The HR Addict

Confession: it’s always harder for me to write about a book I loved than one I felt lukewarm about. And it’s even easier to talk about a novel I truly disliked. But when I love a book as much as I loved this one — the first in Sarah MacLean’s Love by Numbers trilogy — the task becomes daunting. That’s because this novel gives us two characters who tick every box of the “rake meets wallflower” trope, and yet become so much more than stereotypes over the course of their remarkable transformation, which we witness from the front row across the book’s 300-plus pages. They grow, they change, they fall in love right before our eyes. Utterly charming.

Lady Calpurnia Hartwell won my heart instantly, in that moment of fleeing her first ball at eighteen, when everything went wrong, starting with the hideous dress her mother forced her to wear. With her plain brown hair, her plain brown eyes, and her plump, Rubenesque figure, she feels ridiculous and out of place in a world her aristocratic status forces her into, with the sole purpose of finding a husband.

Her honesty, and her ability to see reality without rose-tinted filters — to understand, with such raw clarity, that she is a young woman who doesn’t match society’s expectations — is deeply touching, and that same tender honesty shines through in her first encounter with Gabriel, the Marquess of Ralston, that very night. Perhaps that’s exactly why, despite his reputation as a rake, he shows unexpected gentleness toward this young woman who no longer even dreams of a princess-meets-Prince-Charming story. “Remember, you are an empress,” he tells her, referencing her name that first night. “Act like one, and they’ll have no choice but to see you as one. I already do.”

Gabriel disappears after those words, off to a romantic tryst that Callie partly witnesses from behind the bushes, but that encounter marks her so deeply that, ten years later, he’s still the hero of her romantic (and slightly erotic) dreams, at a point when she has already resigned herself to a life as a spinster.

But we soon realize that Callie’s humor and inner thoughts hide far more than a gray, twenty-eight-year-old spinster. One night, her mind wanders somewhere dangerous and transgressive. The logic is simple: if a life of solitude awaits her, with nothing but her impeccable reputation to her name, why not take a risk and do something… daring? Why not claim privileges usually reserved for men, and enjoy that freedom? Why not free herself, if only for a few hours, from the role of the perfect Lady, left with nothing but her family’s remarks about her struggle to find a husband? Ten years after that encounter with Gabriel, feeling a prisoner of her own pristine reputation, after throwing her spinster’s cap into the fire and watching it burn, Callie decides to draw up a list of nine absolutely scandalous things she wants to do. And guess what? Kissing a man is item number one.

For Callie, the choice of man is obvious. After all, he’s the one who has occupied her fantasies exclusively for a decade. He is her Ulysses, her Mr. Darcy. That night, she gathers her courage and knocks on the tortured rake’s door. From there, the die is cast. He agrees to her request, in exchange for a favor, one that turns into something more than a kiss. And despite that exchange (Callie agrees to introduce Gabriel’s half-sister, Juliana, into society), something else begins pulling Gabriel toward Callie. After all, that first kiss was far more than he expected from a wallflower. And Callie’s honesty is so disarming that it’s no surprise a rake like Gabriel immediately felt tenderness for a woman whose openness caught him so off guard. Desire, surprise, and tenderness, not bad, for a single kiss. And the kiss has been rather extraordinary, he thinks to himself.

Gabriel, Marquess of Ralston, has the name of an archangel — but only on the outside, with his perfect face, the dimple that appears when he smiles, and his piercing blue eyes. A rake — my favorite type of hero. And this one is seductive, sexy, magnetic, and utterly unable to resist being enchanted by the mix of innocence and courage in this woman who wants to be more than what society expects of her, and whose hidden sensuality reveals itself with every new kiss. And there’s no shortage of kisses in this book.

Gabriel may well tell his brother he could never be attracted to someone so plain and missish. She hears those words and believes them. But we know he’s only fighting the inevitable. And what happens afterward reveals just how much he needs certainty that he alone is the object of Callie’s desire. Once again, with total honesty, she admits that yes, it’s him. But not in the way he wants to hear it . “It’s always been you,” she tells him. Then, unknowingly, she twists the knife with a hopeless line: “I only hope it was somebody else.”

She suffers, but so does he, still unable to admit his own feelings. And he wants her as he’s never wanted another woman. Callie, in her blend of innocence and femininity. Callie, in her longing to be more than a plain, boring miss.

This book is so sexy in the simplest of moments. Sexy in something as minimal as Gabriel devoting his entire attention — his entire attention — to Callie’s wrist at that ball. And when they kiss in the carriage. And at his house. And when they go much further, driven by desire, at the fencing club. Not to mention the eroticism of Callie’s first time. And the second, and third (quite the revelation) at her own home. Moments that build and build, through which we witness a woman’s emancipation, claiming the power of her own sensuality, and of pleasure both given and received.

The first time. What an honest way for Callie to embrace what she feels and give herself completely, expecting nothing in return. Fully aware of how rash it is, but also fully conscious that she wants to seize a moment that will never come again. It’s the kind of scene that touches anyone’s heart, how could it not touch Gabriel’s? The scene where she loses her virginity. The way she gives herself to him, and the way he can’t overcome all the resistance he feels.

Is Callie human, unique, and special? Absolutely. So when, after that moment, Ralston — as men so often do — puts his foot in his mouth, apologizes for that singular, most special moment of Callie’s life (and his), and declares that of course they must now marry, what does she do? She doesn’t run into his arms, grateful, taking it as the ultimate proof of love. Honest, sweet Callie simply gets furious, because he nearly managed to ruin that moment with a fit of misplaced chivalry — and to calm herself, she starts pulling books off the shelves of the home library. There’s no way not to love this woman. Nor Ralston, lost in the foolishness of a man in love for the first time, but raised in a society that never taught men how to handle their own feelings.

The only problem is that Callie wants love. And Gabriel, like any rake worthy of the name, is convinced that’s the one thing he cannot give her. His only image of that feeling is his father, humiliating himself before a woman who eventually left him — and their two children — without a backward glance. Callie deserves better. Until an unexpected chain of events, in which she ends the engagement, even while loving him, because she knows she deserves more and he discovers he has fallen hopelessly in love, and that he’ll do anything to win back the woman of his life.

In the end, this book is about Callie’s journey of self-discovery, but not only hers. Because in helping her live through it, Gabriel too gets caught in the web he created, and he too transforms into another man. One worthy of the woman he loves.

One last note: this must be one of those books where the leads kiss the most, and where every kiss feels different as they grow closer to one another. In the exhibition scene, the kiss is the revelation that this new Callie — supportive, determined, and brave — is leaving Gabriel undone. “As if they were both discovering something new.” And they are. Both of them. She, a woman who deserves to be loved. He, that love exists, and that it’s a gift, not a weakness. As for me, the ending left me already missing this couple.