When I was offered the chance to review The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton I had no idea what to expect. I’ve had mixed reading experienced with Avon historicals, and while I have enjoyed our few brief exchanges on Twitter, I really had no sense of where your books fit in within the Historical Romance subgenre. The title and cover art are formulaic Avon (i.e. not remarkable to me at all), and the marketing seems to put your writing style somewhere between Lisa Kleypas and Julia Quinn, which wasn’t a big help, either. And I’ll confess that for perhaps the first few chapters of the book I was skeptical: a young woman kidnapped, stripped of her clothes, and abandoned (temporarily) in a deserted Yorkshire cottage; a dandy and member of the ton conked on the head, partially stripped and robbed, who wakes with amnesia. Said dandy is precisely the man who cut the heroine dead with one of his “witticisms” (in this case that she had a head like a cauliflower) and ruined her chances with a prospective suitor. How these coincidences persist given all the English Regency characters running around Historical Romance, I’m not sure, but one lesson I did learn (again) from reading this book: it is unwise to judge a book solely by its cover and title. Because The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton proved to be a witty, interesting, trope-busting read.

Celia Seaton has had a run of very bad luck. First her mother dies, then her father — who is raising her in a remote area of India, supposedly under the aegis of the East India Company – is killed on his way to meet Celia on a ship bound for England, leaving Celia to sail alone and without any prospect of family or employment upon arrival. Celia, who has never set foot on English soil, is briefly taken in by her uncle, who dies before he can provide for her economic security. From there she gains a position as a governess to four boys, whose widowed father proposes marriage, only to throw Celia out when the man’s sister convinces him (erroneously) that Celia has a lover. She is currently on her way to visit a Mrs. Stewart, a stranger who has written Celia to say that she knew her parents and her recent “misfortunes,” when she is kidnapped at gunpoint and left nearly naked in the abandoned Yorkshire cottage. Celia’s kidnapper has, however, suggested he will return to have a little “fun” with her later on.

With that promise lingering, Celia manages to get herself out of the attic where she’s been imprisoned, only to find an unconscious and half-dressed man lying across the cottage’s doorway. Recognizing him as Tarquin Compton – ton dandy and all around jerk – Celia manages to rouse him, seemingly intact except for his memory. At which point Celia tells Tarquin of the danger to them both, but fibs a bit about Tarquin’s identity; she tells him that they are a betrothed couple and that he – Terence Fish – is studying to be a vicar. Terence/ Tarquin is not convinced of the story’s truth (for one thing, he despises the name Fish and has vague, periodic memories of a rather high-flying lifestyle), but he is certainly aware of the predicament he and Celia are in, and together they set off across the moors, hopefully to find refuge with the mysterious Mrs. Stewart. Neither has any money (Tarquin has his boots, his breeches, and an erotic novel he recently purchased on his way to his Yorkshire property, while Celia has an old, tarnished silver baby rattle that belonged to her mother and that apparently escaped the thief’s eye), both are only half-dressed (Celia’s shift is far too short and her only other garment is a pinned-up blanket that serves as a makeshift skirt), and neither has any conscious idea of where they are or in what direction salvation may lie.

As Terence/Tarquin and Celia trudge across the moors (part of which, not surprisingly, turns out to be Tarquin’s Yorkshire property), they encounter everything from sheepherders who think they’re thieving gypsies to a farmer who agrees to give them a ride and a meal but who later wants to purchase Celia for a bride, and always they are aware that Celia’s kidnappers are in close pursuit. What neither can figure out is why a young woman of so little social consequence would be the object of such a dedicated kidnapping plot and search, and while Terence/Tarquin struggles with his memory loss, he can only rely on Celia to fill in the blanks of his now-forgotten life. She is terrified he will remember who he is before she can tell him about her lie, but even more she is afraid that once he knows who he – and therefore she – is, he will abandon her to her less-than-illustrious fate. For Celia’s experiences of Tarquin Compton have not been pleasant. Several times introduced to her, he never remembered her name, and once he publicly designated her a cauliflower (due to an unfortunate attempt to make her red hair appear lighter and blonder), the little chance she had to make a good match was destroyed. Consensus indicates that Celia is not possessed of great beauty, and she had only the most tenuous of connections to the ton. Once those were spent she really was an outsider to respectable society, both in position and perspective, and she has no faith in Tarquin Compton to help her.

Terence Fish, on the other hand, is an entirely different sort of man. He is protective and solicitous, suspicious of the story Celia told him of his life but trusting that she told him what she genuinely knew. In fact, Terence had a growing fear that he might be a “nobleman” but not a “gentleman,” recognizing the quality of his boots, for example, not to mention the erotic volume he has to keep snatching back from Celia. More importantly, Terence Fish finds Celia Seaton extremely appealing, and he wastes little time in seeking the physical commitment from her that a betrothed man might convince his fiancée – especially a fiancée who seemed to enjoy reading erotic fiction – to indulge.

That so much happens before Tarquin regains his memory might suggest a quick resolution to the plot once he comes back to himself. However, one of the surprising delights of this book is that Tarquin’s recollected life is actually a catalyst to the real heart of the novel, as well as most of its trope-rich action. For by the time Tarquin realizes who he is, the connection he shares with Celia is far more than casual, and even though his social position would allow him to abandon her with impunity, his conscience – not to mention a lower part of him – won’t allow him that option. With the mystery of Celia’s kidnapping still opaque, Tarquin takes her to Shropshire, where his best friend, Sebastian Iverly, is staying with his new wife’s family. Of course, Tarquin forgets that Diana is very close to delivering her first child, and the scene at the Montrose’s home is, to put it mildly, chaotic. What happens from this point on is really too complicated to explain (and would entail some spoilers and delicious details best discovered by the reader), but I can say that while I had guessed the great mystery quite a bit before its revelation, the way it is incorporated into the larger plot strains of the book is very logical and clever.

While the set-up for Celia and Tarquin’s amnesiac road trip seemed somewhat tedious to me, the momentum continues to build throughout the novel, making each chapter more engaging and suspenseful than the last. The outrageousness of the set-up is subtly admitted to within the book itself, especially by the clever framing device of Tarquin’s erotic volume, The Genuine and Remarkable Amours of The Celebrated Author, Peter Aretin, a genuine 18^th C novel that Celia finds outside the cottage. The little book provides almost constant subtext, making many amusing contributions to Celia and Tarquin’s growing sexual attraction, not to mention quite an education for Celia, and, later in the novel, one of the younger Montrose sisters. The book becomes a clever way to negotiate around a heroine who is both virginal and sexually aware (her life in India and her father’s Indian companion also provided her with a rather unconventional sexual education). It also allows for some pretty funny bits involving the hero’s, well, bits, which riff off the standard Romance expectation that the hero is always well-endowed and often overwhelming to the heroine’s inexperienced eyes. In fact, one of my favorite things about the novel is that numerous genre conventions — amnesia, the road trip, the house party, the rusticating hero, just to name a few — are renovated and renewed in interesting ways.

The writing is witty, too. When Tarquin looks down upon Celia sleeping in the midst of much birdsong, and the reader expects some sentiment about her hair or face, Tarquin “wondered if she could be deaf in one ear.” There are clever turns of phrase, as when women would “flutter like deranged doves” around Tarquin. And there are some laugh-out-loud scenes, like the one in which Sebastian drunkenly worries about the physics of a baby’s head and the usual size of the birth canal as his wife labors without complication elsewhere in the house.

On a deeper, level, though, The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton is itself a novel about learning lessons and lessons learned, around which the novel’s more poignant elements are revealed. Celia has felt like an outsider all her life, and as an unbeautiful woman she sees herself as “a shabby wraith in the shadow of [Tarquin’s] magnificence.” How can she believe that a man like Tarquin could ultimately love her, especially when so much of his ego seems to depend on the good opinion of others? And Tarquin, who has spent so much of his adult life so privileged he no longer consciously sees himself as privileged, attraction to Celia is both challenging and vexing. After all, the woman lied to him, humiliated him, and then has the gall to question his intentions and his feelings for her — whatever they may be. There is a point in the novel where Celia is done-over by Diana’s maid, and while she cannot wait to surprise Tarquin with her new look, his attraction is already past her surface appearance. It’s really a lovely moment, because it highlights the disparities in their perceptions of each other at that point in the novel. And while the consummate insider and the absolute outsider do share an early personal history of sadness, the crucial difference between Tarquin and Celia – that he has had influential people to count on at crucial points in his life – stands as a very real obstacle between them. Not as much because of the social implications, but even more because of the emotional consequences of their very different life conditioning.

Despite the length of this review, I feel as if I have barely broken the surface of my feelings about this book. There is so much I admire and appreciate about the craftsmanship and a great deal that entertained me in a fresh, unexpected way. The way the different tropes play on surface v. substance and appearance v. reality, for example, and illuminate the different prisms through which people view themselves and each other. In some ways it is light, but not in the way of wallpaper historicals or straight romps; the light is emitted from the effervescent voice and prose. So what kept it from being an A read for me? This is the hardest part to articulate, because in the end it distills down to a matter of chemistry. Sure there were some anachronistic-sounding phrases, and Celia delivered a number of impassioned comments on the relatively disempowered status of women that fit her outsider status but still sounded a bit modern to me (or at least as vehicles for sharing historical details that might not otherwise be easily worked in), but mostly my issue with The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton is that I never felt deeply emotionally invested in Tarquin, Celia, or their relationship. In fact, I was more emotionally drawn to Sebastian and Diana, whose book I’m now going to go back and read. Had I fallen in love with this book to the degree that I admire and appreciate it, it would have been an easy A. Without that emotional clincher, though, it’s a B+.

~ Janet

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | nook | Sony | Kobo

Related posts:

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3. REVIEW: The Dangerous Viscount by Miranda Neville

I don't know if it was Jayne's recent review of the Merchant-Ivory film adaptation of this novel, or a discussion of Forster's works that some of us on Twitter got into a while back. There's also the fact that every time I see Jennie do one of her classics reviews, I think to myself that I should reread and review this novel. Whatever the reason, the urge became irresistible after I got the book in e-form, and on a recent plane flight, I began to read the book, and fell in love with it all over again.

A Room with a View, first published in 1908 and considered by many to be Forster's sunniest and most optimistic novel, begins in the Pension Bertolini, an inn in Florence, Italy. Two tourists, Miss Lucy Honeychurch and her cousin and chaperone, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, are dining with other Bertolini guests and complaining about the rooms they have been given. The inn's owner, the Signora Bertolini (an Englishwoman from London's east side despite her name) has put them in rooms overlooking the courtyard instead of giving the two women the rooms with a view to the Arno River which they had been promised.

