As I read At Your Pleasure, I wondered if you will ever write a book I dislike. It seems unlikely. I love three of the books you’ve written and the two I don’t love—A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal and Wicked Becomes You—I like tremendously. I am enamored of your use of language, your deftness of plots, the complexity of your lovers’ relationships, and the crackling chemistry in your love scenes. In short, I am a big fan.

So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone I think At Your Pleasure is a very good book. Its hero, Adrian, might be my favorite of all your heroes—although I am terribly partial to Phin (from Written on Your Skin) and Julian (from The Duke of Shadows.) The historical context of the novel, the year 1715, a year after the coronation of the Hanoverian King George, is an unusual and fascinating one. So often the conflict between lovers centers around class but in this book, the line that divides Adrian and Nora, the heroine, is that of religion.

In 1715, in England, Catholics, even Catholic aristocrats, lived under restrictive laws. There were limits on the right to own and inherit property. Catholics paid special taxes, couldn’t have their children educated in Catholic schools, worship openly, or vote. The Settlement Act of 1701 forbad any Catholic or anyone married to a Catholic from sitting on the throne. At the same time, a significant number of the Tory peerage, most of whom were not Catholic, wanted to see a Scottish Catholic, James Stuart, on the throne rather than the current king, German born George I. It was a fraught time rife with tenuous political alliances.

Your heroine, Nora, the widowed Marchioness of Towe, is a Colville and her family is fiercely Tory. The Colvilles have been punished for their abiding loyalty to the Stuart King. Her father, now stripped of his titles and most of his wealth and property, is hiding out in France, plotting with those who would overthrow the current king. Her brother, David, is on the run, hiding in France and then in England, determined, at any cost, to implement his father’s dreams. Nora is the only one of her family living openly in England, in the family seat of Hodderby. Nora doesn’t necessarily share the sentiments of the men in her family but she is deeply loyal to her brother and will do whatever he asks of her, no matter how much it risks her happiness and/or safety. One of the most deadly things David has done is fill the wine casks in the cellars of Hodderby with volatile gunpowder which he plans to use in the upcoming Jacobite rebellion. Nora can tell no one of her brother’s plans—he’s a traitor to the crown—and she lives each day in trepidation, afraid the goals of her father and brother will destroy not only her, but Hodderby which she alone loves.

One night, as Nora readies for bed, a party of riders from the King arrives, led by Adrian Ferrers, the Earl of Rivenham. Rivenham, a favored Whig advisor to King George, carries a Writ of Parliament allowing him and his men unfettered access to Hodderby. Adrian has the right to stay as long as he pleases, command all who live there, and search the house freely. His ultimate goal is to flush out David Colville who will then be taken to the Tower and tried for his traitorous crimes. Adrian Ferrers loathes David Colville for more than just the latter’s politics. Adrian still feels the wound on his shoulder given to him, eight years ago, by David on the night David almost killed Adrian for the crime of loving Nora.

Nora, David, and Adrian grew up together—Rivenham land abuts that of the Colvilles. The Rivenhams, however, are a Catholic family and the Colvilles are of the Church of England. Adrian and Nora fell in love when they were young and both paid a terrible price for doing so. Adrian was beaten within an inch of his life by David, and shipped, by his family, to France to escape the wrath of the then powerful Colvilles. Nora was forced by her family to marry a cruel man in order to cover up her affair with Adrian. Adrian, when he returned to from France to England, was determined, at all costs, to protect his family from the sort of violence inflicted upon him by the Colvilles and their like. He renounced Catholicism, and used his charm, intellect, and will to become a powerful man in the English Court. His Catholic background makes him a target of many in the Court—if Adrian captures David, a Tory Jacobite traitor, and sees him hung, Adrian will augment his political power in the Court.

Nora is devastated to encounter Adrian again. For years, after she was married and he’d returned to England, she would see him at Court, and he never once spoke to her. She believes he hates her and, when she realizes he’s come to Hodderby to destroy her family, she tells herself she hates him too. When Adrian installs himself at Hodderby, he initially treats her cruelly, and she, terrified he will discover all she is doing for her brother, responds with defiance. Adrian is sure Nora knows the whereabouts of David and he pushes her hard, even torturing her with sleep deprivation. As the days pass, though, and Nora and Adrian begin to talk about their past which is full of tragedy and unshared secrets, their relationship shifts. They wend their way from enmity to something else, full of danger and desire. There seems no possible way they could ever find happiness together and yet, the longer Adrian is at Hodderby, the more he and Nora are drawn to one another.

I liked the relationship between Adrian and Nora. Adrian is a great hero—he’s as alpha as he needs to be but that doesn’t keep him from caring deeply and movingly for Nora. As he lives with her and confronts the truth he fears—he’s never stopped loving her—he decides to do whatever he must to keep her safe.

Persuasion would not sway her. Let her believe as she liked; it would make no difference to his course. Though she did not know it yet, a private battle had begun between them. To win it, he would use every weapon at his disposal, of brain and body both. Her injured feelings, her brother’s life—none of it signified if victory ensured her survival. He would save her from David Colville’s folly—no matter what it took.

Nora is harder to feel for. She’s so heedlessly loyal to her brother it’s excruciating to watch her. David has not only filled the house she lives in—and he’s abandoned care of—with deadly gunpowder, he’s scheming to marry Nora to yet another man who doesn’t love her, all to the aim of furthering David’s political goals. Nora’s biggest enemy is herself. Whether she is fighting against feeling the passion Adrian’s touch arouses in her or forcing herself to risk Hodderby and all who live there simply because David tells her she must, she makes choices hard to sympathize with. That said, she’s a woman in a time when women were subservient to the will of men. She watched both her sister and her mother die in childbirth; her brother and father have never seen her as their peer despite all they have had her do for them. She truly loved Adrian and, when she lost him, she also lost her freedom, illusory as it may have been. I found myself forgiving her foolish choices because I felt she’d lost the ability to value herself. Even when Adrian makes it clear he desires her, she doesn’t think it says anything about her charms.

She knew now that a man’s need for a woman was no special compliment. Men had endless needs. Her father, her brother, her late husband—all of them impatiently had required her attention day after day, year after year. She had grown wise enough not to be flattered by need. She had learned to be grateful, instead, for silence and indifference.

When she realizes she still loves Adrian, the realization fills her with sorrow. She thinks,

There was no use in longing for what she could not have. She would never be a man. Never travel the world. Never speak freely, with laughter, to those not her equal. She would never have him. Or a child.

Nora can’t see her way to any sort of joy so it is left to Adrian to force it upon her. And he does. He takes her to bed and she is able to respond only because he gives her no other choice.

Here was what she had forgotten: true desire. Unbearable, exquisite. No room for fear or conscience. Wanting, needing, to feel his mastery: be devoured, laid bare, filled, left no say in it.

Adrian not only loves Nora, he makes her believe she is worth loving. As he does so, surrounded by men who would like to see him fall, trying to figure out how to take David to the Tower without destroying Nora, the love between Adrian and Nora is terrifying. But, as you so eloquently write,

What is love but a great rebellion against caution and sense?

When I finished this book, I thought for a long time about all the issues it raised—the horrible power of religious zeal, the disenfranchisement of women throughout the centuries, the confines of familial love, the harrowing choices people make in order to survive. I flipped back through the pages and re-read sentences I loved—ones like:

Adrian had never felt Him save in His absence.

Otherwise she excelled in keeping occupied at endeavors too feminine to allow his company.

He meant to follow her down, but the vision she made arrested him: hair tousled, slipping from its pins; sober dark skirts knocked over her knees to reveal embroidered stockings and slim legs.

A week later, I began to write this review and as I did so, I thought not so much about the weighty issues underpinning your plot or the loveliness of your prose. Instead, I thought about Adrian and Nora and how much I cared for their story. I thought about how, yet again, you’d written a book I loved. I give it an A-.

