Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Just Imagine

Two hard-headed, passionate people . . . Two stubborn opponents with tender souls . . . Sometimes wars of the heart can only be won through the sweetest of surrenders.
The War Between the States may be over for the rest of the country, but not for Kit Weston. Disguised as a boy, she's come to New York City to kill Baron Cain, the man who stands between her and Risen Glory, the South Carolina home she loves. But unknown to Kit, the Yankee war hero is more than her bitterest enemy—he's also her guardian. And he'll be a lot harder to kill than she's figured on . . .
Believing that Kit's a boy, Cain offers the grubby rapscallion a job in his stable. But he has no idea what he's in for, and it's not long before the hero of Missionary Ridge discovers the truth. His scamp of a stable boy is a strong-willed, violet-eyed beauty who's hell-bent on driving him crazy.

Comment: I've had this book in the TBR list for several years. For a while, after "discovering" the author, I've dedicated myself to her contemporary books, of which I've the majority. Since I've managed to read all the titles I had planned for March and there were still some days left, I went on o pick random books and this was the first.

In this historical romance novel, southerner Kit Weston disguises herself as a boy to search for Yankee Baron Cain, the man who has taken over her old home and plantation, Risen Glory. Things don't go as planned, though, and it turns out that Cain is the son of Kit's stepmother, and he is now the heir of Risen Glory and her guardian, but instead of punishing her, he decides to send her to a finishing school. Later, when they meet again, they seem different to one another and sparks fly between them but will they be ready to let go of past prejudices and life lessons to embrace a happy ending?

This book was originally published in 1984 (I was not even born yet - but not my much) and now that I've read it, after also reading many other historical romances from the same period of publishing and, mostly, more recent ones, I can certainly understand why this merited awards back then but also why it didn't seduce me as much as it would have if I had it read before other similar titles.

The plot is very simple and centered on a mix of enemies to lovers and opposites attract tropes, which tend to me my favorites in general. Still, I wasn't as impressed by this story as I was by others in the genre, written around the same time, nor as I was by other books by this author which "worked out" better for my personal taste. I've felt this story has very cardboard characters, not as developed as others the author has written since, and the situations depicted felt superficial and as if they were check lists the author had to use for this type of story (such as the stereotypes often seen in historical characters set after the civil war between North and South).

This said, I can also understand why it was a success when it was released and why many readers cherish it. I just think other books with these tropes and situations were done better. Had I read it before some of those other books, I might have liked it better but now I did read books with better development, this one feels inferior. Unlike other books by the author, the evolution of the main characters feels very static and without enough inner musing, as I've seen in some of her most popular contemporaries I've read. Kit and Cain here are realistic enough for their life paths and vibrant to be charismatic but their relationship was not that deeply developed.

Kit is a young woman from the South and she wants to get back her inheritance, nor to keep up with Southern practices - such as slavery - but because of what it means to her memory and that of her father, whom she still idolizes. Of course, she will learn he wasn't as perfect as he seemed and she needs to grow up and understand life wasn't as easy as her loose childhood and self taught education made her believe.

As for Cain, he is a pragmatic person, who fought for the North for principles but also because he had been abandoned by his parents (each in a different way) and he convinced himself it's best to not be attached to anyone, so after the war and he started winning money in gambling.

The relationship between these two starts off as if they are enemies, then goes on to be a reluctant partnership and later on they become lovers. Always with opposite personalities and ways of seeing life. This should have been great, a strategic way for them to fall in love and to complement each other, but I wasn't convinced by the evolution of things. To me, Kit always read as being somewhat juvenile and naive and Cain remained aloof and a matter-of-fact type. They only seemed to change right at the end, and it wasn't truly believable. This does fit with the usual pattern of these stories from the 80s and early 90s I remember reading, but the author could have done better, I'm sure.

The writing does seem to be very much in par with the style at the time, even the presentation of other situations and more serious discussions felt more like it was information to justify something, rather than a real intention in letting readers be aware of the characters's minds. Things were presented in the correct way for us to sympathize with the key characters.

I should add that, as it is the author's trademark, there's a secondary romance ongoing, between Magnus (the Black stable master if I understood correctly) and Sophronia (the Black nanny who grew up with Kit during the plantation years before the war). I won't spoiler it but to me, this romance deserved and demanded more attention and development... in my opinion, most subjects they addressed were too serious or too dramatic to be seen as secondary.

All in all, this was fine and readable, quite the throwback to the 80s I'd say, but I wasn't completely taken by it and I can even calculate that if the author were to choose to write this novel today, from scratch, she would prefer to write it differently. But, well, that would happen to most writers, perhaps... thus, I'll say I'm simply glad I've read it, at last.

Grade: 7/10