Mr. Emerson, an old man seated dining at the same table, suggests that Lucy and Charlotte trade rooms with him and his son, George. But rather than accepting as Lucy wants her to do, Charlotte is offended by the old man's familiar manner (she immediately concludes that he is ill-bred because he ventures to speak to her without observing her for a day or two first).

Also staying at the Bertolini are the Reverend Beebe, a clergyman who is soon to become the vicar of Summer Street, Lucy's parish; Miss Eleanor Lavish, an author of romantic novels; and two elderly sisters, Miss Catharine and Miss Teresa Alan; all of whom play a role in the novel. But Lucy, Charlotte, Mr. Emerson and his son George are the central players, and what begins as a minor contretemps about rooms with views foreshadows a greater conflict.

Following dinner, Reverend Beebe advises Charlotte that accepting the exchange of rooms would not put her under obligation to the Emersons. After Mr. Beebe leaves, one of the elderly Miss Alans approaches the newcomers. Forster's gift for dialogue is on display in the conversation that follows:

"But here you are as safe as in England; Signora Bertolini is so English.'

"Yet our rooms smell,' said poor Lucy. "We dread going to bed.'

"Ah, then you look into the court.' She sighed. "If only Mr. Emerson was more tactful! We were so sorry for you at dinner.'

"I think he was meaning to be kind.'

"Undoubtedly he was,' said Miss Bartlett. "Mr. Beebe has just been scolding me for my suspicious nature. Of course, I was holding back on my cousin's account.'

"Of course,' said the little old lady, and they murmured that one could not be too careful with a young girl.

Lucy tried to look demure, but could not help feeling a great fool. No one was careful with her at home; or, at all events, she had not noticed it.

"About old Mr. Emerson – I hardly know. No, he is not tactful; yet, have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time – beautiful?"

"Beautiful?" said Miss Bartlett, puzzled at the word. "Are not beauty and delicacy the same?'

In fact, one of the central themes of A Room with a View is the tension between beauty and delicacy, between honesty and propriety.

Eventually Charlotte Bartlett accepts the exchange of rooms, but not until she has embarrassed Lucy, Reverend Beebe, and the Emersons. Charlotte begins the novel as the personification passive aggressive martyrdom, uttering lines like "My own wishes, dearest Lucy, are unimportant in comparison with yours. It would be hard indeed if I stopped you doing as you liked at Florence, when I am here only through your kindness. If you wish me to turn these gentlemen out of their rooms, I will do it."

Lucy's reaction is equally telling:

Charlotte's energy! And her unselfishness! She had been thus all her life, but really, on this Italian tour, she was surpassing herself. So Lucy felt, or strove to feel. And yet – there was a rebellious spirit in her which wondered whether the acceptance might not have been less delicate and more beautiful.

One day Lucy ventures out into Florence in the company of the romantic novelist, Miss Eleanor Lavish. Miss Lavish thoughtlessly loses track of Lucy, and Lucy, abandoned without a guidebook, is grateful to run into the Emersons in the church of Santa Croce. Once again Mr. Emerson speaks bluntly, and Lucy is torn between accepting his kindness and taking offense. When they are separated from George and Mr. Emerson asks her to befriend his melancholy son, Lucy is uncomfortable and hides that discomfort by distancing herself and then taking offense when Mr. Emerson senses the truth of her emotions.

On another afternoon Lucy goes outside by herself (a daring act for a young woman at the turn of the century) and after purchasing some souvenir photographs, happens to witness an altercation between two Italians which ends in murder. She passes out and is caught in George Emerson's arms. While she recovers, George throws her photographs into the river and Lucy confronts him over that action; an embarrassed George admits that the dead man's blood was on the pictures, and he did not know what else to do with them.

Lucy thanks George for his actions and asks him not to tell anyone what happened. She cannot yet put her finger on what it is that has changed, and does not use words like "intimacy" or "connection," but she is aware that having witnessed a death at the same time has altered things between her and George. George, even more than Lucy, is conscious that something profound has happened. "I shall want to live," he tells her.

Several of the Bertolini’s guests later go on an outing to see a view, and there the beauty of the violet-studded Italian countryside, as well as their emotions, overtake George and Lucy for a brief moment. Miss Bartlett separates them and later turns Lucy's mind against George, suggesting that he will gossip about Lucy and ruin her reputation. Charlotte then takes Lucy away from Florence, and the two women flee together to Rome.

The novel's second half picks up some months later in Summer Street, Surrey, in a house named Windy Corner. The house belongs to the Honeychurch family. Lucy's father, a solicitor, built it and established his family in "the best society obtainable" before he passed away.

Now it appears that Lucy has gained entry to an even better society – that of Cecil Vyse, who has just asked for, and been granted, Lucy's hand in marriage. A good sense of Cecil's character can be gleaned from this exchange between Cecil and Reverend Beebe:

"Let me see, Mr Vyse – I forget – what is your profession?'

"I have no profession,' said Cecil. "It is another example of my decadence. My attitude – quite an indefensible one – is that so long as I am no trouble to anyone I have a right to do as I like. I know I ought to be getting money out of people, or devoting myself to things I don't care a straw about, but somehow I've not been able to begin.'

Cecil sees Lucy as a work of art, something to be protected, rather than as a full equal. At heart he is a snob, but one who does not realize that is what he is, and who in fact, wants to teach others to be less snobbish. Thus it is that when a villa in Summer Street becomes vacant and Lucy writes to the Miss Alans suggesting they apply to lease it, Cecil, to get the better of the class-conscious landlord, suggests that friends of his would be more suitable. The so-called "friends" are two lower middle class men with whom Cecil has only a passing acquaintance – Mr. Emerson and his son George Emerson.

Lucy is infuriated by Cecil's undermining her kindness to the Miss Alans, but more than that, she is frightened by George's arrival in Summer Street. On the surface she is afraid that George will spread rumors that will destroy her engagement, but beneath the surface fear is a deeper one, for Lucy has lied to herself about her feelings for Cecil and her feelings for George, and she does not want to examine the truth of her emotions.

The situation is further complicated by a visit from Cousin Charlotte and a scene in a romantic novel. Will Lucy be able to see the truth of her feelings for Cecil and her love for George before it is too late? What will honesty with herself and with others cost her and how much will they gain her?

A Room with a View is not perfect – Bradbury points out, and I agree with him, that George isn't that well-defined a character – but there is so much I could say about the book and the reasons I love it.

There are the social critiques of snobbery and the class system and of propriety and repression.

There is Forster's humor, which ranges from witty satire, such as this:

"He is nice,' exclaimed Lucy. "Just what I remember. He seems to see the good in everyone. No one would take him for a clergyman.'

To gentle irony, as in this description of the elderly Miss Alan's troubles:

It was a real catastrophe, not a mere episode, that evening of hers at Venice, when she had found in her bedroom something that is one worse than a flea, though one better than something else.

There is the beauty of Forster's descriptions, as in this passage:

Evening approached while they chatted; the air became brighter; the colours on the trees and hills were purified, and the Arno lost its muddy solidity and began to twinkle. There were a few streaks of bluish-green among the clouds, a few patches of watery light upon the earth, and then the dripping façade of San Miniato shone brilliantly in the declining sun.

There are the touches of philosophy, as in this bit from George:

"We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm – yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.'

There are the acutely observed characters which feel so real. Many of them, true to Forster's own definition of round characters in his nonfiction work, Aspects of the Novel, surprise the reader in convincing ways. Of these, Lucy is quite possibly the most fully fleshed, so much so that even when she lies to herself and to those around her, I find myself sympathizing with her instead of condemning her. Among many things, A Room with a View is a coming of age story about Lucy's entry into adulthood.

Above all, perhaps, there is Forster's humane way of seeing the people he breathes life into. Even Cecil proves capable of rising, momentarily at least, above his priggishness. One senses compassion and kind wishes for the characters from the novel's omniscient narrator, even while that same narrator observes their flaws and weaknesses. I am in awe of Forster's ability to clearly observe, gently forgive, and passionately love, all at the same time.

The next to last chapter, "Lying to Mr. Emerson," makes for a soaring, triumphant climax to the novel. The elderly Mr. Emerson's speech to Lucy is one of the most moving and romantic meditations on love I have read, so I won't spoil it for readers.

We all need the room to express our personal truths, the openness and freedom to love that views represent in this novel. The values of self-knowledge over self-denial, of clear communication over muddled thinking, of the love and light that we can only express if we are true to ourselves, are at the center of A Room with a View, part and parcel of what makes the book an enduring classic.

In response to Mr. Emerson's speech, Lucy later thinks that "he had shown her the holiness of direct desire," and I think that is also what the author has done for this reader. A+.

Sincerely,

Janine Ballard

Book Link | Kindle | Amazon | Project Gutenberg (free in several formats)

Related posts:

1. Friday Film Review: A Room with a View
2. REVIEW: Private Lives by Gwynne Forster
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I have heard such good things about your early Victorian-set novels that I kept meaning to read one. When the controversy over the Publisher's Weekly review erupted, I knew I would have to read Unveiled. While more confused than ever about that infamous review, I have been thinking a lot about the book since I finished it, about how different books appeal to different aspects of our reading character. Unveiled is a book that appealed strongly and distinctly to my intellectual side.

Ash Turner always had a knack for the deal. He had seemingly infallible instincts in business and in people, and unlike men who deliberated and weighed options, Ash knew almost instantly whether he could trust a person or situation, and he amassed quite a fortune acting on those instincts. Ash had also made a promise to his father that he would look after his siblings, a promise Ash had always felt he had not really kept. While his father had been a successful mill owner, his death allowed Ash's mother to exercise her excessive zealotry (she gave her children whole Bible verses for names, which they shortened to one word), which ultimately resulted in his sister's death and poverty for his two brothers. Soon after Hope died, Ash left for India to make his own fortune, and by the time he returned, his two brothers, Mark and Smite, were homeless and alone in Bristol, unwilling – or unable – to talk about their experiences during that time. This only made Ash work harder to secure his brothers' happiness, which he felt could only be ensured once the family took its rightful (in Ash's view) place. Which is, unfortunately, occupied by Ash's fifth cousin twice removed, aka the Duke of Parford.

Privy to the fact of the duke's bigamist second marriage, Ash has petitioned the House of Lords to declare the duke's children illegitimate and therefore unable to inherit the dukedom, substituting Ash and his siblings in their place. And now Ash has arrived at Parford with his younger brother, Mark, in tow, assuring Mark that the estate will be a perfect place for him to finish his philosophical treaty on chastity (I cannot wait to read his book!) – not to mention a perfect time for Ash to ensure that the estate is in good working order and the accounts in tact before the House of Lords makes their final decision. Upon arrival, Ash spies among the servants waiting out front a woman he instinctively knew was destined to be his.