Thank you,

Dabney

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Written on Your Skin by Meredith Duran
2. REVIEW: A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal by Meredith Duran
3. REVIEW: Wicked Becomes You by Meredith Duran

The Great Famine: Ireland’s Agony 1845-1852  by Ciarán Ó Murchadha: Because apparently one book about innocent people starving to death just wasn’t enough for me. Actually, it wasn’t until I started this book that I realized I had inadvertently grabbed it just after finishing the book on the Siege of Leningrad. This is a well-written book, but too dry and scholarly for me. There are some human moments and personal anecdotes, but they are a bit too few and far between. At the same time some of the details are powerful enough that as a reader I was appalled at the neglect and cruelty forced upon the victims of the famine. The logic of the powers in England is a thing to behold, as when reports that potato crops would fail for a second year in a row prompted closure of relief measures, to avoid the poor becoming too “dependent” on aid. (Not a problem once they are dead of starvation or disease!) I saw some disturbing parallels between the callous attitudes shown by the privileged class in 19th century Britain and similar attitudes found in some quarters in the United States today.

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At Your Pleasure by Meredith Duran: I have really liked every Duran book I’ve read, and this was no exception. At the same time I think maybe it was…slightly forgettable? I don’t know; somehow I just feel like it hasn’t stayed with me the way a really good book should. But sometimes that has more to do with my mood or what’s going on in my life at the time I read a book. Anyway, I should be doing a review of this; maybe I’ll resolve my feelings about it through that.

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Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout: I wasn’t sure I would be interested in this book, Pulitzer Prize or no. It looked like it might be either too women’s fiction-y for me or too literary fiction-y for me. But my sister read it and liked it, and so I gave it a try. Set in small-town Maine, it’s not so much a novel as a collection of stories. Olive Kitteridge appears either as the main character or a minor character in all of them. Olive, a retired school teacher who is large, terse and often unlikeable, anchors the stories and serves as a sort of anchor in the community as well. Over the course of the book, I came to find her strangely loveable even when she wasn’t likeable. The other characters are interesting as well, usually in a quiet way – Strout’s strength is in insightful characterization, not flashy prose or plotting. I ended up liking this quite a bit.

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Grave Mercy by R.L. LaFevers: I grabbed this one on a whim; the elements that aren’t my usual cup of tea were made up for by elements that intrigued me. This is an alternate-history/fantasy hybrid featuring a heroine who is a sort of handmaiden/assassin for the saint of death (!). I’m about two-thirds of the way through, and it’s pretty good, though there’s a slight lack of sophistication to the writing that may be due to the fact that it’s at least nominally a YA book. Also, I would like to see the heroine become a bit more kickass. I plan to review this.

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Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: I believe this was recommended to me in the comments after my review of the clusterfuck of insanity that was Wuthering Heights. Agnes Grey could not be more different. I’m about halfway through it, and so far it’s a very quiet tale about a young woman who leaves her family to work as a governess, which turns out to be a largely thankless task, at least in the case of the two families she ends up working for. Agnes has some interesting observations about human nature, though she’s occasionally a bit superior and even martryish in her detailing of how very mean everyone is to her. But she’s the classic sensible 19th century heroine: kind, down to earth, humble and devout. So far not a lot has happened, though the much-telegraphed romance between Agnes and a country pastor seems like it’s just about to get off the ground, if the two of them would stop acting like 7th graders at their first dance and actually talk to each other. So far, so good.

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North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell: It was the miniseries of this book that got me started as an Elizabeth Gaskell fan; I went on to watch and enjoy the miniseries of her Cranford and eventually the book version of that story. I’m finally getting around the reading this one, and I’m glad I started it. North and South is a more serious and complex than Cranford, but I’m enjoying it so far, and especially like the ambiguity of the characterizations (I’ve mentioned it before but somehow I’m always surprised when pre-modern novels have characters that aren’t black-and-white).

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A Tryst with Trouble by Alyssa Everett: I have a review of this that should run closer to the release date. I’ll just say this: meh.

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Her Husband’s Harlot by Grace Callaway: I actually bought this after reading Dabney’s review. It had its moments (the sex scenes were quite hot) but overall I thought it was pretty mediocre.

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About that Night by Julie James: I’m not a big reader of contemps, and this is only the second book I’ve read from this author (the other was the related Something About You). I kind of just fell into reading this; I opened it up and then couldn’t quite put it down. That sounds like a strong recommendation, but it’s probably just a reflection of the fact that I find contemporaries the most readable of romances; it’s pretty easy for me to fall into reading one. It’s a decent enough read but I’m not sure I understand the fuss about this author. But again, not a big reader of contemporaries, and I find that what makes them readable also makes them a bit forgettable and interchangeable, at least for me.

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Wow, that was a lot of books! I should do these more often.

Until next time,

Jennie

Related posts:

1. What Jia’s Been Reading in February
2. Dear Author Recommends for March
3. REVIEW: Highland Champion by Hannah Howell

• A Lady’s Lesson In Scandal by Meredith Duran (review)
• One Night is Never Enough by Anne Mallory (review)
• The Wild Marquis by Miranda Neville (actually, all three of the books in this series, including The Dangerous Viscount and The Amorous Seduction of Celia Seaton) (review)
• The Famous Heroine by Mary Balogh (review)
• The Charm School by Susan Wiggs (review)

Related posts:

1. Jayne’s Best of 2011 List
2. Jennie’s Best of 2011 List
3. John’s Best of 2011 List

• Mr. Bishop and the Actress, Janet Mullany, A (my review)
• When Beauty Tamed the Beast, Eloisa James, A-, (my review)
• A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal, Meredith Duran, A-, (my review)
• Silk is for Seduction, Loretta Chase, A-, (Jane’s review)
• What I Did for a Duke, Julie Ann Long, A-, (Janet’s review)
• Slice of Cherry, Dia Reeves, B+, (Janine’s review)
• Cat’s Tale: A Fairy Tale Retold, Bettie Sharpe, B+, (mine and Lazaraspaste’s reviews)
• The Last Time I Saw Paris, Lynn Sheene, B+, (my review)
• The Second Duchess, Elizabeth Loupas, B+, (my review)
• The Lantern, Deborah Lawrenson, B+, (my review)

Related posts:

1. Janine’s Best of 2011 List
2. Best of 2008 List: Reviewer Jennie F
3. Best of 2008 List: Reviewer Janine

To my way of thinking, a new book by you is always a cause for celebration, given that your previous books have all earned A minuses or B pluses from me. So I sat down to read A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal with high hopes – hopes that were luckily not disappointed.

The opening scenes of the book introduce us to two characters from very different stations in life, two characters who are about to meet and whose meeting will have an enormous impact on their future paths. Nell Whitby is leaving her job at the cigar factory, tired and dispirited. The work there is unhealthy (the lack of ventilation is problematic) and soul-crushing, but Nell is desperately poor and has to support her sick mother, who is bed-ridden with a lung ailment she contracted after years of working in the same factory. Nell also has to contend with her bitter, violent stepbrother Michael, who after an unsuccessful flirtation with political radicalism has descended into heavy drinking and who wants to whore Nell out to fund his vices. As Nell walks home from the factory with her best friend Hannah, they spy a photograph of a socialite in a shop window, a young woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to Nell (as you might guess, this resemblance does not turn out to be coincidental).

Simon St. Maur is introduced while in attendance (rather desultory attendance on his part, it should be said) at a sort of bacchanal/orgy/faux-Hellfire Club type party. Simon is on the lookout for a man he’s trying to buy a book back from. His mind is weighted down, though, by thoughts of impending financial crisis. Simon has recently inherited the titled of the Earl of Rushden, but the spiteful previous earl arranged it so that none of the wealth of the estate will go to Simon. Instead, it will go to the late earl’s daughter Katherine, and Simon will be left with a lot of debts he has no way of paying.

Back in the slums, Nell’s mother confesses that Nell is the Earl of Rushden’s daughter and that she’d stolen her away to protect her (a plot detail, that, come to think of it, is never really explained too well; Nell’s mother – who was actually servant in the family home – is depicted as being kind of nutty, but a clearer understanding of her motivation wouldn’t have gone amiss). Nell immediately writes Rushden, not realizing he’s already dead, seeking money for medical care for her mother. When her letters go unanswered and Nell’s mother dies, Nell goes to her father’s home, seeking revenge. She encounters the new earl, Simon, who happens to be buck-naked and more amused than alarmed by the guttersnipe holding a pistol on him. He quickly sees her resemblance to Lady Katherine (the socialite from the picture Nell had spied earlier), and just as quickly begins to see how he could turn the situation to his advantage. Simon has been battling Katherine in court over the fortune that comes with the title, but he’s just lost the case. He can’t get the money that way, but if he were to marry Lady Katherine’s long-lost missing twin, Lady Cornelia – Nell – then he would be entitled to half of the money, at least. (Well, Nell would, but in that era, that would essentially mean the money would be Simon’s.)

