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Originally Posted by FizzyWater
Ah. I'll admit, I've assume some of her situations like that are not historically accurate (illegitimate family members accepted into the family, babies/children adopted and given precedence in the inheritance order).
I'll also admit, I've only been reading historical romance with any consistency for maybe the last five or so years (and maybe irregularly five years earlier than that). But it seems to me almost everything I've read is like that. The woman all refuse to marry except for love. They all seem to run their households because of inefficient or absent male relatives. They've all managed to have "some idea about sex" because of exposure to farm animals or randy servants. They're all friends with their servants. And they all seem to decide they're going to remain unmarried, so they might as well experience sex, even though there's no (safe) way to avoid pregnancy.
They definitely don't read like Austen, but I've never read anything - except maybe some of Lynn Connolly's early works - that gave the same feeling to me.
I do notice some things....Amanda Quick is always having her heroines say "Good grief!", for example.
But I'll admit, I assume that the historicals are written the way they are because young woman today don't want to read about powerless woman who marry at 16 to men more than 3x their age.
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None of the historicals I have read had any of that except being friends with their servants. The problems you describe is what is wrong with the stuff being written today. I'll stick with my old school's romance where a young heroine is thrust into situations beyond her control and yet she learns to triumph and conquer her hero and it is done without the need to modernize the heroine.
That's the problem with authors today they all follow that same formula who tried to justify the heroines action for why she is the way she is. Most probably have never even done enough research to realize that it just wouldn't be done in that time period.
I just read two historicals where the author had two unusual heroines and it work. The first heroine was raised in convent and was preparing to become a superior who would handle the same task as a man for estates but she is suddenly given in marriage and she knows no better than to take the reigns and handles things which drives her poor husband crazy because he is very alpha. The second the heroine is a Laird of her clan and given in marriage by the king to a English knight. She is strong woman who must learn to be a wife to a man she hates who goes out of his way to win her love. Both stories work despite the heroines being very strong woman they didn't seem to be out of their time period or modernized in any way.
I try to stay as far away from mistoricals as I can.