Shawna Z's Reviews > The Naturalist Society

** spoiler alert ** I’m a bit at a loss to say what I liked/didn’t like here. Long story short- 1880s USA society gal thinks she has it all in Harry and his selfish marriage proposal. Golden boy turns out to be all tarnished tinsel and no crown, girl struggles, meets his friends who at first want to use her as well and then they come to appreciate her for her mind and the.book turns into sexy three ways?

What did I step into?

The reality is this girl-comes-into-her-own story is a big old mess and falls on the oldest of tropes- she chucks off her innocence and gets her power from sexual exploration (I’d say more manipulation, but that’s me).

So here’s the long rather than the short-
I liked the original premise, and totally bought it for what it was as we learn more about who Harry really is after the wedding.

I liked the idea of a woman studying on her own, being a self-taught naturalist with a love for birds and how back then there was thought to be no such thing as women of science and study. The addition of some such explorers capturing essences of the creatures they study to perform various feats of alchemy was well done.

The “fake history” of making real-life personages as Audubon, George Washington and members of Napoleon’s armies as capable of wielding this magic was richly detailed, but eventually I found myself wanting to skim those segments to get back to the real story.

Beth was a beautifully written character up until midpoint where she chucks her morals and starts thinking with her vagina after such a short and unfulfilling marriage to a man who married her only for her mind and took his sexual needs from any pretty boy he came across.

Saddling Beth with a (supposedly) charismatic (we never see it) incompetent idiot for the first few pages of the book is a big joke- Harry is literally an iceberg here in that only the tiniest fraction of his life is on the surface while the majority of that frozen block is after his death. He’s certainly a massive flaw given that his actions are supposed to be what the rest of the story is hinged upon? How can we take it on account his supposedly larger-than-life persona and using Beth for his own ego when he’s just a pawn everyone uses to try and control Beth after his egotistical death?

I quickly lost respect for Bran and Alton as a couple as soon as Bran strays into Beth’s knickers and manages to nail himself the best of both worlds where his lover says ah what the hell and they all get kinky.

The story does a poor job of showing Beth striving for her independence and flaunting societal roles, and then has her essentially taking the easy route of “If I can’t continue writing serious essays for scientific purposes as before, under her deceased husband’s name, or (heaven forbid) under her own name”, she starts writing fluff pieces in ladies’ magazines?

What happened to that “I am a woman of science no doubt about it” stance that she insisted on for the first half of the book?

Sadly, what started as a great idea just sunk under its own weight once the author decided that she was going to force these relationships together no matter what. The ends Beth then goes to in order to claim life by her own rules is ridiculously cheap, all this time having Bran and Anton as determined explorers who have conquered the frozen north and now determined to take on Antarctica even if that means these inseparable men and forced to chose between letting only one of them go when one becomes ill and the other sails off on his own so the other can play house with the Beth who is now pregnant with one of their babies? And somehow 18 months later he sails back triumphant for this odd family somehow going to find a place where a woman and two men can raise an impressionable toddler out and no one blinks an eye at the odd sleeping arrangements? Funny, did society somehow completely change moral compasses in that tiny space of time, because less than two years earlier such behavior got her tossed into a mental asylum,

What? Really?

Too many minor characters who are just one-dimensional stereotypes used just to force the plot in the direction the author wants. And by this point what’s really the point of all that “magic” because it’s just tossed around as another means of controlling the plot than feeling firmly as an established variation of this alternate reality.

By the end I really just wanted it to be over so I could move on, and I found myself growing more frustrated as the heroes fail to stay true to themselves and our aforementioned antagonist does a lousy job as the dastardly villain twirling his mustaches after tying the heroine to the railroad tracks in order to bypass hard work and trying to steal the damsel-in-distress’ brilliant deductions? And her family willingly listens to this stranger over the word of their daughter/sister/what-have-you?

Nope. Points for an original idea, but it’s not enough framework to take the weight of this mess.