Simon seizes the opportunity with a very confused Nell, who doesn’t understand why he’s not calling the watch on her, since she sort of tried to kill him. She’s hoping he’ll just let her go, and hoping as well that she can take a few knick-knacks from the house on her way, to sell. Nell had been raised right, and it shames her to stoop to thievery, but she had been forced to in order to try to get money for a doctor for her mother. A friend was accused of stealing money that Nell actually stole, and now Nell sees the opportunity to scrape some money together to get her released from jail.

So, we have both Simon and Nell looking to use each other; Simon wants access to the money Nell will get if she’s declared to be the missing Lady Cornelia. Nell wants to stay around long enough to acquire dresses and various other items she can sell when she goes back to her old life. She’s concerned because she lost her job at the cigar factory after the hubbub with her friend being arrested; she’s also trying to dodge her stepbrother Michael, whose violent streak she fears.

The middle part of the book covers Simon’s Pygmalion-esque attempts to transform Nell into somebody he can introduce to society and have credibly accepted as the missing Lady Cornelia. Nell is alternately a defiant and compliant student; it does help that her mother (I’m using “mother” throughout this review to refer to Jane Whitby, the servant who stole Nell, just for clarity’s sake) did educate Nell pretty thoroughly – she may not know which utensil to use with which dinner course, but she can discuss Shakespeare.

I really liked Simon; this passage encompasses part of the reason why:

No day was brighter than those in which he discovered some new aspect of his power. The House of Lords was largely toothless these days, but he’d taken his seat at the first opportunity. He belonged to all the best clubs, though he had no interest in the company. Various corporations asked him onto their boards, not for his nonexistent business acumen but for the honor of having his name on the charter, and he always, immediately agreed. The fawning adulation of shareholders did not interest him, but he simply liked that he could have it, should the mood ever seize him.

I love the fact that Simon isn’t one of those business wunderkind English lords, and that he acknowledges it. There’s an honesty about the above passage that is rare in the characterization of romance heroes and heroines. Is Simon less admirable than one of those noble nobles? Maybe, but I find flaws more interesting than virtues in romance heroes and heroines, and it should be noted that Simon does grow and change in the course of the book.

Nell, too, is a bit of something different. She and Simon are naturally at odds early in the story, but at the same time she shows a natural and understandable longing for a connection with him:

The grin did it. Felt silly to be nervous when he was acting so companionable. And how much she’d been longing for a bit of friendly conversation! She hadn’t realized until this moment just how lonely she’d been feeling. Wasn’t much point to pretty clothes without a chance to try them out on a man.

Nell is lonely in the great big mansion she’s been plunked down in; the servants look down on her and she is unmoored from everything familiar. Her reactions are totally natural but I was still struck by the difference between her and a more stereotypical romance heroine, one for whom “spunk” and “pride” always takes precedence. It’s these little details, these vulnerabilities, which bring characters alive for me as a reader.

Despite the fact that I liked Simon, I was a little uncomfortable with the power imbalance between Simon and Nell through a good part of the story. Sure, Simon *needs* Nell, but given his gender and position in society, he’s too easily able to intimidate her into doing what he wants. I mostly didn’t mind him being a jerk, because I expected in the end that he’d reform, but a couple of times he pushed things to the point where I felt uneasy about it. It’s completely realistic that Nell would be cowed by Simon, but that didn’t mean I liked reading about it. To be clear, Nell’s not a pushover; she’s just realistic about what Simon can do to her versus what she can do to him. All she can really do steal knickknacks against the future possibility that Simon’s whole scheme will collapse. Actually, I found Nell’s petty thievery sad and rather touching:

By the light of the candle she arranged the items on the carpet: candlesticks; doilies; a slim, illustrated volume of Regency-era fashions; a silver spoon; an enameled bowl the color of the summer sky. The bowl fit perfectly into her cupped palm. It was small enough to be ignored and dismissed. But a canny pawnshop broker would recognize its weight and fine glaze as proof of its value. It might easily fetch money for five months of food.

This passage does a good, visceral job of illustrating to me as a reader the inequity between the wealth of the world that Simon inhabits, and the abject poverty of Nell’s world. A small, palm-sized bowl – probably nothing but a decorative bauble in Simon’s household – could keep Nell in food (probably not much food, and probably not good food, but food) for almost half a year. It’s certainly no wonder that she feels the differences in their stations so keenly.

Actually, Nell’s reaction to the abundance of food around her is even more touching. She is in raptures at every meal, though she becomes frustrated when the etiquette coach hired by Simon to whip her into shape begins observing her and correcting he on her eating. The problem is not so much the rules about how to sip soup from a spoon properly (from the side, never from the tip), but the stricture against eating everything on your plate, asking for seconds, eating more than the tips of the asparagus, etc. The rules become progressively more bizarre and byzantine – at the fruit and cheese course, Nell is told that ladies never actually eat the cheese. The stupider the rules got, the more I sympathized with Nell; given her background and past experiences with hunger, these rules probably seemed sadistic as well as pointless.

I keep going back to Nell’s vulnerability (and Simon’s, too, since it keeps him from being too much of a high-handed ass). I think why it worked for me so well is that I don’t like weak heroines, but I also certainly don’t like so-spunky-they’re-stupid heroines. Nell was neither. She acts tough (which makes sense, given her background), but as the reader is privy to her thoughts, we know how needy she feels inside, and we know when she feels afraid. On her wedding night with Simon, Nell has conflicting and complex feelings about the consummation of her marriage. She’s not simply in the grip of mindless lust (though that’s there, too):

She wanted to take the step. It scared her and it drew her. They were married now—before God and man, as the saying went. She wanted to stay on his side of the bridge. She wanted to be done with hunger, with cold, with fear. He was as beautiful as the world in which he lived. She wanted to stay with him forever.

Nell doesn’t yet love Simon, but she wants what he can give her, materially and physically. That doesn’t seem too radical, but for a romance heroine it’s refreshingly self-interested thinking. After all, how many romance heroines aren’t really allowed to have sex with a man, even a man they are married to, unless they are in the grip of True Love?

I waited anxiously for Nell’s twin, the Lady Katherine, to appear on the scene. It happens fairly late in the book, and though she’s the catalyst for some pretty big developments, she isn’t really as big a part of the story as maybe she should be, given that she is Nell’s twin. Nell actually evinces little interest in her “real” family – she’s somewhat curious about Katherine, but thinks of her father only once or twice and her mother barely at all. It’s actually Simon who is attached to memories of Nell’s mother (which makes sense, given that she raised him, more or less). He is trying to buy back books (as mentioned in his opening scene) that Rushden sold, books that were important to Nell’s mother. While I do like a tight focus on the h/h relationship, I think, given the circumstances, a bit more attention could’ve been paid to Nell’s feelings about having been deprived of her real family for all those years.

In the same vein, one thing did strike an odd note: Nell was supposedly taken when she was six, but she has very few, very hazy memories of her life as Lady Cornelia (and those only come up after she finds out her true identity). It’s indicated that Jane Whitby discouraged Nell from talking about the past, and thus Nell probably had something akin to repressed memories, but I would’ve liked to have seen that aspect of the story made a bit clearer. It seems strange that she would entirely forget her previous life, especially her twin sister, if she had lived that life until age six.

