The Rainbow Season by Lisa Gregory
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
3.7 stars
*This is a TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion.
"That Turner boy is back."
I originally had a different book picked out for this month's theme, Lies, but it was a HarperCollins and I'm not reading or reviewing any from that publisher until they agree to a deal that pays their employees a fair living wage. On short notice, I decided to go with The Rainbow Season, one that I have seen so many talk about. It's romance, it has to have a lie in there somewhere right? Well, I'm going to say this fits the theme of Lies because our main male character, Luke Turner, was accused and found guilty of rape when he was eighteen years old but he was innocent. Not a particular lie that feels great to read about right now and especially in the way the woman who accused him of the rape is talked about, she's apparently “loose” with her morals and known to sleep with a bunch of men, so the thought is, “Why would Luke have to rape her?”. I cringed every time that character and prevailing thought was mentioned but the author used Luke's jail time and false accusation more to bring in the discussion that because Luke was from the other side of the tracks, poor and having an alcoholic father, he must be guilty. Blood tells, right? Luke's whole struggle was internalizing that hate and disgust from the townspeople but trying to show he didn't care, while obviously feeling so, and eventually gaining strength from the trust and love he got from Sarah and her family.
"People always expected him to be bad, just because he was Turner's boy,"
The book starts with Luke getting out of jail, he was eighteen when he was found guilty and now twenty-three. The town gossip rushes to tell Sarah and her older sister Jennifer. This is where the author really pushes how Sarah pales in comparison in the looks department to her older sister and we learn that at sixteen, Sarah fell in love with Jennifer's eventual husband Stu. It's pretty obvious Sarah's love is more school girl crush, hero worship because Jennifer has a family, love and care, that Sarah wants and she sees Stu as the giver of that. At twenty-five Sarah feels like she's already an old maid and even though one of Stu's friends is trying to court her, she doesn't really like him. Sarah lives at home with her parents and it's a situation of idolizing Stu and Jennifer in school girl way and because of that focus on Stu, not being able to open her eyes to any other man.
Sarah felt a sort of kinship to outlaw types like Digger Turner. There were times when she, too, felt excluded and looked down upon, overshadowed as she had always been by her sister.
Luke goes around town trying to find a farm to hire out to and Sarah's father ends up being the only one to hire him. I loved Henry, the father. He has this little speech: How do you think you would have done, Stu, if you had grown up in a tarpaper shack instead of that nice house your parents own? Or if you had had a drunken loafer for a father instead of a respected citizen and store owner?"
Stu, of course, still can't look past his own prejudices, along with a lot of the town and some from Sarah's mom and sister, which leaves Henry and Sarah being the ones left to try and warm up to Luke. I loved how the author showed why Sarah might be open to Luke right away. Sarah feeling like she doesn't match up to her sister in the looks department but also giving us a look into Sarah's inner thoughts of how she's got a “dark side” to her thoughts and emotions. The dark side is mostly Sarah having sexual desire or the wicked thoughts of coveting her sister's husband, again, mostly the ideal of Jennifer's situation. Oh the wonders of sex ed and informing girls/women of their own bodies and not repressing or shaming; this is mostly Sarah's issues. It works to draw her and open her up to Luke.
It was just that sometimes he had to hit something or he would go crazy.
When Henry hires Luke on at the farm, we get a better look at him. How his pride has him trying to work twice as hard to prove he's not one of those “lazy good for nothing Turners” but this pride also works against him as the insults rile him up and the anger has him also wanting to show them all that they're right. Luke has a temper that has him either running away when he gets steamed or getting into fights. His young age and background of growing up with abuse give layers to his emotional immaturity and as he gets shown trust and love from Sarah and her family, you can see him grow from the experiences. He does have some volatility to his personality that caused a good amount of melodrama, especially in the latter second half. But what comes through the most, was his sweetness. He's that lost little hurt boy that is just begging for love and affection. Probably a thesis is required on how he fits the “But I can change him!”, the most important thing is that he never abuses Sarah in any physical or emotional way. His mess ups are running when his own insecurities take over his reason. His fighting men, is his release for all the emotional turmoil inside.
The dangerous Luke Turner, indeed— blushing and scrabbling for his shirt because a lady had seen him barechested.
