I think this is a case of it's me, (possibly?) not the book. I just don't like historical romance set in India. Full stop. I don't really care how respectfully the author tries to treat the subject, it just isn't exactly my setting of choice for my light reads. It's not that I think Mimi Mathews did anything wrong, but I'm personally just not a fan.

So the offputting setting really didn't help me connect with Jenny and Tom, the protagonists in this novel. About 60% of the book is just one long ride to India - by horse, boat, train, so be expecting a lot of travel in uncomfortable situations. They also pretend to be brother and sister in the book to avoid scandal - and that's also not really my favourite romance trope. I'd read other books by Mimi Mathews, but for me, this one is a pass.

Oh hi everyone! have you always wanted to read what goes through my mind 24 hours a day?

Welcome to this book: aka the Heart of Rachel's lifelong issues reconciling her desire for independence and not conforming to anything and not being caged as well as being a hopeless romantic.

I mean hello thing I might have said myself:
"I don't want to spend the rest of my life wondering who I might have been if only I'd had a little time on my own. A chance to exert myself in a manner of my own choosing without reference to the expectations of a father or a brother or an employer Without that, how could I ever commit myself to anyone? It wouldn't be fair to you or to myself."



I think that everyone has those books that they sink into feeling each word was written for them. Much in the same way that Impossible Saints by Clarissa Harwood challenged me to confront questions and validated me in so many ways... so Modest Independence made me feel like I had a sense of purpose and community. That I was not alone.

The best books are the ones that grab us, tug us in, and introduce us to characters who become friends but also act as mouthpieces for the feelings, thoughts and doubts that are rampant through our mind.

Those who know me and follow me on social media know that after I finished the amazing Matrimonial Advertisement, I gobbled up Matthews's previous books. They are all lovely. But this... this book is something more. This book is one of the books that crawled so deeply inside me that it was the best reading experience. The type of experience that makes me crave more like it and makes every other book taste flat for weeks after.


Revisiting peripheral characters from Matrimonial Advertisement (though the book can be read as a standalone), Jenny Holloway, a former lady's maid is given a rare dream: the means to live a comfortably independent life away from servitude. It is not that Jenny was unhappy as companion to Lady Helena, rather that a constricted upbringing as a minister's daughter at the whim and will of men with poor judgment has made her feel caged. While Jenny is attracted to the idea of sharing a communion of minds with another soul---perhaps even her new barrister and friend Tom Finchley--- she wants a taste of liberty, to travel...to make choices long denied her.

She visits Tom who is to handle her affairs and arranges a trip to Colonial India via Egypt in hopes of tasting a bit of the world and spreading her horizons but also of locating Lady Helena's long-lost brother (believed dead) Giles, Earl of Castleton.

Tom Finchley, smart, bookish and reserved is an orphan whose greatest wish is the tenderness denied him due to his lack of family. Although Jenny and Tom have swum in similar social circles and he is attracted to her, nothing in his forthright or to-the-letter nature will allow him to take advantage of a woman when he is married to his cause, his mentor, and the law.

So, after a fateful night when Tom falls asleep on the sofa in Jenny's parlour after a late business meeting and he feels the grace of her hand on his hair, he spirals his life into a different direction and accompanies her on the trip across the world.


What we have here is not a slow burn romance of the will-they-won't-they type or the kind that is rift with misunderstandings because there is a long trail to open communication. Instead, we're given a romance that is wrapped in a soft philosophy: encouraging the reader to go to places--figuratively and emotionally-and mull on the nature of love while gorgeous settings unfurl in a perfectly worded canvas.

This is not a typical romantic experience --at least as far as the rational aspect is concerned. The setting, the sights and smells and sense of adventure tug the reader into a romantic atmosphere of its initial sense while Tom and Jenny confront growing attraction pitted against their deepest desires. Both crave a life of independence. Both are afraid of submission. Both want control. Both very much desire the other.


Both meeting in the middle of separate and very different circumstances while recognizing the counterbalance of what makes them well suited. Alike. "The same rules and expectations that give you strength were a prison to me. They didn't make me feel as if I had power. They robbed me of my power. Perhaps it's so for all women. Our lives are a series of cages: daughter, wife, mother. It isn't a structure designed for being oneself."



Couched in scenes and conversations both vulnerable and introspective and fraught with the tug-and-pull tension of challenged willpower and restraint, Tom and Jenny traverse reconciling their dreams and desires with their ultimately growing attraction and ANGELS HAVE COME TO BLESS US ALL talk about it EVERY LAST STEP OF THE WAY!

They respect each other enough to lay their cards down as equals. As they leave England for Calais, as they train through France and onward to the ocean and a too-tight steam packet that finds them again and again in close quarters exploring the physical tenets of their mutual desire to feel some romance, tenderness, passion even while keeping the other carefully at bay.

Everything in this book is perfectly outlined in a series of moments that are timeless in a reader's pursuit of understanding the multi-faceted layers of our natures. I identified SO deeply with two people who want to step into love and choose it and find companionship while still so deeply clinging to the independence they have earned. The hard fought for and achingly won ability to see the world and find new experiences and mould the world to themselves rather than have them shaped by circumstances forged outside of their control.