Nell and Simon have a weird symmetry in that each were taken away from their birth parents, and of course Simon was raised by the parents whom Nell was kidnapped from. Yet Simon’s childhood was less than idyllic, chiefly because Rushden was very hard on him. I like the way Simon’s complex feelings about Nell and her father are acknowledged:

When the mood struck, she could deal a set-down as sharp as any her father ever authored. The thought gave him pause. Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence that the first woman to truly capture his interest in years also happened to be the first to disapprove of him so sternly. He wasn’t in the business of sticking his head into the sand: he could see that his feelings for her might contain an echo of his old, quixotic quest. In her disapproval, she bore more than a passing resemblance to Rushden—whom he’d tried to please, time and again, until it had become clear that his own spirit would be the cost for it.

Simon’s character really unfolds slowly; at first he seems to be a standard-issue rogue, though not quite as bad as society apparently views him to be. It only becomes clear later in the story that Simon’s self-assessment is somewhat skewed by his treatment at the hands of Nell’s father, who was his guardian. Simon spent his childhood in a futile quest to please the old earl. Much like Nell, thrust into this new world, Simon suffers from feelings of inadequacy. All the things he wants that at first seem to be superficial trappings – wealth, social position, title – are to him actually protection against being found inadequate. Seen in that light, Simon’s behavior is a lot more understandable, though still high-handed at times. Simon also has an avid interest in music; he composes pieces anonymously and sponsors talented performers. Though music is clearly very important to him, it’s hard for him to reveal the depth of his attachment, even to Nell once they are married. Simon and Nell are really very alike in the issues they deal with – insecurity and a fear of making oneself vulnerable.

You would think this would make for a frustrating and fitful romance, and to a degree, it does. Simon, having more power in the relationship (really, almost all the power), is more comfortable than Nell with expressing the growing depth of his feelings for her. Nell takes quite a bit longer to feel confident in the relationship, which given her background and what’s at stake for her, is entirely understandable.

The first two-thirds of the book are heavily character-based rather than action based; when the action kicks in starting in the last third, it does make the book feel a little unbalanced. But since I love character-based romances, I and quite liked Simon and Nell, it didn’t bother me too much. I didn’t mind the fact that Nell needed an external catalyst to really come to see that she trusted and loved Simon. The villains was fairly cardboard, though the participation of Nell’s twin Katherine in some unsavory behavior was intriguing. I wouldn’t mind Katherine getting her own book.

Overall, I really enjoyed A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal quite a bit. My grade for it is an A-.

Regards,

Jennie

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And now, a word from Lazaraspaste:

Dear Ms. Duran,

With the exception of Written On Your Skin, I have read all of your previous books and have enjoyed them. Not only for the emotionally satisfying relationships portrayed, but because you employ a denser prose style than many current authors, a prose style that shows an attention to detail and language that I feel often enhances the experience of reading the romance. Moreover, you often choose characters outside of the usual types that populate the historical romance.

A Lady’s Lesson In Scandal is no exception to either of these traits.

Nell Whitby is a factory girl. She works long hours for little pay and what money she does manage to bring home is quickly spent by her step-brother, Michael. Any coin left over Nell spends on her mother, a woman who is slowly dying. Still, Nell dreams of a better life, just not one with fine carriages and silk dresses. Nell’s desires begin and end in her world, the world of Bethnel Green. What she wants is both idealistic and practical. She wants windows in the cigar factory where she and her mother worked, windows that would bring ventilation and prevent others from getting the lung disease that is slowly killing her mother. She wants to marry a man who loves her more than she loves him, someone steady and good who will not use her love of him against her like Michael does his wife Susie. And maybe, just maybe, she dreams of having enough money to buy a decent pair of gloves. But at the moment, more than any of these things, Nell wants enough money to hire a proper doctor for her mother.

But nothing really changes in Bethnel Green. Nell’s request for windows has singled her out as a troublemaker at the factory. And what money she does have is spent by Michael on drink. Michael, who was once an idealist like herself; wanting and working towards bettering working conditions and unionization until it was beaten out of him during a riot. Nell knows that no decent doctor is going to come to Bethnel Green to look at a dying factory woman. So she is careful not to hope, to keep the anger tamped down, and to carefully skirt disaster by remaining silent and anonymous. That is until she and her friend, Hannah, spot a picture of a professional beauty in the window of a shop, a professional beauty who looks just like Nell. But Lady Katherine’s likeness doesn’t flatter Nell, it doesn’t give her anything but a deep sense of foreboding, a foreboding that seems to manifest itself when that evening her mother reveals to her that Nell is not the daughter of a farmer, but of Lord Rushden.

Lord Rushden is dead and the new earl, Simon St. Maur is in a bit of a financial pickle. His predecessor, a distant relation, was not particularly fond of him and made sure that all the money associated with the earldom was settled on his twin daughters. Yes, every single sou that could possibly have been separated from the entailment was, leaving Simon St. Maur broke. The only choice he now has is to marry an heiress. So when a girl, a girl who looks exactly like Lady Katherine, comes barging into his bedroom intent on killing Lord Rushden, it is as if fate has finally smiled on him.

Simon believes that Nell is in fact the missing heiress, not just some look alike. Indeed, what is the likelihood of twins having a third and unrelated doppelganger? So I don’t think I’m giving anything away in saying that it is fairly clear to the reader that Miss Nell Whitby is in fact the missing daughter of the Earl of Rushden pretty much from the get-go. As such, Simon proposes marriage to Nell a solution both to his financial problems and a fitting revenge to the dead man who hated him enough to deprive him of the money to run the earldom. Nell, though, isn’t sure what to believe. She agrees because she is desperate . . . and yes, curious.

This then, is not a book about the mystery of Nell’s identity. Although, I would argue that all romances are inherently about the mystery of identity. But that’s just metaphysics. Rather, much like your other books, this is a carefully crafted character study about how two very different people manage to fall in love. And that is the heart of the conflict of this book. Nell grew up from the age of six years old thinking that she was a commoner, having the expectation of work, of knowing that work—hard work—was what her life was and would always be. Luxury in her mind is a slightly worn pair of gloves. Dignity is not having to kneel in the mud to pick a few extra pennies. Wealth is having more than enough food than you could ever eat. Whereas Simon is a man who understands that wealth is power, and power is being able to make people believe things, to bend them to your will.

“To ignore the world’s opinions,” he said against her skin. “Or to create their opinions for them,” He lifted her hand to his face, pressing her palm along his cheek. “That’s a heady drug,” he said, and for a confused moment, she though he meant the sensation of his skin, freshly shaved, hot and smooth.

What an odd thing to do, to make a woman touch your cheek.

Because of this distance in power and perception, Nell can’t allow herself to fully trust Simon, even though she wants to. She is wary of his motivations and believes that even if she was at one time Lady Cecelia, she is not now. That the years of being Nell Whitby, factory girl, have made her Nell Whitby, factory girl and no amount of fine dresses or dance lessons will change that.
Neither can Simon, despite proposing marriage and honorable intentions—honorable as far as a marriage of convenience goes—fully put his future in Nell’s hands. Even if she is the heiress, they have to prove it to the courts. And if they can’t, then he’ll still need to marry an heiress. So there you have it. She can’t totally trust him and he needs an exit clause. But even if they can come to some resolution regarding trust and money, the real gap between them is in their world views, in how they see the people, things and ideas around them. Even once they are married, Nell is aware of this fact, aware that Simon has a control over his universe in a way that she has never had and might never have even as the Countess of Rushden:

Nonsense, clever nonsense, all spun in Simon’s low, smooth voice. He was a bloody genius with these people, slicker than any confidence artist, more popular than whisky in a room full of Irishmen. People doted on his remarks. They courted him and he rewarded them for it, lavishing his charm on anyone who wanted it, using his free hand to flirt, to deliver glancing brushes over ladies’ wrists and solid, manly clasps to gentlemen’s shoulders. He radiated approval, amusement, belonging, and people gathered to him like stars around the moon. Under his influence, their avid curiosity about her shifted into simpler warmth; they looked at her anew, seeing not a grotesque surprise but a delightful discovery, Rushden’s discovery.

