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A review by georgiatwiss
To Love and to Loathe by Martha Waters
5.0
Thank you to NetGalley and Atria for providing an advanced reader copy, all opinions that follow are my own...
I liked Martha Waters’ debut To Have and To Hoax, but I truly loved To Love and To Loathe.
The scene is set with a wager cast between long-time acquaintances and frenemies Lady Diana Templeton and Jeremy Overington, Marquess of Willingham, that he will be married within a year. Soon after, upon receiving a less than stellar performance review from one of his ex-paramours, Jeremy seeks Diana out in order to persuade her to engage in a liaison at his upcoming house party. In doing so, he hopes to receive honest feedback regarding his skills in the bedroom from a woman he trusts not to hold anything back. Diana takes him up on the offer and they enter a mutual agreement— she will give him the truth and he, in turn, will signal to the rest of society her intention to take future lovers and also allow her the chance to further her side of their wager. What follows is a witty, thoughtful, subversive and sex-positive, enemies with benefits/enemies to lovers, story that does not shy away from deeper topics like heteronormativity, misogyny, the constraints of marriage and patriarchy, female pleasure, male privilege etc. that are most often completely invisible within traditional historical romances.
While the characters were intriguing, and the chemistry between Diana and Jeremy was perfectly evident in their bantering, I was most excited to see the sex-positivity infused within their intimate interactions. As most know, the norm when reading a historical romance, or really any romance in general, is that from even the very first time the foreplay and sex are always stellar—the heroine always comes multiple times and during the act of penetration comes first or at the same time as the hero. And while that is part of the romance fantasy, it’s really refreshing to see an author give space for characters to actually have discussions about their sexual intimacy that reflect the reality of the often awkward and extremely vulnerable moments of learning how to communicate with your partner about what each of you needs. Most romances treat men as being naturally and inherently good at sex (hello toxic masculinity!), so having Jeremy be not the best all the time (I laughed very hard and also cringed in solidarity at the fingering scene, bc those of us with that piece of anatomy….Diana we feel you girl) and also open to listening to what Diana is telling him is really important and I loved reading it!!! Give me more sex-positive historical romance please for the love of god.
To sum it all up, this was a really great piece of writing that shows the capacity of historical romance to not only serve as a lovely escapist fantasy, but also as a means of interrogating/critiquing deeper topics surrounding marriage, sex, intimacy, and societal/patriarchal norms. Thank you to Martha Waters for writing it, I look forward to what I can only assume will be the Emily & Julian story (or West and Sophie?) next !!
I liked Martha Waters’ debut To Have and To Hoax, but I truly loved To Love and To Loathe.
The scene is set with a wager cast between long-time acquaintances and frenemies Lady Diana Templeton and Jeremy Overington, Marquess of Willingham, that he will be married within a year. Soon after, upon receiving a less than stellar performance review from one of his ex-paramours, Jeremy seeks Diana out in order to persuade her to engage in a liaison at his upcoming house party. In doing so, he hopes to receive honest feedback regarding his skills in the bedroom from a woman he trusts not to hold anything back. Diana takes him up on the offer and they enter a mutual agreement— she will give him the truth and he, in turn, will signal to the rest of society her intention to take future lovers and also allow her the chance to further her side of their wager. What follows is a witty, thoughtful, subversive and sex-positive, enemies with benefits/enemies to lovers, story that does not shy away from deeper topics like heteronormativity, misogyny, the constraints of marriage and patriarchy, female pleasure, male privilege etc. that are most often completely invisible within traditional historical romances.
While the characters were intriguing, and the chemistry between Diana and Jeremy was perfectly evident in their bantering, I was most excited to see the sex-positivity infused within their intimate interactions. As most know, the norm when reading a historical romance, or really any romance in general, is that from even the very first time the foreplay and sex are always stellar—the heroine always comes multiple times and during the act of penetration comes first or at the same time as the hero. And while that is part of the romance fantasy, it’s really refreshing to see an author give space for characters to actually have discussions about their sexual intimacy that reflect the reality of the often awkward and extremely vulnerable moments of learning how to communicate with your partner about what each of you needs. Most romances treat men as being naturally and inherently good at sex (hello toxic masculinity!), so having Jeremy be not the best all the time (I laughed very hard and also cringed in solidarity at the fingering scene, bc those of us with that piece of anatomy….Diana we feel you girl) and also open to listening to what Diana is telling him is really important and I loved reading it!!! Give me more sex-positive historical romance please for the love of god.
To sum it all up, this was a really great piece of writing that shows the capacity of historical romance to not only serve as a lovely escapist fantasy, but also as a means of interrogating/critiquing deeper topics surrounding marriage, sex, intimacy, and societal/patriarchal norms. Thank you to Martha Waters for writing it, I look forward to what I can only assume will be the Emily & Julian story (or West and Sophie?) next !!