I so deeply connected with this book and it reached such a vulnerable place inside me that I felt myself checking if my apartment was bugged and someone had read my late night diaries, had peeked into my brain, had cut open parts of my heart.


And it is so beautifully shaped--- this exploration of love and submission, of the strength and beauty of independent thought and the deep-rooted desire to explore every corner of the earth. So resplendent a story when wielded by a pen that is as comfortable in gas lit London or a lawyer's office or a train carriage or a tea room or the ridge's of India's ills. From Cairo to Devon, the reader feels immediately immersed. This book validated my passion of wanting to travel and experience and snap memories, even as it inspired me to look to where I need to let my guard down. It inspired the strongest parts of my personality and conviction and passion for independence while also reminding me of the grace of human interconnection. It takes a really powerful sense of story, place and resonant theme to spark so many questions while informing so much of what rattles around in your heart and mind as you reconcile your oddities while tugging out your vulnerable, romantic side.

And it is just so expertly written: the dialogue, the glances, the stolen touches. The POV shifts from Tom to Jenny that slice through the chapters are some of the best I have ever encountered because they are so unexpected: often mid-thought, often quick life a knife or slow as a crackling flame. (Flame imagery plays a major motif in the book: matching well the sun-spanned settings Tom and Jenny encounter -- "Along with her glistening auburn hair, it gave her a look of greater than usual vibrancy. Like a candle in full flame")


It's so honest: one moment of tenderness for Tom opening the realization of all he has lost. Trust and passion are earned in slow steps: lemonade shared in a train car, removing the corset under a nightgown in shared occupancy, watching one read a newspaper, learning the little things that define the person you are allowing yourself to fall for on a timer before you rip off their influence and fling yourself into the independence you think you want. A small purchase at an Indian bazaar, a kept promise. A look of jealousy.


I can guarantee that A Modest Independence will make you think and feel and want and sigh. But I can also guarantee it is NOT like the other romance books on your shelf. This is a book to be savoured. This book is so perfectly meted to learning about love, about yourself, about confronting what you want and why and how you might allow yourself a slice---just a slice---of your strong-rooted nature to let someone else in.


Also, OMG TOM FINCHLEY YOU ARE MY HERO! YOU ARE EVERYTHING I WANT! ALL HEROES ARE NOT YOU! YOU ARE MY EVERYTHING!! HE IS JUST JUST JUST.... oh reader friends.... he is just so wonderful.... !!!!!!!!!

note: the book does take us into British Occupied India and exotic locales where racism and prejudice was rampant in the Victorian age. Matthews's research and knowledge of the time period are a necessity here as she very gently and sensitively explores the obvious issues of dark occupation while never once painting caricatures.


My instagram stories have been nothing but quotes since I started reading: here are a few ---

"Because you respected my choice. You were willing to let me go in order to make me happy."
"You make me sound frightfully noble."
"You WERE noble."

***

"It's lately occurred to me that you and I have exhibited an infinite capacity for solving other people's problems. Surely, we can use a fraction of that ingenuity to solve our own. There must be a way we can both have what we want. We've only to set our minds to finding it."


***
OMG SPEAK TO MYSELF and my soul, Tom:
"Do you know I don't even believe it's the desire for independence that drives you. When it all comes down to it, what you are is afraid."


***

I GET YOU, JENNY!!!
"Life was a series of choices--of sacrifices. In order to have Tom, she'd have to give up her freedom. The very independence she'd dreamed of for so many years. It was a price she she wasn't willing to pay. Not for him. Not for anyone"


***
OH MY LORD THIS IS ME:

"No one has ever accused me of being sweet before"
"Perhaps you haven't shown that side of yourself to anyone else the way you have to me?"


***

"Jenny found Tom's talents far more useful than those offered by the white knights and swashbuckling pirates that populated penny novels. dragon slaying and derring-do were all well and good, but in the modern world a lady required a different kind of heroism: which w asn't to say that Tom was incapable of slaying the occasional dragon"
(!!!!!!!!!!!)

***

"Love wouldn't be enough. One couldn't derive happiness entirely from another person, no matter how fond of that other person one might be."

(YES!)


***
"As marriage proposals wen, it was an unmitigated disaster [...]Had it been a legal strategy, Fothergill would have decried it as being impetuous, poorly thought out, and destined for failure"
(HA!)


***
"It was an ordinary sort of dream. So commonplace as to be no dream at all. Even so, the idea of it settled warmly in her stomach and heavily on her heart. It wasn't what she wanted in life, but the temptation of it was powerful. She felt at times it might be worth it to give up her dreams for adventure. That HE might be worth it."

(GAH! JENNY! I GET YOU! )

***

"I know what I want and what I don't want. I suppose I've always known that. As for the rest..."
"What else is there?"
"Only the entire world!"

***

AND ALL IN CAPS FOR THOSE IN THE BACK:

"ONE GROWS TIRED OF WAITING FOR KNIGHTS IN SHINING ARMOUR! SOMETIMES NOTHING WILL DO BUT TO RESCUE ONESELF!"

***


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