The woman, Anna Margaret Dalrymple, is the daughter of the duke who has remained behind in disguise as Margaret Lowell, nurse to her own ailing father, to ensure that the Turner brothers do no unnatural harm to the man standing between them and the dukedom. She should hate everything about Ash and his brother, and for a while she manages to maintain her disdain and her father's fragile health. However, Ash is the kind of man who has gotten a lot of what he earned by his innate charm and charisma, as well as the profound respect he pays to each person, regardless of station, education, or wealth. He knows what it means to be an outsider (he still feels like an outsider to his own brothers' close relationship), that money and station can purchase security but cannot guarantee it. Even though he believes Margaret to be a nurse, he regards her with deference and with kindness, making her believe that she has substance as a person beyond her title or name. With friends shunning her, fiancé abandoning her, father treating her as useless, and brothers off trying to persuade the House of Lords to their side, Ash's solicitous charm is ultimately more seductive than the humiliation his petition for her de-legitimation has caused:

"Do you know why my peers want their brides to have pale skin?”

She was all too aware of the golden glow of vitality emanating from him. She could feel the warmth in his finger. She shouldn't encourage him. Still, the word slipped out. "Why?"

"They want a woman who is a canvas, white and empty. Standing still, existing for no other purpose than to serve as a mute object onto which they can paint their own hopes and desires. They want their brides veiled.

They want a demure, blank space they can fill with whatever they desire."

He tipped her chin up, and the afternoon sunlight spilled over the rim of her bonnet, touching her face with warmth.

"No." Margaret wished she could snatch that wavering syllable back. But what he said was too true to be borne, and nobody knew it better than she. Her own wants and desires had been insignificant. She'd been engaged to her brother's friend before her second season had been halfway over. She'd been a pale, insipid nothing, a collection of rites of etiquette and rules of precedent squashed into womanly form and given a dowry.

His voice was low. "Damn their bonnets. Damn their rules."

"What do you want?" Her hands were shaking. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"Miss Lowell, you magnificent creature, I want you to paint your own canvas. I want you to unveil yourself."

And thus is the novel a series of unveilings: the revelation of the Dalrymples' illegitimacy, of the various relationships in the novel, of Margaret's self-discovery and the secret of her identity, of Ash's own secret, which he has not shared with anyone until he shares it with Margaret, and of intimacy between Margaret and Ash. Characters act as mirrors to one another, not necessarily reflecting truth, but rather confirmation of what characters see in themselves. When the old Duke of Parford looks upon his daughter, for example, he sees his own uselessness and projects it on to her. When Margaret initially thinks about her erstwhile fiancé, she sees her own unworthiness as reflected in his abandonment of her once her standing and inheritance were imperiled. Even Ash, who seems so very confident and certain of his decisions feels inadequate, especially when he looks at his brothers, who share an ease of kinship in which he cannot participate. Surface versus substance, innuendo versus meaning, station versus self – all of these relationships are examined in the novel, with deeper and deeper layers of awareness connected to greater happiness.

For example, when Margaret's friends deserted her, she took that as a sign of her unworthiness. Until, that is, Ash makes her feel that she is a real person completely independent from her superficial nobility. This revelation changes the way Margaret begins to carry herself and to pursue some of the old relationships she let slip away, and consequently some of those relationships do change. Not all of them, as this is not fairyland, but some of the connections that had substance before can be reconstituted in a different way. Similarly, relationships Margaret always took for granted – like those with her two brothers – suddenly become the subject of deeper consideration once the superficial markers of worth and value are stripped away.

Without a doubt, Unveiled is a smart book. Although the text does not identify him as such, Ash struck me as philosophically something of a Utilitarian (remember that both Mill and Bentham argued passionately in favor of equal rights for women, among other social reforms), focused on creating the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people in his life. The issues of identity and self-consciousness are good reminders of Enlightenment philosophies, as well as German idealism (Kant, Hegel, etc.) and romanticism. We tend to think of Victorian England as this stuffy, stagnant time, but in truth is was an exciting and dynamic time, philosophically, technologically, socially, and politically. These characters reflect evolving ideas about the self and society, and they are both idealists (and somewhat idealized) in their own way.

Which is why I wanted so much to love this book. To love it with the passion and the intensity with which Ash and Margaret love each other. However, as strong as this book was intellectually, I felt somewhat disconnected from it emotionally. I could almost feel the novel being built while I was reading, and while I could see the relationship between Ash and Margaret progressing, beyond Ash's initial conviction about Margaret, I felt that so much of their relationship was built on Margaret's adoration of the confidence Ash inspires in her.

Consequently, I felt led more than propelled through the book. For example, Ash tells Margaret a story about a tiger cub he adopted in India. He is so determined to win the cat's favor, he subjects himself to being bit by her, because if he "'could win this magnificent creature's regard, it would truly mean something.'" The allegory here is obvious, but Margaret must spell the message out to us: "He'd just told her that she was worth it — she and all her prickles." There are a number of such examples in the book, places where I feel that the lesson is being explained to me rather than simply implied, and even though I recognized its usefulness in Margaret's own process of self-discovery, it felt a bit overworked.

Many times during my reading I wished for more passion in the narrative, more of that same kind of emotional catharsis Margaret experiences. I kept thinking about how ashes are left after everything of substance burns away, and that image had a double edge for me: even as Ash and Margaret are both unveiled in their true form, there was a dryness to the narrative that made me feel like the passion had been burned away. Had that passion been present for me, this book would truly have soared. Without it, my experience was definitely positive, but not as profound as I wanted it to be and felt it could be. That said, I will definitely be reading about the other Turner brothers. B/B-

~ Janet

Book Link | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders
| Sony| eHarlequin

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This is one of those movies I knew immediately was destined to be among my favorites. I remember having my sister tape it for me then, after watching it for the first time, immediately rewinding the tape to watch it again. Now, over twenty years later, I still love it to pieces.

Miss Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) and her older cousin-chaperone Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie Smith) are dismayed when they arrive at a pensione in Florence, Italy and discover that they won’t have the rooms with views of the Arno they were promised. Over the course of dinner that evening, Charlotte – in her usual fashion – makes a fuss causing an older man, Mr. Emerson (Denholm Elliot), and his son George (Julian Sands) to offer their rooms in exchange – something considered indelicate by several of the women present. But Lucy wants her view and persuades their new vicar Mr. Beebe (Simon Callow), who happens to also be there, to intercede with Charlotte and the switch is made. It soon becomes obvious that George, something of a free thinker as is his father, is falling in love with Lucy and after he steals a kiss during an outing to the countryside, Lucy and Charlotte pack up and head for home.

Once there, Lucy becomes engaged to Mr. Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis) of London who is something of a repressed snob. To score a petty victory over a local landowner he despises, Cecil recommends the Emersons, who he doesn’t even really know, as tenants for a vacant house in the area all without realizing the events which occurred in Florence. As George takes the opportunity to press his love, will Lucy admit her feelings and follow her heart or will she remain safe with a man she obviously doesn’t care for?

The first thing about this film I noticed was the music. From the opening credits with the glorious “O mio babbino caro” sung by Kiri te Kanawa, musically the film is a treat. After listening to that plus “Chi il bel sogno di Doretta,” I knew I had to have the soundtrack – which I went out and bought and have enjoyed over the years. I also love the use of the chapter titles to divide the film into sections and the artwork which opens the film and is interspersed throughout. In the commentary, Ismail Merchant reveals he initially wasn’t crazy about it but I’ve always found that the Florentine artwork fits perfectly.

The cast is fabulous. Judi Dench is delicious as the overly florid female novelist Eleanor Lavish and Rosemary Leach shines as Lucy’s exasperated mother who isn’t too sure of Cecil yet makes sure Charlotte is invited for a visit while the plumbers tear up her house. Fabia Drake and Joan Henley are sweet as the Miss Alan sisters and then newcomer
Rupert Graves catches the eye as Lucy’s younger brother, and also sometimes the cause of his mother’s exasperation, Freddy. Bonham Carter – with her amazing mass of hair – carries most of the movie and has real chemistry with the intense Sands while Callow manages a fine performance that doesn’t exactly stand out in this crowd yet which never puts a foot wrong. The performance by Day-Lewis is so mercurially wonderful that I once had to convince someone, who was more used to him in LotM, that he was even in the film.

Yet for me, the real stars of the film are Elliot, who conveys the new thinking, which many of the others find tacky, but who never comes off as crass while doing so and Smith who manages to show Charlotte as a passive aggressive spinster (“Poor Charlotte”) without making us eventually hate her. We even see the hints of the young woman in love she once was and realize that all along she’s thrilled at the romance Lucy experiences.

The cinematography is divine both in Florence and in England. Listen to the commentary to find out what Merchant and Ivory had to go through to secure the location filming in the first place and then after that how hard they still had to work to get the actual film footage. Pasta lunches, crowd control, schmoozing up to the Vatican and sharing a location with communist speakers are some of the things they had to do in the name of art. But what shots they got for their troubles. Watch for one overhead scene in the Basilica di Santa Croce which almost looks like a tennis match.

The costumes, which the actors seem entirely at home in, are also perfect as is Bonham Carter’s mastery of the piano pieces she needed to be able to fake for the film. The script is marvelous and conveys the dilemma faced by Lucy as she grapples with her heart’s desire vs the social mores of the time while still remaining humorous and entertaining. For Lucy must choose between her restricted upper-class life and the freeing new world represented by the Emersons. As her mother tries to convey to Freddy, there is a right sort and a wrong sort and Lucy must decide who falls into which category for her.

This is a smart, intelligent film which takes its time but which never wastes time nor makes me look at my watch to see how much time is still left. It flows effortlessly for me and before I know it, I’ve reached the scene which is depicted on the cover and that shows which man Lucy has picked. This isn’t a stuffy, period drama. It’s light, romantic and fun. It’s a favorite of mine for years and one I’d recommend in a heartbeat.

~Jayne

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Sunita: I thought I had read this book before but when I picked it up a couple of months ago, I realized it was new to me. The synopsis made me think it was similar to Georgette Heyer's A Civil Contract, which is one of my favorites among her novels, but it's not very romantic. The book does share some plot similarities, but the tone is quite different.

Janine: A Christmas Promise is a marriage of convenience story, a Christmas celebration story, and also a story that deals with grieving. It begins when Randolph Pierce, Earl of Falloden, receives a visit from Mr. Joseph Transome, a successful coal merchant.

