As You Desire His­tor­i­cal romances aren’t what they used to be. Just read this dis­cus­sion here where the debate con­tin­ues on the con­tin­ued decline of the his­tor­i­cal romance novel. How­ever, Con­nie Brockway’s As You Desire has a won­der­ful hero and if your look­ing for a dif­fer­ent set­ting, how does Egypt sound to you?

As You Desire is set in Egypt. It is one of the rea­sons why I never fin­ished read­ing it when it first came out. I thought it had zero inter­est as far as loca­tion was con­cerned. After so many years later and much dis­cus­sion on com­mu­nity boards about this book, I thought I’d give this novel another chance. Read­ing it the sec­ond time was some­what of a strug­gle. I felt Brockway’s exe­cu­tion of the plot was a bit choppy. The book gets a rec­om­men­da­tion for the hero alone — Harry Brax­ton. Harry’s unre­quited love for Des­de­mona or “Dizzy” as he affec­tion­ately calls her is the main rea­son why I enjoyed this book.

Harry’s been in love with Dizzy for years but he has a secret that he fears will make her turn away from him in dis­gust. So he pretty much rec­on­ciles him­self to just being her friend and being her pro­tec­tor. Often Dizzy gets into scrapes that Harry almost always gets her out of and this pretty much keeps him close to her. Harry’s exile from Eng­land allows him to pros­per in Egypt. Where in Eng­land oppor­tu­ni­ties were closed to him, it is Egypt that allows him to fully thrive and prosper.

As a for­mer child prodigy, Des­de­mona is able to read twelve dif­fer­ent lan­guages but she can’t speak them . Her par­ents took advan­tage of this, rob­bing her of her child­hood and show­ing her off to other schol­ars from all over the world. After her parent’s deaths, she is shipped to her grand­fa­ther in Egypt and it is here that she is allowed to be free and live a some­what nor­mal life. Often she day­dreams of a bet­ter life and a hero to sweep her off her feet.

Enter Harry’s Eng­lish cousin who is hand­some and wealthy. He offers her the oppor­tu­nity to return to Eng­land and live hap­pily ever after. How­ever, Harry is who she dreams about the most, but he broke her heart once for which she never really recov­ers. The two pro­tag­o­nists deal with sev­eral dif­fer­ent con­trivances: the big bad secret, secret ene­mies and the slight mis­un­der­stand­ings. Char­ac­ter devel­op­ment could have been more solid. Dia­logue was good, but the writ­ing itself was a bit choppy to me. The writ­ing just didn’t flow right in this book.

Harry and Desdemona’s char­ac­ters were still some­what one dimen­sional to me. We learn just enough about them to explain their moti­va­tions and actions in the story. We know that Harry wants Dizzy and that he has this big secret to tell her. I thought being miles away from Eng­land would have been incen­tive enough to tell her but I guess it wasn’t.

For me, the secret he had to tell her, should have been told to her much sooner because she didn’t grow up in his world so she wouldn’t have judged him as harshly as his aris­to­cratic fam­ily. But that’s my opin­ion. I just didn’t buy the need for secrecy. The impe­tus in him telling her at last, was the threat his cousin rep­re­sented to Dizzy in mak­ing her roman­tic day­dreams come true. Thus he was forced to tell her to keep her rather than tell her of his own free will because he loved her.

In the end, As You Desire turned out to be a good book. I just don’t see what every­body loved about it unless what they loved was Harry because he was the only ele­ment in the book that made it a joy to read. The way he would drop what­ever it was he was doing to go res­cue Dizzy again or how hurt he would feel when she would think the worst of him made him such an adorable hero. One of the best heroes I’d read in a long time. If you enjoy a dif­fer­ent set­ting, a beta hero and unre­quited love, then this book is for you. I liked As You Desire. I just didn’t love it. My favorite Brock­way is My Dear­est Enemy and All Through the Night.

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