A Kiss for Midwinter by Courtney Milan

A Kiss for Midwinter by Courtney Milan

A novella in The Brothers Sinister series

Published December 16, 2012

“I see what you’re about, Grantham. You think to teach me a lesson. You want to show me that the world is more frightening—and more dark—than I believe.” 
“Maybe I’m simply looking for an excuse to spend time in your company.” Maybe he wanted her to see him outside the social settings where he performed so poorly. He wanted a chance for her to see him, a chance to break through the impossible wall of her dislike. “Maybe,” he said, “I’m thinking that the days are dark and long, that midwinter is approaching. Maybe, Miss Charingford, all I really want is a kiss.”

Grade: A

Official Summary from Author’s Site:

Miss Lydia Charingford is always cheerful, and never more so than at Christmas time. But no matter how hard she smiles, she can’t forget the youthful mistake that could have ruined her reputation. Even though the worst of her indiscretion was kept secret, one other person knows the truth of those dark days: the sarcastic Doctor Jonas Grantham. She wants nothing to do with him…or the butterflies that take flight in her stomach every time he looks he way.

Jonas Grantham has a secret, too: He’s been in love with Lydia for more than a year. This winter, he’s determined to conquer her dislike and win her for his own. It all starts with a wager and a kiss…

I Say:

I love overly logical characters, especially because I tend toward being one myself. Jonas Grantham, doctor and pragmatist, is no exception; at one point, the narrator says of him, “The labyrinthine rules attached to kind words usually left him bemused,” and I thought, “YES EXACTLY” before realizing that I was trying to justify my lack of social skills by identifying with a fictional character. Anyway. But, seriously, how can you not love a hero that thinks like this? (after the jump!):

[H]e had decided it would be best not to mention his main reason for wanting to marry—that he thought it expedient to procure a regular source of sexual intercourse without risking syphilis.

Okay, well maybe other people would want a more overtly romantic hero, but I find Jonas hilarious and he actually is quite romantic. It’s just filtered through his personality—like when he puts his hand on Lydia’s wrist when they walk together, taking her pulse and enjoying the fact that it’s a little faster than usual.

Lydia, on the other hand, is incapable of being romantic for much of the novella. An older man took advantage of her when she was a teenager, and she blames herself. Like Elizabeth Bennet, she willfully misunderstands people, ESPECIALLY Jonas. He tells her to her face, if somewhat obliquely, that he is in love with her. Multiple times. And she doesn’t believe him, until two-thirds of the way through the book when she remembers that she is “shockingly good” at lying to herself and finally interprets everything in a new (much more correct) light. Readers may find that rather frustrating, but I find it quite believable—she is determined to interpret everything in a specific light and will even make up evidence if she has to.

She must have imagined that look in his eyes, that quiet strength in his voice. There must have been a hint of sarcastic inflection in his voice, a roll of his eyes that she had missed. He meant it sarcastically.

He had to have meant it that way, or those sparks that built up in her belly would burst into flame, and she was never burning again. Not for any man, no matter what he said.

Much of the book consists of Jonas being awesome, and Lydia taking everything the wrong way. I don’t mind, because Jonas is so awesome. When Jonas gets her to enter into a wager—if she fails to find a bright spot in a situation he shows her, he gets to kiss her. Otherwise, he’ll never speak to her again. Lydia is suspicious:

“Do you think me loose, Doctor Grantham?”

“I think you as loose as a citadel. Why else would I have stooped to making elaborate wagers with you in exchange for the smallest token of your affections?”

But at least Jonas is not the only one Lydia doesn’t get:

Her father knew the absolute worst about her, and he loved her anyway. She didn’t understand why.

Years later, she is still dealing with trauma and slut-shaming herself. She can’t understand why her father didn’t kick her out of the house and send her to a convent when he found out she was pregnant. She is ashamed to miss the physical intimacies of having a lover. She believes that Jonas judges her for losing her virginity.

Truth and the lack thereof are important themes in this book. Jonas says it most succinctly:

“The truth is a gift.”

He does his best to give Lydia the gift of truth, to help her. I enjoy it when people speak frankly—again, because I share Jonas’s tendency to tell “too much truth”—so this was one of my favorite quotes (skip if you’re pre-pubescent?):

“I’m not a virgin. Neither are you. And even if you were, there’s no need for either of us to be missish about the matter. If a woman is old enough to push a ten-pound child through her birth canal, she can hear words like ‘penis’ and ‘cervix.’ These are medical terms, Miss Charingford, not obscenities.”

One of the “not truths” Milan attacks are myths. Many of the myths, such as the fact that doctors don’t need to wash their hands, have clearly been dispelled by now, but not all of them have. Virginity, for example.

“I’m a doctor, Miss Charingford, and even I can’t always tell on close examination whether a woman is a virgin. Besides, the hymen is just a membrano-carneous structure situated at the entrance of the vagina. It is of substantially less physiological relevance to a man in the throes of passion than the vagina itself.”

Regarding the medical elements, of which there are many: the author’s note contains the horrifying sentence, “If you ever think that there’s some screwy element of medical stuff that happens in here, trust me—I’m not making it up” and the conclusion, “Sometimes I am very grateful to live in the modern world. Right now I am very, very grateful.”

As with The Governess Affair, once the major issue is fixed—here it is something Lydia must resolve within herself—the novella ends rather quickly. Perhaps a little too quickly for my liking—I would have liked to have seen Jonas and Mr. Charingford interact after Lydia’s engagement, for example—but it is a novella, and that comes with the form.

My Conclusion:

I adored A Kiss for Midwinter, though I understand that the hero and heroine are not for everyone. I find it refreshing to read something that, like Jonas, is not afraid to speak bluntly and address important issues. I recommend it to people who want to read something a little different.

Postscript:

Now that I’ve finished discussing the rest of the existing Brothers Sinister entries, I’m finally going to let myself read The HeiressEffect! I am so, so, so, so, so excited. It’s going to be amazing, I just know it. Review coming soon!