Randolph has recently inherited the earldom, and with it the country home in which he grew up. Grenfell Park is mortgaged to the hilt, and Randolph has refused to sell it in order to pay off this and the other debts which his cousin, the previous earl, ran up.

Mr. Transome has purchased all of Randolph's debts, and he offers Randolph the following bargain: he will cancel all of Randolph's debts and settle half his enormous fortune on Randolph, if Randolph will marry his only daughter.

Randolph immediately balks at the notion of marrying a stranger, and the daughter of a "cit." He is in love with Miss Dorothea Lovestone, though he cannot afford to offer for her. He asks the coal merchant for more time, but Transome replies that that is time is the one thing he does not have. Although Randolph does not immediately realize it, Joseph Transome is dying.

The frail Mr. Transome grants Randolph a mere 24 hours to think over his offer, and after drinking himself to a near-stupor, Randolph realizes he has little choice unless he wants to sell Grenfell Park, which he cannot bear to do. The next day he tells Mr. Transome that he will agree to marry his daughter Eleanor.

Mr. Transome is pleased, though he stipulates two more conditions: The union must be consummated on the wedding night, and Randolph must reside with his new wife for the first year of their marriage.

Meanwhile, Eleanor Transome is at least as repelled by the thought of marrying an earl as Randolph is at the notion of allying himself with a coal merchant's daughter. Not only has Eleanor been rejected by members of the aristocracy in the past, despite her finishing school manners, but she is also in love with someone else: her second cousin, Wilfred.

But Wilfred, a shipping company clerk, has written Eleanor that he cannot in good conscience marry her while his prospects are so poor, nor ask her to wait for his circumstances to improve. Since Wilfred has left her no hope of a marriage between them, Eleanor agrees to fulfill her father's dying wish by marrying Randolph.

Randolph and Eleanor's first meeting does not go well. Eleanor believes Randolph is a spendthrift and gambler who has wasted his own fortune and will do the same to her father's, while Randolph thinks Eleanor is ambitious and grasping in her pursuit of a title.

It does not help Randolph's perception that Eleanor, conscious of her father's physical suffering, barely touches the dying man, and that self-consciousness makes her stiff in Randolph's presence. Randolph believes his soon-to-be bride is cold, and when Mr. Transome assures Randolph that in time he will see that Eleanor is the greatest of all the treasures Transome has bestowed on him, Randolph refrains from saying that he cannot imagine such thing will ever come to pass.

Nonetheless, the two young people marry and the wedding night scene is both surprising and memorable. Mary Balogh is a master, in my opinion, at depicting the evolution of a couple's relationship in the progression of the ways they make love. The sex scenes in her books can sometimes be strange or even uncomfortable to read, but they are also memorable and very effective at showing the nature of the couple's feelings toward one another. The angry sex between Randolph and Eleanor is both painful and oddly pleasurable, and it shocks both of them.

The next day, Eleanor goes to her father's house and remains there until Joseph's death. Before her father dies she does her best to give him assurances she does not believe about her husband and her marriage, and in turn, Eleanor's father extracts a promise from her. She is not to mourn him for long, and she is to celebrate Christmas with all the joy she is capable of.

But will Eleanor be able to keep her Christmas promise when she has not even be able to cry all the tears trapped inside her at the loss of her only remaining and loving parent? How can she evince joy at Christmas when she learns that Randolph was in love with Dorothea Lovestone, and that he is rumored to be keeping a mistress?

Will it be possible for Eleanor to celebrate the holiday when Randolph suspects she is too cold to mourn her father, and when he has invited four lonely gentlemen to share the holiday with them, one of whom Eleanor has reason to despise? Can Christmas be anything but fraught with conflict, when Eleanor has invited twenty of her boisterous middle class relatives to Grenfell Park at the same time and when Wilfred arrives with them, uninvited?

Will all these obstacles make Christmas at Grenfell Park an inescapable disaster? Or will a Christmas miracle enable Randolph and Eleanor to see each other with new eyes, and heal the breach between them?

Sunita: Your summary perfectly illustrates how much this book is and is not like Heyer's. The similarities are there: Rich Cit buys impoverished nobleman for cultured daughter, both must learn to live with each other. But even apart from the wedding-night sex scene, which I found intense and surprising, and the greater level of sexual tension and awareness, there are key differences. For one thing, Eleanor is beautiful. More importantly, while Mr. Transome sets the plot in motion and his memory shapes events in the book, he is not physically present for most of it, allowing Balogh to concentrate on the romance at the core of the story.

Janine: As I mentioned above, I approached rereading A Christmas Promise with some trepidation because it's rare for a book to have the same intense emotional impact on me on rereading that it had the first time. I remembered my first reading of A Christmas Promise as magical, and I wasn't sure that lightning would strike twice for me with this book.

Imagine my delight when the book proved to be as magical and seamless as I remembered. It was such a beautiful reading experience for me that I can't keep from describing it in metaphors and saying that it has the crystalline sparkle of snow; the sharp, stark, melancholy beauty of a deep winter twilight; the warmth and sweetness of a hot mug of cocoa, and the deep emotion of holiday music.

Sunita: I agree that this is a beautifully written book. Many of Balogh's earlier and very good novels are light on dialogue but very heavy on introspection and internal monologues. In this book, where the hero and heroine are thrown together and develop an unwilling attraction, this lets us see their feelings develop and uses their sharp words toward each other sparingly.

Janine: You make a great point. Let's discuss the characters.

Randolph isn't always good to Eleanor, but I found him sympathetic because it was clear from early on, when he showed her father compassion, that he had a good heart. He starts out making some mistakes, like not comforting Eleanor after her father's death, and seeing his mistress, but he realizes these were mistakes and he rectifies them.

I love the way Eleanor gradually grows on him, and he starts to realize how wrong he was about her. He sees that she has a loving heart, and he wants that love for himself. He's just not sure how to get from point A to point B. But he wants to be a good husband, and by the end of the book, he is everything Eleanor could ask for.

Sunita: I also really liked that Randolph could reevaluate his own behavior and assumptions as he got to know Eleanor. His initial reactions to her father and her family were snobbish and suspicious, but as he spent time with Eleanor and her family, he allowed his greater knowledge to reshape his opinions and feelings. You never feel that Randolph will lose his aristocratic instincts, but at the same time he can see the disadvantages of his upbringing. I thought Balogh hit the balance really well, in that both characters learned from each other without losing their individuality.

Janine: As for Eleanor, boy, I really felt for her despite her outward coldness to Randolph. She loves her father so much and his loss unmoors her. She has a tendency to get defensive and to lash out when hurt but I loved that fighter aspect of her personality. For example when Dorothea Lovestone's mother tells Eleanor about Randolph's mistress, Eleanor finds a way to make Lady Lovestone uncomfortable.

Sunita: Eleanor's relationship with her father had a special poignancy for me, because I am an only child and was extremely close to my father. He died suddenly and unexpectedly, and even though it's been almost ten years, I still miss him terribly. Balogh beautifully captured that sense of rudderlessness that can overwhelm you when you lose someone close to you. I found this aspect of the novel hard to read the first time, and I think I may have skimmed a bit. The second time I was prepared, but wow, it still packs a punch.

Janine: The larger cast of characters is also memorable. There are three other pairings in the book and I enjoyed all of them. Sir Albert Hagley, Randolph's best friend, seemed like a jerk at first but really redeemed himself by the end of the book.

The members of Eleanor's family were wonderful (with the exception of Wilfred) and they showed Randolph and his friends that the middle class has as much to offer them as vice versa. In another book, I might have found something like that unrealistic, but I thought it worked here because the initial snobbery wasn't overcome in an instant.

Sunita: I agree. These aren't people that are going to suddenly become kindred spirits, but they appreciate each other. It helps that everyone seems comfortable with their own class location.

Janine: The theme of mistaken first impressions, which is present in many of Ms. Balogh's books, is so well-executed in this one. Eleanor and Randolph have legitimate reasons to think badly of one another, and it makes sense that they cling to those mistaken first impressions early out of misplaced loyalty to the people they believe they are in love with. But they agree to be civil to each other pretty quickly and they start to give one another the benefit of the doubt shortly after that.

Sunita: Isn't it nice to have characters who mostly behave like thinking adults? They act on a lot of snap judgements and mistaken impressions at the beginning, but they get over them.

Janine: Agreed. Something else I really appreciated was that the book shows the holiday season in all its facets. Yes, it's a time of boisterous celebration and of family closeness for some, but it's also a time of loneliness for others and a time for missing loved ones who are no longer with us.

Sunita: Balogh has a number of books set at Christmas time, and I think she pulls off the tension between loneliness, loss, and the almost obsessive desire to be happy in the holidays better in this book than in most of them. Perhaps it works because the difficult emotions aren't only being experienced by the hero and heroine.

Janine: It's rare for me to enjoy every single page of a book but I did with this one. Still, if I had to pick a favorite scene from A Christmas Promise, it would have to be the last scene. I don't want to give away what happens but suffice to say that I almost emptied my box of tissues when I read it.

Sunita: The last few scenes are incredibly powerful to me. I also liked the scenes in the village, especially in the school.

Janine: For a grade, I'm torn between A- and A. I know there is no such thing as a perfect book, and there are minor nitpicks I could make about this book (for example, it seems doubtful that Randolph, a peer, was really in danger of going to debtor's prison for not repudiating his cousin's debts, and being Jewish, I would not have objected to less of a focus on the story of the birth of Christ), but I was so caught up in the story that I hardly minded these things. Perfect books may not exist, but as holiday reads go, I can't think of one that is closer to perfect.

Sunita: Agreed. I love Christmas stories despite the fact that I'm not Christian. I think the Bethlehem focus felt even stronger because of the birth-death dichotomy. Also, the neat matching up of the secondary characters seemed a bit much. If I hadn't known otherwise, I would have assumed they were sequel bait. But whether it's an A or an A-, it's a real keeper. I am so glad these early Baloghs are being released.

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Major excitement at a lower class heroine, plus added excitement that you show a more realistic view of her social acceptance minus a hero who seems to earn a living feeling sorry for himself equals mixed feelings for this book.

Scheherazade Martin was born into a theater family, raised in the theater and has successfully managed it for years. Though she’s not an actress, society views her as little better than one and she has to maintain a quick wit, soothing personality and willingness to kiss up a bit to the wealthy patrons in order to keep things running smoothly in the green room after the performances. The one thing she wants in life is the respectability that comes with a wedding ring and she knows she won’t get it from Brandon, Lord Blackstone.