As I said above, part of what made this book for me a cut above the average is the way Duran uses prose. The characters and their relationship with each other, their romance is primarily developed through dialogue, through the exchange of language. This is important because the conflict is a conflict of ideas, of perspectives. The only way to bridge this gap, the gap between how Simon sees the world and how Nell sees the world, is to speak to one another. The reader is not simply told that the two grow closer, begin to understand each other, fall in love, etc. but shown throughout the book in scene after scene, in encounter after encounter. And those encounters do not use Simon’s good looks or Nell’s chin to make their point, but Simon’s words and Nell’s words. Because the really amazing thing about books is that they paint a world entirely in words. They give us the interior lives of people only through the manipulation of twenty-six letters in an alphabet. And somehow, in doing so a book can make me feel what the characters feel, make anxious and sad and happy, can make my heart palpitate and my eyes dilate. For instance:

He smiled against her mouth, delighted with himself, with how unexpected this moment was becoming: a hundred clichés came to mind as their tongues tangled, clichés made vibrant by the wondrous truths they suddenly appeared to contain. He closed his eyes, fighting the urge to gather her to him, to push himself up against her, into her, to crush her beneath him. My God, she is sweet.

A story is just words on a page, but a really good story makes me think that somewhere, somehow these characters exist, have bodies and thoughts separate from the author or the narrator. So snatches and quotations can’t properly convey why this romance works so well, because like all good romances the pleasure of the story is experienced best by reader when reading it from the first to the last page. A-

Lazaraspaste

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

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Bound by Your Touch by Meredith Duran
2. REVIEW: Wicked Becomes You by Meredith Duran
3. REVIEW: Written on Your Skin by Meredith Duran

• Nothing But Trouble by Rachel Gibson, recommended by Jayne
• All or Nothing by James Buchanan, recommended by Sarah F
• Double Blind by Heidi Cullinan. (The Kindle edition is far cheaper), recommended by Sarah F
• Wicked Becomes You by Meredith Duran, recommended by Jennie and Janine
• Vampire Mistress (Vampire Queen) by Joey W. Hill, recommended by Shuzluva
• Beyond the Shadowsby Jess Granger, recommended by Shuzluva
• Mistress By Mistake by Maggie Robinson, recommended by Jane
• Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris, recommended by Janet aka Robin
• Just Like Me, Only Better by Carol Snow, recommended by Jayne

Related posts:

1. Dear Author Recommends for August
2. Dear Author Recommends for February
3. Dear Author Recommends for April

Since publishing your first romance in 2008, you have quickly become one of my favorite and most dependable authors; I have not given any of your first three books a grade lower than an A-. So I looked forward to Wicked Becomes You with a fair amount of anticipation.

The book opens in 1886 with a prologue that takes place at the funeral of Richard Maudsley; Richard had been stabbed after venturing into a casino on a lark. His best friend, Alex, feels guilty because he had refused to accompany Richard; Alex is an aristocrat but on his way to being a self-made businessman  (he is a younger son)  and he is dedicated to his work. He also feels guilty because before Richard died, the two men had quarreled over Richard’s sister, Gwen; Richard was suspicious of Alex’s attraction to Gwen. At the funeral, Alex returns Richard’s ring to Gwen, a precious remembrance of her last living family member (her parents are already dead).

Gwen was the golden girl of her family; her parents, who had climbed up socially from a background in trade, had hopes that Gwen would make a brilliant marriage. Standing with Gwen in the chapel, Alex remembers his promise to Richard that he would see Gwen settled. It’s a promise that he has some ambivalence about, but all the same  he feels obligated to try.

The action then moves forward four years, to another church; it’s Gwen’s wedding day and she’s about to get jilted – this time at the altar – for the second time. Alex is there to witness her humiliation (along with the rest of the ton, most of whom regard Gwen with fondness because she’s just so darn nice). Alex generally stays out of London; his business concerns take him around the world, and he’s only stopped in to see his older brother, the Earl of Weston, to find out why he sold a piece of family property. Alex doesn’t care about the property, but he does care about his family, and he cannot resist his twin sisters’ pleas to get to the bottom of the sale; he suspects the earl may be having money problems. So it’s only chance that Alex is there in the pew when Gwen’s prospective groom literally bolts, and also that he’s at Gwen’s home later participating in  a powwow to determine What To Do About Poor Gwen, while the lady herself is upstairs in bed, distraught and enraged.

Gwen had not loved her fiance, Thomas, but she had more or less believed his assurances that he loved her; she knew he needed her money, at least. Gwen longs for a family of her own; at a young age her parents had sent her to live with the aristocratic but slightly-down-at-heel Beechams, in the hopes of giving her some town polish. Now her parents and only sibling are dead, and the people she’s lived with for most of her life, while not particularly unkind or abusive, are nothing but paid guardians. Lying in her bed,  Gwen feels herself break free; she realizes that all her attempts to be good and proper and perfect have earned her nothing but the degradation of being jilted twice and the pity of the ton, and she’s still as alone as ever. She resolves that since no good has come from being good, she’s going to try being bad.

Writing this out, Gwen’s resolution strikes me as childish and silly, but you never make it feel that way in the story – I empathized with Gwen enormously and actually mentally cheered for her when she essentially said, “screw ‘em” and decided that she would do what she wanted to from there on out.

One thing she wants, she decides, is to get back her brother’s ring, which she had given to Thomas as a token of affection. But Thomas has apparently fled to Paris, and so Gwen determines that she will follow him there, demand her ring back, and give Thomas a piece of her mind while she’s at it. To achieve this goal, she has to face up to the disapproval of those concerned about her – namely her foster parents and Alex’s twin sisters, Caroline and Belinda, who are her closest friends. Alex views the “new” Gwen with some confusion which he masks with an infuriating, condescending amusement, as when he considers Gwen’s slightly manic behavior after the jilting:

Really, somebody needed to cast a trophy for her. In Recognition of Her Tireless Dedication to Utterly Groundless Good Cheer.

Alex and Gwen meet up again in Paris; she’s chasing Thomas and he’s trying to find out more about Rollo Barrington, the mysterious stranger who has purchased the family property that Alex is trying to buy back. Alex witnesses Gwen’s nascent attempts at being daring, and they clash a bit over their differing views on responsibility, obligation and freedom.

From Paris, the book turns into a sort of road  story. I generally really like road  romances (and they seem to be one of the more popular romance plot conventions), but I did have some issues with this portion of the book. Alex accepts Gwen’s help in unraveling what is going on with Rollo Barrington (after Barrington takes a shine to Gwen). Alex’s willingness to use Gwen in this manner struck me as contrived and not true to his character. Much as he tries to hide it, Alex is a caretaker, and he takes his duty to Gwen seriously. It doesn’t make sense, exactly, that he would go from wanting to protect Gwen and watch over her to using her as bait in a situation that he senses is not entirely safe.

Honestly, the entire subplot involving  Barrington and his buying up of property felt muddled and a bit pointless. It only really served as a device to bring Alex and Gwen together (and allow Gwen to play Alex’s mistress, which gave them much more freedom to be alone together than they otherwise would’ve had). That’s okay, but I felt that maybe more time was spent on the subplot than needed to be spent on something that had no real significance to the story otherwise. I also felt that the resolution was anti-climatic and a bit confusing.

I like the humor in your writing, which is especially evident  from Gwen as she begins to break free of the bonds of perfection. Here, musing on her commitment to knit sweaters for an orphanage:

Ten sweaters in a month!

Gwen was not a loom!

And then there is her indignant letter to her erstwhile fiance, which includes uncharacteristic (up to this point) digs at his lack of funds:

Good luck with the roof at Pennington Grange, by the way. I will hope it does not rain too much this season.

I liked Gwen a lot – she is a bit unformed at the start of the book, having been trained to be good and virtuous and unobjectionable, which along with her great fortune, is expected to net her an aristocratic husband. She doesn’t really know herself, and in the course of the book she grows up and finds some balance between virtue and authenticity.

Alex is an appealing if not entirely original hero – he’s a younger son of an aristrocratic family, chafing under the weight of expectation that come with his position. His attitude is given psychological depth by the circumstances of his youth; he had been afflicted with terrible childhood asthma, which eventually led his parents to banish him alone to a remote country house, so as to avoid any excitement that might trigger an attack. Alex still harbors a great deal of resentment towards his dead parents for the stifling restrictions they placed on him as a child and towards his siblings, for continuing to treat him as fragile although he has long since proved that he is anything but. I thought this aspect of the story was quite intriguing; I wish that it had been developed a touch more. Perhaps Alex needed to have a discussion with his brother and sisters to bring some closure to issues that honestly did seem to be having a continuing psychological effect on him as an adult.

