Rushing to finish my reading challenges by the end of the year means more weekend book reviews! Oh boy. After several attempts at fulfilling the category for a Civil War or Reconstruction romance for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' challenge, I stumbled upon An Extraordinary Union, which had high reviews, the right setting, and an interracial romance. I don't end up reading a lot of interracial romances because I heavily favor historical romances, primarily Regency-era ones set in London society, which was not exactly brimming with interracial couples, but I'm not at all opposed to them as a concept, so this was a pleasant discovery. (I do have to read an interracial romance for another category and have a different book picked out for it; I just had too much trouble finding a good Civil War romance to slot this one into another category.)The story here follows Elle(n) Burns, a free woman of color who was born a slave before being freed with her family as a child. Now, Elle has returned to the South to spy for the Loyalty League, a group of blacks working for the North, the Union, and Lincoln. Her disguise necessitates her posing as a mute slavery and subjecting her to humiliations that she'd thought she'd escaped. It also puts her in the path of Malcolm McCall, a Pinkerton detective who is also spying on the South, though he has the privilege of being a man and white and so gets to pose as a soldier instead of a slave. Upon their first encounter, Elle and Malcolm are both attracted to each other--at least after they establish that Malcolm hasn't shown up to rape Elle. But despite their attraction, Elle is leery of Malcolm for very good reasons. You know, like the fact that she's black and he's white and there can never be an equal power dynamic between them, society will never accept them, and she's not really sure if he really likes her or if he just wants a taste of something taboo. So there are a few obstacles in the way of their romance.
Cole does such a great job bringing Elle and Malcolm together. There's a keen awareness of unequal power dynamics in the very nature of their relationship and Cole (and Malcolm, by extension) does everything possible to even the playing field, making sure that Elle's consent is highly visible at every step of the way and that Malcolm backs off every time she seems like she's about to say no. After he saves her twice, she makes a request that she save him the next time--and then she does, in spectacular fashion. And of course, Elle is the one who puts together the pieces to figure out what is going on with a ship that could threaten the the outcome of the blockade and the war itself. Elle is a strong, remarkable woman even when she's being humiliated and put down, in direct contrast to her "mistress" who is a downright bitch and petty and vindictive even when she already has everything she could ever want.
The writing here is excellent, the pacing is on-spot, and the chemistry between Elle and Malcolm absolutely sizzles. However, I do have two issues. My first complaint is that not a lot is done to show Elle and Malcolm's backgrounds; a few things are stated, like the reason for Malcolm's family's immigration to the United States and how Elle came to be free and lost her best friend and former lover, but there's not a lot of insight into how that made them the people that they are. And second, while I think the individual plots of the spy mission and romance are done well, they're not necessarily woven together well. I liked how Elle and Malcolm teamed up to pool information and find out about the ship, but the spying aspects and romance aspects seemed to seesaw from one extreme to the other without much in-between. Still, this was highly enjoyable and I'm definitely interested in reading more books in this series and by this author.
4 stars out of 5.
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