Surprisingly she does get a proposal of marriage from Blackstone’s cousin, Kit. But though Kit is a younger son, his family and the ton view their relationship as a misalliance and use every trick at their disposal, including coercing Brandon into trying to seduce Scher, to try and break up Scher and Kit. Brandon views his assignment with disgust which grows as he comes to know the strong woman Scher is. But he’s hiding a dark secret in his past which makes his life a pit of despair and seemingly precludes offering Scher anything but the carte blanche she’s determined to avoid.

First off, I love the heroine’s name, even if I did Google it to see if it would have been known in Europe at this time. But beyond merely being colorful, did you have a reason to pick it? I like the fact that she’s in the theater world even if she’s not actually an actress. She can still be socially tarred with the same brush and is during later scenes. Thank you for this. I get miffed when a historical book is set up in such a way that there are social barriers between a hero and heroine which in the end get knocked down and end up meaning nothing. Balogh seems to do this a lot.

Brandon does come off like an ass during the first chapter or so until we finally get his POV and realize what he’s doing by pressing his attentions on Scher. But even then, he is still somewhat ass-ish for doing what his brother wants. Why would Brandon agree to this if he doesn’t get along with his family?

Brava for Scher to have goals and stick to them – for most of the book anyway. Her desire for respectability is a potent one with real life tragedies to back it up. When she stays the course and tells Brandon, and several others, ‘no’ she isn’t just being coy or silly. Scher also uses her head when an encounter with Brandon threatens to get out of control. She challenges him to see her as a person and not use force. But she can fight too. I like that Scher is wise to what the family tries during the introductory dinner meeting but then shouldn’t she expect the snubs she gets during the Hyde Park drive?

Bonus points to Brandon for trying to be honest and prepare Scher for that drive through Snubville and for the fact that she would never be accepted into this society. He tells her that the drive that day would only show her what she and Kit would endure from then on. And his warnings ring more truthfully since he’s been in a similar situation in India.

Brandon and Scher share more than just passion. They’ve both been betrayed and hurt and find solace in each other. But what helps me believe that Brandon has truly found his love is his statement to her that he can’t think of a better place in life that doesn’t have her in it and Scher’s willingness to give up her dream of a respectable marriage in order to be with Brandon. Plus Brandon listens to Scher and respects what she says. Which I guess will make him act less like Kit about Scher continuing to be the one controlling the theater after their marriage.

Does Brandon get his viewpoint of the English and especially the upper class English as stuck up snobs who march in lockstep, keeping the foreigners and lower classes down only after arriving in India? He’s so vitriolic about this, which I can understand based on what happened to him but what caused him to be any different from the other English working for the East India Company? Was there something in his past that I missed or is he, like Wilberforce, born out of step with his countrymen?

Brandon agreed to come back to England with title and money so he could go to House of Lords and “Do Something.” Champion the cause of the poor, the slaves, the immigrants, the Colonies, whatever but he told Scher that this was why he gave in and took the blood money and his freedom. So, after two years, why has he done nothing but wallow in his guilt and enjoyed feeling sorry for himself? When Scher told him to either piss or get off the pot, I said, “Amen, sister!” I also wondered about how easy it would truly be for Brandon to extricate himself from what he felt was keeping him from offering for Scher.

Readers who like a dark, angsty hero might care for Brandon more than I did. Me, I just wanted to grab him by the scruff and shake him. Scher, who does things instead of sitting around pouring ashes on her head, is more my kind of woman. But I will give you points for a bang up epilogue and major hook to read what I guess will be the next book in the series. C+

~Jayne

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When I saw your book featured in the upcoming releases at Netgalley.com, I was intrigued. Although the Napoleonic War is pretty heavily mined territory for historical romance novelists, the prospect of a cross-class romance appealed to me, and I’m always on the lookout for new authors.   While the story starts out much the way many Regency-set historicals do, it is far from a cookie-cutter plot, and as the story develops it comes very much into its own.

Anna Arrington is the niece of an Earl, the sister of a Viscount, and a considerable heiress in her own right. She is also unhappily married to Captain Sebastian Arrington and following the drum as he serves in Wellington’s Spanish Campaign.   Anna meets Sergeant Will Atkins, an innkeeper’s son who serves in the 95th Rifles, when she assists him in a difficult childbirth in camp.   Will and Anna are immediately drawn to one another, but even after she is widowed, their differences in rank and background, both in the army and in general society, preclude them from pursuing a relationship.   When they find themselves alone after escaping from French captivity, they give in to their feelings on the journey back to British lines, and they secretly continue their seemingly doomed romance until Anna returns to England.   In the second half of the book, Will continues to serve in Spain, while Anna tries to reestablish a life at home and faces unexpected events.   When Will is invalided out of the army after the Battle of Badajoz, he and Anna are finally both in England, but the social differences that kept them from openly declaring their feelings in the army loom even larger.

I admit that my heart sank during the first chapter, because the Spanish woman giving birth was named Juana. As I’m sure you are well aware, there was a real Juana, married to an officer in the 95th, and her romance was fictionalized in Georgette Heyer’s The Spanish Bride.   Perhaps you meant the name as an homage to both Juana Smith and to Heyer, but it pulled me out of the story. Luckily for me, you quickly established a very different story with characters with unique and well-drawn attributes.   The narrative arc is unusual for a romance. The hero and heroine realize their feelings for each other quickly, and they communicate them.   The conflicts that keep them apart are serious and authentic to the period, and I was genuinely unsure how you were going to bring them together for an HEA. That is no small feat for a romance novel.   In addition, the scenes of army life and the Peninsular context are very well done and reflect what we know from scholarly research and the historical materials of the period rather than romance conventions and shortcuts.

Anna is an interesting heroine. She is beautiful, rich, and vivacious, but you show us how those attributes have   brought her grief as well as advantage. I didn’t find her easy to warm up to, but I admired and respected her. Will, on the other hand, won me over completely. His sense of honor and his fight to retain that honor in the face of temptation were well realized.   And they are a wonderful match for each other. The scenes where they realize their own feelings, discover that the other reciprocates those feelings, and then act on them, are incredibly romantic.   Their conversations are delightful,   and their internal monologues are illuminating without going on and on.

Once Will and Anna are separated, however, the book shifts gears, and not altogether for the better. They really live in separate worlds at that point, and even if they are thinking about each other, there is no interaction, such as through letters, for the reader to latch on to. This break makes complete sense in the context of the story, and it gives the plot suspense (How will they get back together? Can they really make it work?). But it means that the romantic elements have to be sustained through things that happen to each other separately. And the things that happen to them are frequently depressing or stressful, so that takes us further from the romance. Paradoxically, I think that because you did such a good job with the romance in the first part of the book, I missed those scenes more in the second half. When Will and Anna finally get back together in England, the scenes between them felt all too short.   That said, the way you found to bring them together was ingenious, especially since it incorporated a part of Anna’s background and interests which you had presented much earlier in the book. And it felt historically appropriate as well.

I had a hard time giving this book a grade, even more than I usually do. It is a terrific debut novel, and I will definitely watch for future novels and stories by you. The sections that focused on Will and Anna together were enormously satisfying in terms of the romance. But I hesitate to recommend this unreservedly to readers who want the romance to be the primary focus of the book; even though the events that occur when Will and Anna are apart are influenced by their relationship, many readers will find those parts less satisfying. With that caveat, I can definitely recommend it to fans of historical fiction and to readers of historical romance who enjoy Peninsular-set English historicals and would like something a little different.   B

~Sunita

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I’ve made no secret of my general malaise when it comes to the urban fantasy genre. I overloaded on it during its boom period, and I still don’t think I’ve entirely recovered. That said, I’m always willing to give a book a chance, especially when it tries to do something different with the subgenre. After hearing that your novel was set in Prohibition era New York City, I decided that was the kind of different I was looking for.

Zephyr Hollis comes from a family of demon hunters. Her father, in fact, is the best demon hunter in all of Montana. But after deciding the family business was not for her, Zephyr heads east to the big city. In New York City, she’s gained the reputation of being a bit of social crusader; her nickname is the vampire suffragette. It seems Zephyr feels a little guilty for all that hunting she used to do in her past and hopes to make amends.

In this Prohibition era NYC, Others (supernatural beings) face persecution along the lines of those experienced by minorities at the time. I especially liked this element of the novel because there was a large overlap between the vampire and immigrant populations. It makes sense from a worldbuilding standpoint that the most vulnerable segments of society would be the ones most likely to fall prey to vampires. Zephyr, however, has made it one of her life’s missions to work for their benefit. In addition to attending activist meetings and public protests, she also teaches night classes to Others and immigrants alike.

One of her students is the very tempting Amir, who is an Other but not one that Zephyr immediately recognizes. But in addition to being the expected love interest, he also asks her to track down the true identity of the vampire crime boss, Rinaldo. Because in addition to be a former vampire hunter turned social reformer, Zephyr has a bit of special ability: she’s immune to vampire bites. No matter how many times she gets bitten, she doesn’t change.

As you can probably guess, the best parts of the novel for me were those dealing with the class and race issues. Moonshine is not anachronistic. Readers will encounter the perspectives and opinions they’d expect of the time period but filtered through Zephyr’s POV, they are never presented as acceptable. We see this play out in two of Zephyr’s relationships: her romantic one with Amir, and her almost-friendship with Lily.

Speaking of the latter, I loved the portrayal of female relationships in this novel. They were never one-note or token. From the contentious relationship with her landlady to the almost-sisterly one with her roommate Aileen, we get to see the full gamut. My favorite relationship, no surprise, was that with Lily. Seeing lower class country girl Zephyr have to work with a socialite reporter was great. I actually wouldn’t mind a book about Lily, to be honest. If there’s a story in why Zephyr became a social reformer for Others’ rights despite her background, then there’s definitely a story in why a socialite from a wealthy family became a reporter.

I admit I’m lukewarm on the romance subplot with Amir. I liked the fact that he wasn’t a vampire, or even a werewolf, but it didn’t do much for me. Part of me felt like it was there because it’s expected of the genre. On the other hand, I did appreciate the fact that you did not shy away from the fact that, as an Other, Amir lives on a different time scale from humans and has a different set of values from humans. He is not a human in a monster’s suit. He is an Other to the core, and the ending does not gloss over that. This may be disappointing to readers who prefer a neater ending, but it is a more realistic take that at least acknowledges the implications of being a supernatural creature. (I’m deliberately vague about what Amir is. It’s not quite a spoiler because there are hints early on in the novel but if readers would like to know right now, check the tags as always.)