There has always been an unspoken attraction between Gwen and Alex; as well, they share the connection of loving and mourning Richard. The conflict between the two of them is no less poignant for being rather basic: Alex’s lonely childhood makes him wary of connections, whereas Gwen’s makes her long for them. Alex has farther to go, in a sense, because he has to learn that love and concern for others do not have to be fetters. Gwen needs to learn to let go and not always feel that she has to be perfect in order to be worthy of love.

I did notice, particularly early on, a few possible anachronisms – in his meeting with Gerard, Alex tells his brother that he shouldn’t get so upset; he’s liable to give himself an aneurysm. Later in the same scene, Alex thinks to himself that Gerard is acting like the “schoolyard bully” he once was. I have no concrete knowledge of whether “you’ll give yourself an aneurysm” was a phrase in usage in the 19th century (I more often see “apoplexy”, which isn’t exactly the same thing, medically, but I think conveys the same idea). I also doubt that “schoolyard bully” (or schoolyards, for that matter) would have been familiar to 19th century English aristocrats. Late in the book Gwen uses the word “conned”, which I also question being in common usage, particularly by someone of her background.

These anachronisms were minor in the larger scheme of things and may have been in fact more noticeable because the setting otherwise did feel authentic. Once I notice such things, though, I feel compelled to mention them (if only so someone can correct me on whether they are in fact anachronisms!).

Despite my quibbles with certain aspects of the plot, Wicked Becomes You was definitely another successful story for me. My grade is an A-.

Best regards,

Jennie

| Book Link | Kindle | Amazon
| Nook | BN | Borders |

This is a mass market published by Simon & Schuster, a member of the Agency 5. For some reason I cannot find any S&S books at Sony and few at Kobobooks.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Bound by Your Touch by Meredith Duran
2. REVIEW: Written on Your Skin by Meredith Duran
3. REVIEW: The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran

• Always a Scoundrel by Suzanne Enoch
• Beloved Vampire by Joey Hill
• Bound by Your Touch by Meredith Duran
• Butterfly Tattoo by Deidre Knight
• Damned by Blood by Evie Byrne
• Magnate’s Make-Believe Mistress by Bronwyn Jameson
• Never Love a Lawman by Jo Goodman
• Scandal by Carolyn Jewel
• Smooth Talking Stranger by Lisa Kleypas
• Wicked All Day by Liz Carlyle

I noticed that I loved the scoundrel redeemed story which is pretty much the dominant theme in my best loved historicals of the year.   I’ve read into the first quarter of 2010 and I have to say we romance readers have a good year ahead of us.

Related posts:

1. Top Romances of 2009 by Janet
2. Top Ten Romances of 2009 by Janine
3. Top Romances of 2009 by Jayne

****

I hesitated about making a list this year, since my reading was largely dictated by what I volunteered to review. Consequently, there are many, many wonderful books I haven’t yet read and some books I did love that I didn’t put on this list, either because they were not straight Romance (Sinful Life of Lucy Burns, Dead and Gone), because they just didn’t stick with me with way other books did, or because I wanted to make room for a book that I think might be otherwise overlooked. So rather than my “Top Romances of 2009,” this list is more “10 Memorable Romances I Read in 2009″ — and they’re books I heartily recommend to the DA readership.

• Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie by Jennifer Ashley
• Demon Forged by Meljean Brook
• Courtesan’s Wager by Claudia Dain
• Bound By Your Touch by Meredith Duran (review by Jane)
• Never Love A Lawman by Jo Goodman
• Highland Rebel by Judith James
• Indiscreet by Carolyn Jewel
• Smooth Talking Stranger by Lisa Kleypas (haiku review!)
• Double Play by Jill Shalvis (no review)
• Hunt Her Down by Roxanne St. Claire

Related posts:

1. Top Ten Romances of 2009 by Janine
2. Top Romance Books of 2009 by Jennie
3. Top Romance Books of 2009 by Sarah Frantz

• On the Edge by Ilona Andrews
• Bound by Your Touch by Meredith Duran* (review by Jennie)
• Written on Your Skin by Meredith Duran* (review by Jennie)
• Stillness by Megan Hart, in the anthology Pleasure and Purpose
• Determinata by Megan Hart, in the anthology Pleasure and Purpose
• Scandal by Carolyn Jewel
• The Birthday Present by Alison Richardson (#3 in The Countess Trilogy)
• Blood by Sharon Shinn, in anthology Quatrain
• Branded by Fire by Nalini Singh
• Not Quite a Husband by Sherry Thomas* (review by Jennie)

*Full disclosure from Janine: Meredith Duran and Sherry Thomas are my crit partners and good friends, but since I enjoyed their 2009 books tremendously, I felt it would be a glaring omission not to include those books on my list of favorites.

Related posts:

1. Top Romance Books of 2009 by Jennie
2. Best of 2008 List: Reviewer Janine
3. Best of 2008 List: Reviewer Jennie F

• Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (review by Jia)
• Bound By Your Touch by Meredith Duran
• Written On Your Skin by Meredith Duran
• Pleasure And Purpose by Megan Hart (review by Janine)
• Scandal by Carolyn Jewel (review by Janine)
• Indiscreet by Carolyn Jewel
• Smooth Talking Stranger by Lisa Kleypas (review by Joonigrrl or read the haiku review)
• Since The Surrender byJulie Anne Long (review by Jane
• Not Quite A Husband by Sherry Thomas

Related posts:

1. Dear Author Recommend Reads for October 2009
2. Top Romance Books of 2009 by Sarah Frantz
3. Best of 2008 List: Reviewer Jennie F

• Written on Your Skin by Meredith Duran (recommended by Jennie, Janet/Robin and Jan)
• Hot Under Pressure by Kathleen O’Reilly (recommended by Smart Bitches, Jayne and Jane)
• Mistletoe Mommy by Tanya Michaels (recommended by Jayne who also recommends forgetting what the title is because it has nothing to do with Mommy or Christmas)
• One Week As Lovers by Victoria Dahl (recommended by Janet/Robin and no, I don’t know what it will take for Victoria Dahl to get an A here at Dear Author)
• Goddess of the Hunt by Tessa Dare (recommended by Jane because I loved the immature, big hearted Lucy who had to have that fearless belief in life in order to bring about the brooding Jeremy).
• Beloved Vampire by Joey Hill (recommended by Jane. The review will come at noon. Needless to say its a star crossed lover + vampire + love saves people story with a dark edge).
• Since the Surrender by Julie Anne Long (recommended by Jane because even with the plot flaws and the WTFery sex scene, I still loved the characterizations).
• Beyond the Rain by Jess Granger (this is a qualified rec by Jane. It was a very good SFR that was accessible but slow in some places. It’s a trade but if it were in mass market, it would be an unqualified rec. This one is not in ebook form and therefore not available under the discount).
• Spider Touched by Jory Strong (I’m giving this the same qualified rec. The detail that Jory Strong has brought to her new alternative urban fantasy romance is amazing and I love that she uses the world to provide the basis of the conflict but it’s a trade).

Related posts:

1. Dear Author Recommends for August
2. Dear Author Recommends for April
3. Dear Author Recommends for June

Since I’ve acquired my lovely Sony PRS-505, I’ve used the handy-dandy “bookmark” button to mark notable pages in a book that I may want to refer back to when I write a review. Depending on the book, the bookmarks may be noting something that worked for me or something that didn’t. When reading your latest book, Written on Your Skin, I hit the bookmark button so many times I was afraid I was going to wear it out. All 32 bookmarks (and it easily could’ve been 132 if I hadn’t restrained myself a bit) noted bits of prose or characterization that I just loved. So it’s no surprise that Written on Your Skin is easily one of the best books I’ve read in a long while.

