life by adding massive social prestige and wealth, but in his own self characterization, this is more like the desirable cart attached to a particularly clumsy ox. The rest of Anne’s life is not particularly a net positive by his presence in it, and at times he feels his positives are more like a sexy lamp that could be replaced by a wise mentor stock character. One can even read a darker interpretation of his marriage to Anne that he knows he’s actually offering a less than good deal and figured her desperation would make up for it. 

These, incidentally, are all interesting conflicts that could have been addressed if we had about 25% more book. I credit Waite here that she’s clearly got the insight and writing ability to have ironed out these problems and made Simon either less of a bliss-ninny or have him reign in more of his worst tendencies in regards to this flaw as part of character development. I also don’t think the circumstances this was published in gave Waite the support to do so, thus one can’t complain too much.

This forms, by the way, the crux of my review dilemma. To nurture more femdom books into existence, existing works must be more widely read and shared. Nevertheless, this must be done with compassion and the knowledge that writers in this niche are operating at a severe disadvantage, most typically in the indie space.

As an indie, “At His Countess’ Pleasure” must be judged, not by the standards of the bigger budget books, but what is accomplished with less. One thus forgives much: typos, lower grade graphics on the covers, things that didn’t always land as precisely as we might hope, and so on. Often they are the byproduct of a single creator wearing many hats, and these errors really can be treated as irrelevant to the overall whole.  As an example of the genre of Romance, and assuming the creator had all the tools of a big budget book, this needed to go back to the metaphorical kitchen. As an example of something put together cottage industry style with no support to speak of and profit margins that border on an entirely labour of love level, Waite pulled this off phenomenally, bringing her talent and technical skill to a part of the book market that can trend into shovel ware. 

Thus my conclusion: it wasn’t a waste of time to read this and if Waite does any other femdom I’d happily give that a shot too. As an Erotic Romance, it’s a bit weak in how it assembles the R part, but if you are into firm but gentle F/m, the E is solid and could stand on its own if that was all you wanted.

Where To Buy: At His Countess’ Pleasure by Olivia Waite