Zephyr’s family was charming, to the point that I wish we could have seen more of them. I thought the scenes in which they were on-page were gold, personally, but I’m also a sucker for family dynamics and interactions. It was definitely refreshing to have Zephyr’s family still love and adore her even though she became something of a black sheep.

Overall, I’m glad I broke out of my longstanding urban fantasy funk to give your novel a try. The setting was different enough to keep it fresh while I also think the structure is familiar enough for diehard urban fantasy fans to enjoy. I don’t know if you intend to write more novels along this vein, but I’d certainly be up for them. B-

My regards,

Jia

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I am ordinarily not a fan of the holiday focused book although I know that these are popular with many many readers (including my dear blogging partner, Jayne).   However, I did enjoy your first book with Harlequin, A Christmas Wedding.   That book contained quite a few out of the ordinary elements including the age of the couple as well as the characterization of the matriarch that I wanted to give this one a try.   I was glad I did.

The Christmas Present is more traditional in its plot (lovers from the opposites sides of the track) but the characterization is still strong.   Vivian Wentworth is a young divorce attorney in a large, prestigious firm in San Francisco.   Her senior partner takes on a pro bono case representing a young man accused of murdering his pregnant girlfriend and assigns this case to Vivian.   She does not have any experience in a criminal law and feels that this can only turn out badly.

Rafael Cardoza runs the community center, Helping Hands, where Vivian’s client is currently residing. Rafa believes strongly that Diego is innocent and is just as convinced that Vivian is out to screw Diego over.   Rafa learned early on that rich girls liked to have men like him to be a dirty side secret and at the first hint of a public relationship and the rich girl would cry assault.   Rafa went to prison because of a rich girl.

Vivian begins to investigate the murder and becomes convinced that Diego is innocent.   Her beliefs become cemented as she interviews dirty cops and fields threats to back off.   Her parents, interested more in their social standing, become concerned with her insistence on trying the case instead of arranging for a plea.   The case is beginning to get increased attention.   Vivian’s father and mother remind her that she needs to be concerned about her standing with the firm because it is clear that Richard, the senior partner, assigned this case knowing Vivian had no experience in criminal law. It’s as if he is waiting for her to fail.

Rafa has a big chip on his shoulder.   He struggles between thinking that he’s not good enough for Vivian and that Vivian isn’t good enough for him.   As Rafa and Vivian spend more time together, Rafa sees how smart Vivian is, how steadfast she is, and how attractive she is.   He is drawn to her but against his wishes.   He is afraid of what his family will say and how being with him will cause rifts in Vivian’s family.

Vivian and Rafa’s family are polar opposites.   Vivian’s father and mother plan holiday trips without their daughter.   Their family get togethers are to ensure that Vivian is upholding the family name.   Rafa’s family is big and colorful.   Their family celebrations are to enjoy everyone’s company.

Vivian simply didn’t care enough for the San Francisco social scene to be bothered either by Rafa’s criminal background or his less than perfect job. The only thing that prevented them from being together was Rafa’s fear and his pride.  I enjoyed the legal part of the story although Vivian’s initial meeting with Diego took place in front of Rafa which I think would be a violation of the attorney client privilege.    The mystery surrounding Diego and the murder of his pregnant girlfriend seemed a bit far fetched but it didn’t detract from love story between Vivian and Rafa.

I appreciated Rafa as a non caucasion, WASP male protagonist.   While class played a bigger role in the conflict than race, Rafa couldn’t have been replaced by any other white male character.   The story didn’t revolve around Christmas but it did use the holiday as a scene to bring the two together.   B-

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased at eHarlequin.com or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

This book was provided to the reviewer by either the author or publisher. The reviewer did not pay for this book but received it free. The Harlequin Affiliate link earns us an affiliate fee if you purchase a book through the link and the Sony link is in conjunction with the sponsorship deal we made for the year of 2009. We do not earn an affiliate fee from Sony through the book link.

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Here’s a golden oldie, or moldy oldie if you don’t care for it. The movie is based on a play written by Ferenc Molnar and was filmed twice before this final one was made. It’s Grace Kelly’s next-to-the-last film made before her marriage to a real Prince and she never looked lovelier.

It has always been the overriding ambition of Princess Beatrix (Jesse Royce Landis who also played GK’s mother in “To Catch a Thief”) to see her daughter Princess Alexandra (Grace Kelly) become a Queen. Their family was forced from the throne of their tiny middle European country by Napoleon (whose name Princess Beatrix will not allowed to be mentioned in her presence) and she’s aware that it’s probably their last hope to regain some stature by cementing the ties between their dispossessed family and their cousins, the reigning royal family headed by Queen Maria Dominika (Agnes Moorehead) and her son and heir Prince Albert (Alec Guinness).

When Beatrix gets word that Albert is on his way to visit them, she immediately pulls out all the stops and whips the palace staff, and her family, into a frenzy in order to present Alexandra in her best light. But after Albert arrives for his short four day stay, he spends more time duck hunting, inspecting the modern dairy and with Alexandra’s younger brothers than with the slightly shy Alexandra. What’s a mother on a deadline to do? Use a little old fashioned jealousy, that’s what.

She instructs Alexandra to invite the boys’ young and handsome tutor Dr. Nicholas Agi (Louis Jourdan) to the final night ball in the hopes that it will spur Albert to a proposal. Instead, to her horror, things backfire as Agi, emboldened by this chance of which he never dared dream, confesses his secret love to Alexandra. Now whom will she choose?

As I’ve seen mentioned in other reviews, the plot for this story is obviously dated even by the fifties. The world it depicts was long gone even then – either during WWI or by the end of WWII. But while I’m watching it, I try and lose myself in what it shows as still existing among a people who have no clue that their way of life is in its twilight. And yet, the film does hint at what is to come.

It’s all about the differences in classes – the old class of royalty who are shown doing little beyond ceremonial duties and being instructed in how to “be royal” and the rising middle class who will take over due to their drive, education and ambition. We see the best and the worst of both classes and are left to decide on our own if Alexandra makes the correct decision or not.

There is a great deal of dry comedy throughout the story which Alec Guinness pulls off in style. But he also shows great tact, after an initial spell of pique, in dealing with Alexandra’s conflicting feelings. Another surprisingly fun character is Symphorosa (played by Estelle Winwood) whose pithy one liners often embarrass Beatrix as she’s trying to make a good impression on Albert. Agnes Moorehead is regally grand and imperious in a role that had little time on screen but which she made the most of.

Landis beautifully balances Beatrix on the knife edge of likability. We can see her as a woman just trying to see to the future of her family – the scene when she offers contradictory advice to Alexandra on how to behave around Albert is quite funny – as well as a pushy, slightly snobby royal who is obviously shocked when one of the lower orders dares to have feelings for her daughter. Kelly floats coolly through her role until the moment when her passions are aroused and she comes to life. There’s a late scene when she lets Albert “have it” for the way he’s acted towards the family and of course the final scene where she comes to terms with the direction her life will take.

The movie has a slightly bittersweet ending. One might wish for it to end another way but given the way Alexandra has been raised her entire life, I wasn’t surprised. I’m not entirely convinced that her protestations of love for Agi are real. Perhaps or perhaps not. As Albert reminds her, she just kept her feelings so controlled and beneath the surface for so long that when they finally burst free, she’s not sure how to handle them.

As far as I can tell, “The Swan” isn’t available on DVD but there are two ways for it to be viewed. Someone has loaded it on youtube (type in “The Swan-part 1″ — note the hyphen is important). I’d love to know which language it’s subtitle in. It’s also being shown on Turner Classic Movies in November (right now it’s scheduled at midnight on the 26th/27th but check closer to the date to be sure).

~Jayne

FTC discloser – I watched this on television.

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Bess Walsh needs time away from her unhappy marriage. She finds it at the beach house she inherited from her parents. There, in the water, Bess fantasizes about Nick, the boy she loved and lost twenty years before. She touches herself and soon she feels Nick touching her. The lovemaking is intense, unforgettable.

But the next morning Bess is shocked to see that her fantasy lover hasn’t evaporated with the night. Nick is still there, and though physically he hasn’t aged a day since they parted company twenty years earlier, he feels solid and corporeal, and has an emotional maturity he did not have back in those days.

Bess has missed Nick so badly that she does not want to question his reappearance or interrogate his twenty year old disappearance. She knows it must involve something that she won’t like hearing. Instead, she drowns the questions in touch, in passionate sex that makes the rest of the world fade away.

Bess and Nick’s past is revealed in chapters that alternate with the present day storyline. Back then, Bess was a twenty year old college student who came to Bethany Beach to earn money during the summer. The beach house belonged to her grandparents, but to less well-to-do kids like her friend Missy, it made Bess seem like a snob.

At a party at Missy’s house, Bess was attracted to a boy named Nick, whom Missy told her was gay. Like Missy, Nick didn’t have much money, nor did he have much of a family. He was a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Although back home she had a boyfriend of four years, Andy, Bess had a strong suspicion that Andy was cheating on her. She described Andy to Nick as her “sort of” boyfriend.

When Nick learned that Missy lied to Bess about his sexual orientation, he proposed that Nick and Bess pretend there was something between them to get back at Missy. Bess agreed, but the game became more than that to her. Even after being warned about Nick’s bad reputation, she couldn’t help being drawn to him.

Now, twenty years later, the attraction is just as potent. Bess only leaves the house to get groceries, and spends most of her time in bed with Nick. When, on one shopping trip, Bess stops at Sugarland, the caramel corn shop where she worked back in the old days, she’s surprised to find that Eddie, who was an awkward, geeky boy with a crush on her back then, now owns the business. Bess tells Eddie that her teenage sons will be coming to stay with her soon, and he suggests that they can work at Sugarland. But these intrusions of the real world are forgotten when Bess returns home to Nick’s arms.

Is Bess losing her mind, and is Nick a manifestation of her imagination? Or is Nick real, at least as real as a spirit can be? Why is the past haunting Bess, and is it possible for her to let go of it? What will happen to Bess’s marriage? What will happen to her relationship with Nick when her teenage sons arrive? And what was it that happened twenty years ago?

These questions are answered slowly over the course of this unusual book, so I will not spoil such discoveries for readers.

I enjoyed Deeper and its two sympathetic protagonists. Both Bess and Nick make mistakes, but both of them are vulnerable, each caring more than they have the courage to show the other for a long time. Knowing there was not going to be a happily ever after for this couple made the book bittersweet and poignant.

Deeper is not a perfect book — the past storyline took a long time to grab a hold of me and to become as interesting as the present day story, since the more mature Nick and Bess had suffered more and therefore had more at stake in their relationship. Also, there was a lot of sex in the present day storyline, and sometimes it felt like too much of a good thing because their emotional relationship interested me more than their physical one.