The book opens in Hong Kong in 1880. Phin Monroe and Mina Masters have been carrying on a flirtation for several weeks when they encounter each other at a party. Phin thinks that Mina is an empty-headed flirt and Mina thinks Phin is an American businessman. They’re both wrong. Things get interesting when Phin collapses, the victim of poisoned brandy. Each quickly realizes that the other has hidden depths, but there is no time to explore their new understanding of each other – Phin has to get away before Mina’s brutal stepfather comes for him. Mina saves Phin’s life, but not without great cost to her own.

Four years later, Mina is in London, more or less under house arrest. Her beloved mother has gone missing, and Mina is under the thumb of Ridland, a rather amoral character who happens to be Phin’s former spymaster. Mina decides to call in the favor that Phin owes her.

Phin has finally gotten himself out from under Ridland’s hated control, and he isn’t eager to fall back into it. He’s now Phineas Granville, Earl of Ashmore. He has the power to ignore Ridland’s dictates, and in fact is using that power to try to destroy the man who blackmailed him for years, forcing him to kill for crown and country. The last thing Phin wants is to be dragged back into Ridland’s web of intrigue. But the fact that Mina once saved his life weighs on his conscience, and the reluctant attraction he felt for her in Hong Kong still lingers in his mind.

There is nothing extraordinary about the plot of Written on Your Skin – it’s pretty standard historical romance fare. It is well-executed and almost perfectly balanced. I had some brief concerns about it dragging during a section where Mina us under Phin’s control and Phin suspects her of being in league with Ridland – hero/heroine power struggles are a delicate area for me and suspicious heroes are such a staple of mediocre romance that I was hoping this aspect of the story would be resolved quickly. It was. The rest of the book was largely a road romance, as Mina and Phin try to track down and save Mina’s mother. I don’t think of myself as having a particular affinity for road romances, but on reflection I think I do. There are so many possibilities that arise from having the hero and heroine uprooted from their everyday surroundings, and you utilize that aspect of the story very well.

What really worked for me in Written on Your Skin is the beautiful prose and especially the extraordinary characterization. Prose and characterization are inextricably linked in my mind – I suppose you can have fine prose and still have bland characterization, but I think it’s pretty impossible to have exceptional characterization without superior prose. In WOYS you have both, and that is what lifts it from the status of a good book to a great one.

Phin and Mina are remarkable characters. Phin was born to the aristocracy but always existed as a bit of an outsider, due to his Irish heritage and his wastrel father. He found a mentor at an early age who welcomed Phin into his family and taught him cartography. But even this positive development ended up having a dark side: it was the mentor and Phin’s mapmaking skill that caused Ridland to take an interest in him.

Phin has tried to settle into the life of an Earl and forget his past. But he is essentially consumed with self-loathing about the things he did during his career as a spy. He feels like a murderer and suffers from panic attacks. He reminded me a bit of Samuel from Laura Kinsale’s The Shadow and the Star, not only in his feelings of shame and inadequacy but in his nascent attempts to court the daughter of his recently deceased mentor, a move he seems to feel would help cleanse him of his sins (as well as perhaps bring him closer to being the son of a man he regarded as a father). Phin’s anguish and guilt are real and devastatingly rendered.

If Phin is a wonderfully drawn character, Mina is even more so. She may have vaulted onto my list of favorite romance heroines of all time.

Mina is an American, daughter of a long-dead American father and an English mother who has tried, mostly without success, to instill in her only child strict English notions of propriety. Mina’s childhood was traumatic due to her mother’s weak character and marriage to Mr. Collins, an Irish-American businessman of shadowy ties and brutal tendencies, a marriage that forces Mina to assume the role of protector and comforter at a young age:

But as she drew a breath to start the routine-’reassurances (he did not mean it), denials (he will not leave you), promises (he will never leave you), for God’s sake all the manufactured optimism, the lies-’she could not muster much feeling beyond exhaustion. You are not meant to cry in my arms, she thought. You are my mother. I am meant to cry in yours.

Mina and her mother were able to escape Collins back in Hong Kong four years before, but not without acquiring scars, both physical and emotional. She has since flourished as a businesswoman in New York, formulating and selling hair tonics and enjoying her independence. A trip to England, in part to procure lavender for her tonics, turns into a nightmare for Mina when Collins escapes from prison and Mina’s mother disappears.

What did I love about Mina? Where to start? She is a beautiful woman who is not shy about using her beauty to achieve her goals. She’s managed to turn the tables on the condescending men she encounters in business and society by playing the role of the brainless and helpless beauty who is unthreatening and in need of their aid. She had previously successfully played this role with Phin, and though the mask slipped a bit at the end, when they are reunited he is still not sure about Mina’s true nature. In fact, the first time they encounter each other in London, she rather amusingly throws herself into his arms and begs his aid with the air of one who cannot imagine that a man would not help her, a ruse that might have worked had Phin been less suspicious due to Ridland’s involvement.

Mina has every bit as much emotional baggage as Phin does, though ultimately I think she is stronger emotionally and better able to carry it. The main impediment to love for her is trust – she has watched her mother subvert her own character to a man’s will, and she vows that she will never do the same. Mina’s mother is on stage for relatively brief portions of the book, but I found myself resenting her for the damage she had done to her daughter. I was that attached to Mina, whose character is aptly described here, in her own thoughts:

She lifted her chin as she walked, the better to display the line of her neck, which a number of gentlemen had assured her put them in mind of a swan’s. Surely it would prove harder on the conscience to hurt a swan than a hedgehog, although she could use a few sharp quills right now, and the helpful capacity to curl into a bristling ball.

Mina is both a beautiful swan and an impenetrable and prickly hedgehog; she’s also at times a roaring tigress, as well as perhaps a few other denizens of the animal kingdom. She’s not a perfect romance heroine, at least not in the traditional sense: she’s not beloved by servants and kind to small children. She’s also not a new-school kickass heroine, operating at all times without fear or error. She’s beautiful and smart and tough, and she uses all of these attributes to get through life.

This book is tangentially related to your June release, Bound by Your Touch, and it’s interesting to read Phin’s thoughts on that book’s hero, his friend Viscount Sanburne:

It would be a simple thing to put his curiosity to rest. I stole things. I killed people. And I drew a few maps. But it had occurred to Phin that the viscount was too bored to receive these tidings with the proper revulsion. He might see them as novel options for keeping himself occupied.

So often the heroes of related historical romances are portrayed as blood brothers, almost platonic soulmates. It was actually refreshing to read, from Phin’s perspective, that he finds Sanburne’s laconic jokester persona wearing at times.

Being that Phin is a wonderful character and Mina is a wonderful character, it makes sense that I found myself very emotionally invested in their romance. Their relationship, is, in the end, wildly romantic. Both have fears to overcome; neither is entirely reasonable at times (I found myself siding with Mina more often than not, perhaps because her independence makes her a sympathetically though not unrealistically modern heroine). Written on Your Skin is my favorite type of romance, one in which the obstacles to lasting love are relatively equal on each side, and the hero and heroine thus have to take an equal number of steps to come together.

Okay, I find that I still have about 30 bookmarks I haven’t gone through yet, but I don’t want to spoil the book for readers. Rather I want to urge them to run, not walk to their nearest bookstore and pick up a copy of Written on Your Skin. My grade (one I’ve managed to talk myself into in the course of writing this review): A+.

Best regards,

Jennie

This book can be purchased at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or in ebook format from Sony on July 28, 2009, or other etailers.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran
2. REVIEW: Bound by Your Touch by Meredith Duran
3. REVIEW: The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran

I was a big fan of your debut The Duke of Shadows, published last year. I can’t say how excited I was to learn that you had not one but two books scheduled for release in 2009, one in June and the other in July. Having now read the first, I can say that The Duke of Shadows was no fluke – Bound by Your Touch confirms that you possess a rare talent.

On the surface, this is the familiar tale pairing a bluestocking spinster with a profligate aristocrat. Lydia Boyce and James, Viscount Sanburne meet when he interrupts a speech she is giving before an archaeological society, hoping to drum up funds for her father’s research. Lydia is devoted to her absent father, who spends most of his time in Egypt on archaeological digs, and relies on Lydia back in England to act as his secretary, agent and fund-raiser.

