3.5 stars!

Reminder for myself: I want to reread this because I think I'll like it more a second time around. I had to return the book to my library so I didn't get the chance to reread just yet. ( )

El primer encuentro entre Fleur Hamilton y el duque de Ridgeway a las afueras del teatro Drury Lane no fue muy alentador, es más, se podría decir que fue bastante sórdido. Ella era una prostituta; él, su primer cliente.
Pero lo peor de todo vino cuando volvieron a verse las caras, ya que Fleur está en la casa del duque y nada menos que como la institutriz de su hija, y lógicamente su esposa, la duquesa, también vive en el mismo techo.
Con todos estos antecedentes es bastante improbable que el amor entre Fleur y el duque pueda florecer y que les augure un futuro feliz. Pero, ¿quién sabe? Cuando se trata de una novela romántica todo es posible…

I read this a while ago as it's one of Ms. Balogh's older books, but I saw a recommendation and decided to reread it for the angst. And there's a lot of angst.
We first meet Fleur when Adam hires her for the night and finds out this is her first time. She's also a gentlewoman, so feeling guilty Adam, Duke of Ridgeway, hires her as governess to his daughter. It's an odd setup; Fleur is terrified when she realizes who her new employer is, but gradually relaxes as Adam proves to be noble. We learn he's in a terrible marriage while Fleur is fleeing her nasty cousin which mitigates some of the distaste around their romance. It's very odd for a man to have his mistress (okay, one-time but still) at his home teaching his five-year-old daughter. The story has a lot of offensive characters. Poor Adam is one of the nicest but also somewhat of a doormat for a Duke. Still, the writing is excellent and it's well worth the read (or reread). ( )

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, 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. ( )

"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 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. ( )