On another, less significant note, I realize that this may seem like an idiosyncratic nitpick, but I was frequently distracted by Bess’s name. I’m of Bess’s generation and I have never known anyone my age who goes by the name Bess. Beth, Liz, even Betsy, yes. But Bess? No. It sounds grandmotherly to me, and the fact that in the past storyline, none of the other kids her age ever commented on her name seemed odd, when I kept wanting to substitute “Beth” in my mind.

But I was won over by the book’s freshness and by the compassion I felt for both Bess and Nick. Their longing for one another was so intense that they wanted to ignore the reality of their situation rather than face what they had lost. While I didn’t understand all the choices Bess had made during the time she and Nick were apart, I wanted her to find happiness somehow. And Nick was even more vulnerable and appealing. How I wished I could turn back the clock for him.

As I was reading, I could almost imagine Deeper as a movie. I could almost see the beach house, the water, and Sugarland. The vivid detail is one of your great strengths as a writer. The way the characters in your books feel real to me, even in a surreal situation like this one, is another.

I kept wishing for an ending in which an older, living Nick reunited with Bess. I knew that such an ending would have been a copout for this book, and that I could expect something more realistic than that from you. When the ending came, it was the right, appropriate ending, and though it was bittersweet, it also satisfied me. B-/B for Deeper.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

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Clockwork Heart takes place in a fictional Industrial Age city-state called Ondinium. One of Ondinium’s industries is the mining of ondium, a precious metal lighter than air. Ondium is used to make wings for Ondinium’s icarii, flying messengers allowed to travel freely between Ondinium’s three sectors.

Ondinium is a divided city. Its citizens worship a goddess known as the Lady of the Forge and believe in reincarnation. Most of Ondinium’s citizens are divided into three castes, and the members of each caste live in separate sectors, and have their caste marks tattooed on their cheeks. Upper caste citizens are believed to be more enlightened than others, and are referred to as exalted. In theory the icarii, who do not belong to any caste, don’t have to defer to them, but the reality is different.

The story begins when its heroine, an icarus named Taya, comes to the aid of an exalted woman and her child who are trapped in a sabotaged wireferry. Taya is the closest icarus to spot Viera Octavus and her young son Ariq, and she carries Ariq down to safety, and then, with the help of her fellow icarus and ex-boyfriend Pyke, rescues Viera.

Taya and Pyke are questioned by a lictor, Ondinium’s equivalent of a police detective, who suggests that a group of anti-technology terrorists called the Torn Cards may have sabotaged the wireferry. The lictor asks Taya to watch out for anything suspicious from the air, and report such activities to the lictors.

Shortly afterwards, Taya delivers a message to the office of Decatur Alister Forlore, an exalted member of the ruling Council, at Oporphyr Tower. Taya arrives to find Decatur Forlore conversing with the man who has just finished repairing his clock. Unlike Decatur Forlore, who wears an exalted’s robes and jewels, the repairman is dressed in cheap clothing, so when he turns around, Taya is shocked to see that the repairman, too, has the exalted markings tattooed on his cheeks. He is a man who has chosen to live outside his caste.

The two men, Alister and Cristof, are brothers. They are also cousins to the woman Taya rescued, and they question Taya about Viera’s welfare. After Cristof departs, Alister offers Taya wine and flirts with her, and she is attracted to him enough so that she has to remind herself that she and Alister belong to different castes.

Later that night, Taya attends a family wedding in the low-caste Tertius sector. On her way home she is set upon by thugs who want to steal her ondium wings. Before they can do so, Cristof, Decatur Forlore’s brother, appears and helps her fight them off. Cristof takes Taya to his clock shop to care for her wings and they strike up a conversation. But when Taya leaves the shop, there is an explosion in a nearby refinery, and she begins to wonder if Cristof had something to do with it.

In the coming days, Taya meets both Cristof and Alister again. She goes on a date with Alister, who is as charming and friendly as his brother is surly and aloof. She is also feted by exalted in honor of her rescue of Viera and Ariq from the sabotaged wireferry, and she learns of Alister’s suspicions that the terrorists’ activities may be related to a program he is writing for the computer known as the Great Engine, which helps run Ondinium’s society.

The program, “Clockwork Heart,” is designed to predict which couples will have happy marriages. Alister thinks that the terrorists known as the Torn Cards may have learned of the program and may be willing to stop at nothing in order to prevent its use. And although Taya suspects that Cristof may be one of those terrorists, she finds that she is drawn to him and to Alister both…

And now for the conversational portion of this review:

Janine: Let’s start our discussion of Clockwork Heart with the question of genre. How would you categorize this book, or would you? There is no genre label on the spine of the book, and after thinking about it, I think it’s a true genre-bender, with elements of fantasy, mystery, romance, and science fiction of a steampunk flavor. What do you think?

Jaili: I went into Clockwork Heart thinking it was a steampunk historical romance because that was how it was described during a discussion about book recommendations. However, it isn’t as I expected. It’s genre-defying, but at the same time it isn’t. It’s a patchwork of genres, which turned out to be one of the best strengths – and the biggest weakness – of this novel.

Janine: Genre distinctions are important because they set reader expectations. I have to admit that in my case, I wanted more romance than what there was in this book. Yes, there is a romantic relationship that eventually develops, and it even has a happy ending, but it felt kind of cursory to me, and that made the book disappointing to me, despite the fact that it had several strong suits.

Jaili: You said it all. I also had no idea it featured a love triangle. If I had known, I wouldn’t have touched Clockwork Heart because I have a terrible habit of peeking at the end to see who the heroine will end up with. I used to suffer disappointment with other novels when the heroine didn’t choose the one I thought she should have chosen, hence the peek-at-the-end habit. I only do this with love-triangle novels. Because I don’t like peeking at the end, I avoid them. However, I could guess early who Taya might end up with because it was clear who the author favoured, which means I didn’t need to look at the end. Thank goodness!

Janine: I’m laughing because I peek at the end of love triangles also! And I did it in this case because I couldn’t guess. But since I don’t want to spoil which man Taya ends up with, I’ll just say that I felt they both had their problems. Alister, though elegant and loaded with charm, was a bit too slick and cavalier at first, while Cristof was a bit too prickly and standoffish at first. I wasn’t sure that either of them could make Taya happy, and I wasn’t completely convinced that the one she ended up with would do so, even at the end of the book.

Jaili: To be honest, there were moments when I felt Taya was a Mary Sue because not only the brothers were interested in her, there was her ex-boyfriend who seemed to carry a torch for her and there were a couple of other men who seemed to flutter their eyelashes at Taya. I think that contributed to a feeling the actual pairing wasn’t that convincing. I have heard, though, that there will be a sequel. Perhaps their relationship in the sequel will solidify enough to make it convincing.

Janine: Interesting thought about so many men being attracted to Taya. I didn’t pay attention to the Mary Sue aspect of that, but it’s a good point.

Let’s talk a bit about the book’s strengths. I was most impressed with the richly detailed world Pagliassotti crafted. Ondinium was a very complex place, with the castes that made up its social strata, the reincarnation religion, the 19th century technology, and the many characters which included foreign thieves, politicians, lictors, vendors, miners, programmers and icarii.

Jaili: Oh, yes. The worldbuilding was fantastic. I was truly impressed. There were many clear influences from a couple of Eastern cultures by the way of the caste system, the religion and some other elements, but I think Pagliassotti made it her own. Just about.

That said I had the impression it was a historical with a familiar setting, but it wasn’t. I’m still not even sure of the time setting. The only thing I know is it has 19th century-style technology, but the time setting? I have no idea. The past, the present or the future? I simply don’t know.

I think I even wondered if it was supposed to be similar to the society portrayed in Frank Herbert’s SF fantasy novel, Dune (which I have to say is the only SF fantasy novel I read! To my fantasy-mad husband’s distress, I’m not a fan of fantasy novels.) There is a slight similarity between the societies of Dune and Clockwork Heart, but I have very limited experience with fantasy novels, so perhaps my comparison may be wrong.

Janine: I think it was a fantastical steampunkish world, rather than one that has a connection to our own past, present or future. I agree that the blend of East and West worked because Pagliassotti made it her own. I was impressed by the way all the elements of the worldbuilding meshed almost seamlessly. The combination of complex yet accessible worldbuilding and the sympathetic characters reminded me a bit of some of Sharon Shinn’s books, like Heart of Gold and Jovah’s Angel.

Jaili: I take it back. Dune isn’t the only SF fantasy novel I’ve read because I’ve also read Jovah’s Angel! It’s a good comparison. You’re right, it does remind me of JA. I also agree that the elements merged very well, which is impressive for a debut author.

Janine: I thought the mystery was well constructed in the sense that I didn’t guess exactly what was going on and who the various villains were in advance, and I am usually good at sussing out such things.

Jaili: I guessed early and was proven right in the end, but there was little enough to hang my guess in question until it was confirmed. In fairness to Pagliassotti, I heavily read and watch mystery and crime fiction as well as romantic suspense. There are very few that surprise me nowadays. With this in mind I thought she did well with the mystery angle.

Janine: As I’ve hinted above, I think the sympathetic nature of the characters was another strength. But there was also a weakness in the characterization, which I didn’t really become aware of until I started wracking my brain to try to figure out why I didn’t enjoy the book more: The major characters didn’t really have much in the way of layers or hidden dimensions. I would have loved for the characters to be explored more in the course of the story, but for the most part, with the heroes of the book, what we saw was what we got.

Jaili: As I mentioned earlier, the book’s strength is its patchwork of genres, but it’s also the biggest weakness. It didn’t allow me to invest. When I read a romance novel, for instance, I adjust to-’I suppose-’a framework of a romantic story to invest myself in characters and their developing relationship in spite of its genre; let it be SF, mystery, urban fantasy and whatnot. With a crime novel regardless of whether it has a romantic element or not, I’d adjust mentally to figure out the mystery along with the fictional investigator.

Clockwork Heart didn’t have a major genre that I could adjust myself to. Because of Clockwork Heart’s genre-defying nature, I couldn’t cope with having to switch between mental adjustments constantly. Mystery. Fantasy. Romance. Adventure. I usually can cope with a typical novel with at least two elements, e.g. romantic suspense or futuristic romance, but Clockwork Heart is, in essence, a fantasy novel that has its own terminology with a world that I wasn’t familiar with. I think readers who enjoy fantasy novels wouldn’t have this problem, though.

