The Midnight Bargain Review

In this African-inspired regency romance, magic is a powerful if rare commodity that men get to practice and hone while women blessed with it are forced to wear a "marital collar", a device that keeps them from accessing their powers throughout most of their lives. About to start her first Bargaining Season, Beatrice Clayborn has one last chance to convince her father to allow her to avoid an arranged marriage and a life of misery, but for that, she has to perform magic more powerful than she has ever attempted, with dire consequences.

General Impressions

The easiest way of describing this book is picturing Bridgerton/Pride and Prejudice with magic: we have the regency/Jane Austen inspired courting culture, a racially diverse world where there is no racism and an African inspired magic system written by a black woman, all wrapped up in a beautiful cover. Orbit doesn't kid around, is what I'm saying.

This was obviously a book where the author put a lot of thought and effort into the world-building and fleshing out her characters and that was felt viscerally while reading it. I found myself worrying about these characters, which is hard to accomplish in YA, where happy endings are very much guaranteed.

Beatrice, our heroine, is a powerful sorceress that continued to practice magic in secret after puberty, despite the societal pressure to stop it. With her family facing economical ruin, thanks to her father's idiocy, she sees her hopes of a mildly satisfying existence as his advisor dashed by his need to marry her off to the highest bidder and save the family's legacy and reputation. Beatrice is forced to choose between her freedom by destroying her family's reputation and business, or condemn herself to half a life, barred from her magic and subject to her husband's every whim and cruelty, just like her mother and every other woman she knows.

While Chasland is perhaps the worst place to be a woman, no place is completely equalitarian. Even women from more liberal and educated countries like Ysbeta Lavan, where women have a lot more rights and are free to decide over many aspects of their lives including the number of children, having professions and a life apart from their husbands should they want to, have to be collared while they are pregnant to protect their unborn children from being possessed by the same spirits that allow them to practice magic. That common desire to avoid marriage unites Ysbeta and Beatrice, in a distrustful partnership that grows into friendship.

C. L. Polk was able not only to create a colourful and recognizable world with all its dresses, balls, and magic but she truly shined in the way she described every aspect of a woman's life in Chasland. Adding to the magic loss, they had no way of gaining an education, owning property or anything of their own, work or gain/keep their own money, no control over their bodies or reproductive rights, and were in every away kept from being able to live outside of the influence of a man while they were able to have children that they had no legal right to, and even after they became barren still had husbands and relatives to answer to.

Cast

My favourite thing about this book was that every character* had wants and needs of their own and weren't there simply to serve the main character's romantic arc. There were choices to be made and consequences to their decisions or lack of.

*This being regency inspired, focused mostly on the rich and noble-born. The few servants that had speaking lines, seemed to have no other desires than to serve their employees, which was a shame.

In that kind of environment with your whole life depending on a couple of weeks luncheons and dances, where you had to be at your very best while competing with every girl your age, it was no wonder that sisterhood was a rare commodity but I still wished the other debutants had been written as fully formed people instead of just warm bodies in a room when most of the male characters were afforded more courtesy while mattering just as much to the overall plot.

While the author did create a secret society of educated women who tried to teach girls magic through secret puzzles passed on from mother to daughter, they appeared twice and were an utter disappointment, which was a pity for such a great concept. I would have rather had a few more interesting women than depending on the kindness and understanding of men to advance the plot.

While I wish the concept of sisterhood had been taken further than it went I cannot fault the two actual sisters we do meet: Beatrice and her younger sister Harriet are as different as they could be. While Beatrice was blessed with innate magical talent and power and wishes to pursue a path that was forbidden to her, Harriet looked forward to the future she was destined for: a rich husband, running her own great house and raising her children.

Beatrice's rebellion would destroy all of that so for most of the book they are enemies. That does not mean that Harriet's choice to follow the path she was raised to want was wrong or made her a weak character. She was smart, precocious, and knew how to play the game, something that no one else around her knew to do and that served her very well.

Beatrice is stuck between a rock and a hard place throughout the book and I understood each and every one of the decisions she made and the pain that came with them. I only resented the way all that tension was invalidated when she apologizes for not immediately choosing love and foregoing herself (which was exactly her mother's mistake as she councils Beatrice that love doesn't last without respect). She is unfairly painted as cold and cruel towards Ianthe when he would sacrifice nothing either way but she would lose a lot, no matter what choice she made. She had good reasons to make her choices, none of which she made lightly, and I wish that had been acknowledged and respected till the end.

Ysbeta's Lavan fight for the right to own propriety by herself, a right that in her own country she was afforded and that in Chasland would become her husband's, was only understood by Beatrice while her brother and the man who was in love with her, two of the most liberal and educated man in the entire book simply ignored it or considered it childish stubbornness on her part. Men had no interest in changing something that allowed them to pursue power while the cost was fully supported by women's bodies and lives, and that included even the heroes.

The character who was done the dirtiest though was definitely the Clayborn matriarch, someone stuck in an abusive marriage with an asshole, was still able to save the day and was never mentioned again, and for all we know is still married to him. SHE DESERVED BETTER!

Conclusions

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and took it as a metaphor for the way child-rearing is still very much something women are expected to do without a complaint while men get to advance their careers because they don't actually have to sacrifice time being fathers.

The ending was a bit too Disney for me: Beatrice's father deserved hell, instead of being half forgiven and getting everything he wanted and didn't deserve. I did love the epilogue though, mostly seeing Ianthe being a wonderful father and husband and Beatrice's confidence and power after being free to pursue her passions and getting everything she ever dreamed of. I definitely need another book. I need to see Harriet in and after university, getting the education she never knew she was allowed to dream of, and become the damn president of the entire country. I want to see Ysbeta going on adventures in her boat and having the time of her life. And I most ardently want to see Beatrice's and Harriet's mum getting a divorce, telling her ex-husband to die and go live her hot girl summer after twenty years of being treated as a birthing cow by a below mediocre man. It's what she deserves.

Thank you to Orbit Books Uk for sending me this amazing book. Can you tell I'm passionate about it?

Rating: 4.4/5