Eventually, Luke breaks his foot and he's forced to stay in a room above the barn, making him stay in Sarah's orbit so they can get to know each other more. Sarah being older, by two years, and being the one coming from the loving family gave her the advantage with Luke, which I think was important since he has that rape accusation, even though the reader knows it is false. She's the one who has the edge and most of the control and Luke is almost scared of her because he doesn't want to lose how she looks at him, like a normal human being worthy of respect. He's of course physically attracted to her but places her respect above that. Lead by Henry and Sarah, her parents eventually grow to trust Luke enough that when they leave for a two day trip, they leave Luke to watch over Sarah alone. And as parents are wont to do in romances, they end up dying to help along our main couple's relationship. In a scene that was pretty emotionally powerful: Something broke in him at the wild, desperate look in her eyes, and he squatted beside her, taking her face between his hands. "I'll find her, Sarah. All right? Don't fret, I'll get her out."
It's pouring rain and Sarah's looking at the body of her father who drowned and people are saying it's too dangerous to find her mother's body but all Luke sees is no one comforting Sarah and how numb and lost she is and knowing how important it is to her that her mother's body is recovered. Luke slings a rope around his waist to dive repeatedly in the river, almost dying to recover her mother. It was a storm pounding rush feeling but the emotion underneath throbbed, I teared up.
He looked at her; for an instant Sarah saw the sparkle of a tear in his eye and she hurt for all his hard, lonely past.
With her parents gone, everyone around Sarah is saying she's going to have to sell the farm and live with Jennifer and Stu. Sarah hates this idea because she loves the farm and also thinks of how hard it would be to live with a man she covets. Sarah gets a little tipsy with Luke to drown some of her sorrow and they come up with the idea to marry. At 50% we get our marriage of convenience. Of course, everyone is up in arms over her wanting to marry Luke, which fires up her stubbornness and makes her want to do it even more. She ends up telling Luke her feelings for Stu and this crushes him a bit but he still agrees to marry her because while he has the beginnings of feelings for her, he's telling himself it's to protect her and he'll have a farm. These silly kids go for awhile liking their friendship marriage but slowly the sexual tension is getting too thick to breathe in.
She laughed, and he, after adjusting his gloves and wiping the sweat from his forehead, went back to cutting wood. Sarah sat down beneath the elm and leaned against the trunk, content to sit and watch the beautiful symmetry of his movement as he arched back and up, then flung his axe down to bite into the log. He split each piece neatly, then tossed it on the pile and set another in its place to be split. His motions were precise, economical, and steady. There were doubtless many things she ought to be doing, but Sarah decided not to think about them. She preferred to sit here lazily and dream and watch Luke work.
Honestly, everyone should just chop wood in front of whoever they want to attract, works every time. This middle second half got a little slow for me with some melodrama vibes but there were some good scenes in there with Sarah forcing Luke to introduce her to his family and new neighbors moving in to force a one bed situation. When Luke gets tipsy from a party at the neighbors, it makes all his pent up desire spill over and we get their first sex scene. Sarah's into it but battles those feelings of shame and fear because of her society's teachings and ignorance. Luke's too tipsy to go slow for Sarah to work through what she's feeling and the beginning has some uncomfortable vibes but Sarah physically likes the sensations, if not mentally and emotionally allowing herself too. Towards the end, she starts to get into it but then it's all over. The next morning has Sarah remembering the night in a positive light, which I'm not sure felt right but she's too embarrassed to face Luke and goes to the kitchen. Luke of course wakes up and starts the self-loathing and interrupts Sarah's feelings of embarrassment as fear for what he did and does his best to not be in her presence for days, the whole running from his emotions and situations thing. Sarah thinks Luke is disgusted with himself and her feelings of always paling in comparison to her sister has her interpreting his feelings as not being attracted to her.
To none of them could he confide his innermost dreams and fears and emotions, and so with them he always felt a certain separateness, aloneness.
Since Sarah is the one the author wisely gave control to, she's the one to try and break the disconnect and begins teasing Luke, trying to get him to touch her the way he did that night. The ending has them reconnecting, disconnecting as Sarah's confession of loving Stu misinterprets a moment for Luke, and finally through a drought reconnecting to their happily ever after. This was a very good story about impetuous young love, the newness of certain feelings having to be worked through because of immaturity and Luke not having a foundation and experience of love. What stuck out the most to me was how sweet, earnest, and gentle the tone of the story was, especially Luke's character. For me, a romance mostly shines by how much I believe in the leads' love, do they fit together, what draws and keeps them together, and their chemistry. Sarah and Luke had me tearing up and smiling, I felt and believed in their emotions. The sequel looks to be about Luke's sister Julia, we never meet this character but hear about she was forced into marriage to escape having a baby out of wedlock, and I'm definitely going to pick up that one after how good this one was.