Anyroad, it was interfering with my enjoyment of the story, so I chose to focus just on characters instead and found that they, as you say, didn’t have much depth or layers, which was quite disappointing.

In spite of all that I liked the characters, especially Taya. She was the saving grace because if I hadn’t liked her, I wouldn’t have finish the novel.

Janine: I agree that Taya was appealing even if she didn’t have as much depth as I would have liked.

Several of my favorite novels have blended genres, including Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, Byatt’s Possession, Japrisot’s A Very Long Engagement, and Sharon Shinn’s angel books, among others. So I tend to think it all depends on how well integrated the genre elements are and whether such books are satisfying on more than one level.

It’s time to grade Clockwork Heart. This book is a tough one to grade, because my head and my heart are split. Usually my enjoyment level goes hand in hand with my intellectual assessment of a book. In this case, though, my enjoyment was no more than a C, while I think the craftsmanship deserves at least a B. I had a cold when I read the book, and it is possible I would have enjoyed it more had I been healthy, so I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt and a B-.

Jaili: I had no idea I would have problems with grading this book! It’s an excellent fantasy novel, no doubt. Even more so when we consider it’s a debut. I read somewhere online that Pagliassotti wrote the first draft of Clockwork Heart for a popular annual online event, National Novel Writing Month. Very impressive. As a steampunk-based fantasy novel, it’s excellent. Her use of 19th century technology in this setting is out of the world. As a romance novel? It’s so-so and I could do without the love triangle. I’m not a fan of love triangles, to be fair. A mystery? Also, so-so. Like the patchwork nature of Clockwork Heart, my initial grade was a patchwork: A, B and C.

I’m still disappointed it’s not a steampunk historical romance, but it gets an A- from me because of Pagliassotti’s craftsmanship, the worldbuilding, the steampunk element, and the fact I enjoyed it.

This book can be purchased in mass market from an independent bookstore or in ebook format from Fictionwise.

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One thing I’m trying to do this year is expand my reading horizons.   I usually stay within my favorite genres of fantasy, paranormals, and young adult, but sometimes you need variety to keep things interesting.   So when I was glancing through the eHarlequin website earlier this month, your book caught my eye because of the interracial couple on the cover.   I normally don’t read romantic suspense but my interest was piqued and Harlequin/Silhouette books are short enough that I don’t feel like I’m making a massive time commitment if things don’t work out as well as I’d hoped.

Anamaria Duquesne comes from a long line of psychic women.   When she was a little girl, she predicted her mother’s death.   Now over twenty years later, she returns at her grandmother’s request to learn more about the circumstances surrounding that tragic event.

Robbie Calloway is a lawyer who’s been hired to keep an eye on her.   When you make a living by telling fortunes, you can’t help but end up accused of being a swindler, even if you’re the real deal.   And make no mistake, Anamaria is the real deal.   (I guess I wasn’t able to completely stay away from paranormal elements, after all!)   We’re led to believe that Robbie’s client is worried Anamaria is going to take advantage of his wife’s gullibility the same way her mother once did.   But it soon becomes apparent that everyone in Copper Lake has a secret, some of which they’d prefer stay buried.

I admit I was initially concerned when I started learning about Anamaria’s family.     The Duquesne women are a long line of single mothers who have children — always daughters — out of wedlock, all of which are fathered by different men.   If that’s not a racial stereotype, I don’t know what is.   And while I think their collective free-spirited outlook on their lifestyle and their being portrayed as strong, independent women might be indicative of a subversion of this cliché, I remained uneasy about this aspect from start to finish.   Different readers might have different reactions to this, one way or another.

In addition, her mother, Glory, fits the tragic mulatta archetype at first glance and that lingered in the back of my mind as I read the book, bracing myself for the hammer to come down at any moment.   When the truth about Glory’s death is revealed, I ultimately concluded she didn’t really fit this stereotype but again, I think this is another aspect readers could go either way on.

When it comes to the actual story, I’m not sure I would call this book suspenseful.   I’ll be truthful and say this is the first book I’ve ever read from any Harlequin/Silhouette romantic suspense line so I have no measuring stick to guide me.   As Anamaria’s investigation into the past continues, there are escalating threats to her safety but they never struck me as particularly dangerous to her life.   Maybe I just have some preconceived notions about romantic suspense that need addressing (and destroying), if I always think they involve women in peril.

Even when it comes to the romantic aspect, I’m not sure I completely bought it.   The Duquesne women are known for “loving hard and unwisely” and it seems like Anamaria knew Robbie would be that man for her at first sight.   That might explain why I have a hard time swallowing it since the destined love trope generally tends not to work for me.   As for Robbie, I also had a hard time warming up to him.   He’s the lazy playboy son of a rich family and is used to all the privilege that affords him.   I don’t understand how he can even call himself a lawyer without laughing since he hardly does any work!   But once he started falling for Anamaria, his outlook starts changing in ways that softened me towards him.

This brings me to the aspect I liked best: the treatment of race and class in the context of interracial relationships in a small, deep Southern town.   It’s not glossed over or brushed aside.   Anamaria comes from a long line of women used to being kept as secret lovers to what often are rich, white men.   Robbie comes from a background where he’s expected to marry a blue-eyed blond and have a proper, class-appropriate marriage.   That’s the point at which their relationship starts so watching their respective outlooks change — Anamaria wonders why she can’t marry the man she loves hard and unwisely and Robbie wonders if marrying a blue-eyed blond is what he really wants when the future children he imagines are all daughters who look like Anamaria — was the most engrossing part of the novel for me.   It’s not ever preachy or overt but it’s there and I found that very realistic given their respective backgrounds.

I also liked how achieving their HEA was about fighting tradition for what you truly want.   Robbie’s circumstances are obviously a matter of tradition.   Marry a white, blue-eyed blond socialite from a rich family and have a marriage and family that’s expected from someone from your social status and class.   But Anamaria’s circumstances are a tradition too, in their own way.   The Duquesne women call their propensity to fall for the wrong men a curse, but is that really the case?   Or is it a self-fulfilling prophecy that passes from one generation to the next?

When it comes to a grade, I’m a bit torn.   I feel that the plot itself is a C+, especially in light of the real reason Robbie was hired to tail Anamaria in the first place, which I thought was abruptly revealed.   On the other hand, I thought the portrayal of race and class as it affects a relationship was really well-handled and for that reason, I settled on a B-.   From looking at your backlist, I see this was apparently the last book in a series about the Calloway brothers, so I think I might pick the first three up sometime in the future.

My regards,
Jia

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or ebook format from the Sony Store and other etailers.

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Some have told me that Seduce Me at Sunrise was as good as Kleypas’ penultimate book, Dreaming of You, featuring Derek Craven and Sara Fielding. The book had some similar underpinnings with the hero being of the lower class with a grotesque background who feels completely unworthy to be loved by the heroine, a gently bred young woman. What I thought was similar was the strong emotional connection between Merripen and Win, the leads in Seduce Me at Sunrise.

There’s a papable physical attraction, but even more than that is the fierce emotional ties that bind them.

Win says to Merripen:

I am running after you, and life, in desperate pursuit. My dream is that someday you will both turn and let me catch you. That dream carries me through every night I long to tell you so many things, but I am not free yet I hope to be well enough someday to shock you again, with far more pleasing results.

Merripen thinks of Win:

Because it wasn’t hers to give.

Your heart is mine, he thought savagely. It belongs to me.

Winnifred was struck by scarlet fever and while she survived, her physical state was greatly weakened. She was pretty much an invalid. When her sister marries a wealthy man, the family now has the means to get Win medical care. Win chooses a risky and experimental clinic in France. It may kill her but it also may make her well. She feels that if she wasn’t so frail and delicate, if she wasn’t an invalid, then Merripen and she can be together.

Merripen would rather Winnifred stays an invalid for the rest of her life because at least she would be alive and with him. Merripen is a gypsy who was taken in by the Hathaway family when he was left for dead by his tribe. He’s fiercely protective of the family and loves Win desperately. He believes can’t ever hold her or really have her because he isn’t good enough for her given his background. His existence on this world, though, continues only because she is here. Win goes off, gets better, and returns but after two years and one letter from Merripen Win wonders if she shouldn’t just move on. So when she returns, she brings back her doctor, Julian Harrow. Julian and she have grown close and Win brings him home with her so that he can have the chance to woo her.

If romance readers read primarily for a visceral reaction, this book will be hugely successful because Merripen and Win’s strength of feeling for each other is remarkable. The problem, for me, however, was that the details, character motivations, and plot were kind of a puzzle to me. Merripen mistrusts Harrow from the beginning. There is something off about Harrow yet Merripen does nothing to protect Win from Harrow even when she wants him to, even when he has the perfect opportunity to do so. This reaction was so curious given that Merripen loved Win more than the breath in his own body.

There were long stretches of story given over to revisiting Amelia and Cam which I thought were pleasant but unnecessary, particularly when I really didn’t understand Merripen’s motivations or Win’s motivations.   The villian’s motivations were as murky as anyone else’s and given that villianry plays an important part in Win and Merripen’s emotional breakthrough, it was important for me to have some kind of understanding as to the why the villian acted in a certain manner.

As brave as Win was, she certainly played a secondary role to Merripen, Cam, Leo (her brother) and sometimes even Amelia. Indeed, I found that Leo had the best lines and seemed to steal whatever scene he was in:

“Most women have a tragic attraction to rakes,” he said regretfully. “I really shouldn’t use it against them.”

and

“Now you’ll weep for a different cause,” he told Amelia. “Because as you see, I’ve come back as well.”

She flew to him, and was swallowed in a strong embrace. “The French wouldn’t have you?” she asked, her voice muffled against his chest.

“On the contrary, they adored me. But there’s no entertainment in staying where one is wanted.”

and

The comment seemed to incense her beyond all expectation. “I am aware of your reputation as a skirt chaser, my lord. I find no cause for humor in it.”

Leo didn’t think she found cause for humor in much of anything. “My reputation has lasted in spite of a nearly three-year absence?” he asked, affecting a tone of pleased surprise.

“You’re proud of it?”

“Well, of course. It’s easy to have a good reputation-’ you merely have to do nothing. But earning a bad reputation- well, that takes some effort.”

It’s probably an understatement to say that I look forward to Leo’s book. His wry, sardonic way lent a good dose of humor to a book that could have been overwrought with angst. The emotional tone of the book was well balanced. It was just that the machinations of the characters often seemed contrived as did events that furthered the plot. The ending, in particular, had an air of convenient romancelandia scriptedness to it. A reader is not likely to be disappointed in having read the book, but I did hope for something more. B-

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells. No ebook format. Come on, SMP, what are you waiting for?

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