James is actually at the meeting for the opposite reason – he wants to flaunt an artifact that he’s snatched from beneath his hated father’s nose at said father, who is in attendance at the meeting. Lydia is piqued at the interruption to her speech and is more than happy to tell James and the assembled onlookers that he’s been snookered – the artifact is a fake.

This sets James and Lydia off on a sort of extended duel, the sort of which again, on the surface, is quite familiar to romance readers. James, in trying to discover how he was ripped off, finds evidence that Lydia’s father is involved. Lydia is outraged at the suggestion and vows to clear her father’s name. James is also being menaced by mysterious notes whose provenance he knows nothing about (and in fact he is eventually accosted and attacked). James and Lydia eventually join forces to unravel the mystery of the fake artifacts and their connection to the shadowy figures who are harrassing James.

The parallels in James’ and Lydia’s respective relationships with their fathers (and their sisters) is one of the strengths of the book. These parallels are not quite subtle, but such a deft hand is employed that I never felt hit over the head with them; rather they had a symmetry that I really appreciated (I’m a sucker for symmetrical plots). James had never felt close to his stern and uncompromising father, but he began to truly hate him when a tragedy befell James’ beloved sister and James felt that his father turned his back on her. Lydia finds herself having to come to terms with the possibility that the father she idolizes has feet of clay, and finally has it out with her selfish and shallow (and prettier) younger sister, who years before “stole” the man Lydia believed herself to be in love with.

I loved the fact that these relatives were all drawn as very real and believably human; each is clearly and recognizably flawed but none of them are evil. Both Lydia and James discover that their views of their fathers are not so much wrong as incomplete. I love the a romance with enough complexity in characterization to acknowledge that “good” people can do bad things and “bad” people can do good things.

The other main strength of Bound by Your Touch was (duh) the relationship between James and Lydia. It doesn’t matter how many times the bounder-meets-bluestocking story is told; what matters is how WELL it’s told. In this case, it’s told very well indeed. James had clear (if not always entirely sympathetic) motives for his headlong race into dissipation. Lydia had tried for love before and been burned, badly, so her choice to withdraw and focus on what she felt good and useful at – being her father’s right hand – was understandable. I often have no patience with heroines who wallow in misery for years over some minor humiliation that occurred when they were younger. In Lydia’s case, though, it helped that she was ANGRY – she didn’t show it much but when it came out it was impressive to behold. She was angry at her sister, she was angry at the suitor who spurned her and she was angry at herself because she felt stupid and shamed.

A minor quibble: I found the actual details of the fake-Egyptian-artifacts subplot a bit confusing, though it became clearer once the villain was revealed. It may just have been me, since a friend who has read the book as well didn’t have any trouble with it, and I haven’t seen the complaint mentioned elsewhere.

I am about to start Written on Your Skin, which I understand to be at least tangentially related to Bound by Your Touch. I am very much looking forward to revisiting the world you have created, one of masterful characterization and lovely prose. My grade for Bound by Your Touch is an A-.

Best regards.

Jennie

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers after July 20th. Send your complaints to Simon & Schuster (adam.rothberg at simonandschuster.com is my suggestion as his name is on the press release regarding Scribd)

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Bound by Your Touch by Meredith Duran
2. REVIEW: The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran
3. REVIEW: Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran

• Make Me Yours by Betina Krahn recommended by Jayne and Jane. Features a sexually knowledgeable female. A minx, if you will. It’s very fresh.
• Bound by Your Touch by Meredith Duran recommended by Jane and Jennie F. It’s one of the few books to which Jane has a straight A. It’s a masterpiece of craft and romance.
• What Happens in London by Julia Quinn recommended by Jane.   One word ran through my mind when I read this and that is charming.
• Branded by Fire by Nalini Singh recommended by Janine.   The latest entry in Singh’s Psy/Changeling series pairs strong willed Mercy, a cat, with Riley, a wolf.   They fight like cats and dogs and make love like there is no tomorrow.
• Trace of Smoke by Rebecca Cantrell recommended by Jayne.    This debut novel features a great heroine: “She’s supposedly powerless yet triumphs. She keeps most of her promises. She tries to do the right thing in the face of evil. She’s a heroine to respect and one I enjoyed meeting.”
• Cowboy Comes Back by Jeannie Watt recommended by Jayne. Jayne reads far and wide within the category lines at Harlequin to find you gems like this.
• Outcast by Joan Johnston recommended by Jane. This is a fast moving romance featuring a man broken by his traumatic past and the woman who is ready to sacrifice everything to save him.

Related posts:

1. May Recommended Reads
2. February Recommended Reads
3. June Recommended Reads

I was probably the only member of the Dear Author reviewing team that didn’t love your freshman debut, DUKE OF SHADOWS. For me, it read like a love story between you and India and not so much a love story between the characters. I admit that despite the urging of your critique partner, Janine, that I was reluctant to read your follow up book. I put off reading it until recently when I cracked it open just to read the first couple chapters and ended up not being able to put it down.

It’s obvious from the categorization of this post that I gave the book an A. It’s the first without qualification A I’ve given in a long time but I tried to look for flaws and couldn’t find them. This is a story that was technically masterful as well as being a great love story. I think it’s a book in which I would find new layers and meaning each time I read it.

Lydia Boyce is a spinster, living with her sister who is married to the man that Lydia thought she would marry. She’s plainer than her younger two sisters and has sought refuge in the love and approval of her father, a scholar of Egyptian artifacts. Her father has been in Egypt for some time, uncovering ruins and sending goods back to be sold from time to time. He needs more funding and Lydia is his emissary, handling the sale of his goods and writing papers based on her father’s research.

James, Lord Sanburne, has only the mildest interest in Egyptian artifacts. In fact, his only interest is in besting his father. If his father had taken an interest in Chinese goods, James would have wanted the priciest, most difficult to obtain Ming vase. Instead, they duel over Egyptian artifacts. James intrudes on an archaeology society meeting carrying a stela. He steals the thunder of Lydia and likely reduces her chances of gaining funding for her father. Lydia decries his stela as a fake.

Sanburne’s fight with his father is a real one. Sanburne’s sister, Stella, killed her husband after he beat her one too many times. She was put in an asylum and the one visit that Sanburne was granted haunted him. He begged his father to remove her to somewhere else, just as he had begged his father to help his sister when she first ran away from her husband.

Sanburne and Lydia’s attraction to each other made perfect sense. Lydia was very strong. Her personality is strong, of course, but there is mention made of her physical strength. Their lovemaking is fierce with each marking the other. Sanburne, I think, revels in the fact that he could not break Lydia no matter how he tried. He revels in her intellect too: “No. You take my meaning. That’s the joy of seducing an intelligent woman: you follow me perfectly.”

Lydia is attracted to Sanburne because of his seeming ease at taking joy in life, even though that is often a mask. Sanburne challenges her as well. He constantly makes her answer for her actions where no one has in the past. He questions her, makes her think. No matter how insulting she is to him, Sanburne makes her dig deep for the why of it.

The sex scenes in this book were very moving and perfectly in keeping with character and plot. One of my favorite parts was where Sanburne says to Lydia: “”I see every part of you.. your body was only the last bit.” and Lydia replies “Let me see the same.”

Craftwise, this book was amazing. There was no wasted scene or sentence. At one point, James is boxing. In many books a scene like this merely provides a background to have some dialogue. This scene, however, serves to instruct the reader on many points. It shows us why James is physically hardened as Lydia notes. It shows us that James seeks constant absolution for living while his sister is imprisoned. He seeks out pain and maybe even the oblivion of the knock out but never gets it. “He had fists like hams, didn’t he.” The scene provides foreshadowing of Lydia’s weakness and James’ believable use of strength of her behalf. That one scene portrays so many points of the story.

Mirroring was used to great effect. Lydia loves her father and is his emissary. James hates his father and does everything he can to embarrass the man. Lydia is often at loggerheads with her sisters, betrayed by Sophie. James loves his sister and wishes he could have saved her. The way that these two characters’ paths arc and cross and blend is really amazing and I can’t say more because it would ruin the story.

There’s so much I didn’t touch on in the review such as the themes of selfishness, the concept of absolution and redemption, the act of forgiveness. One simple review couldn’t address it all. Readers will have to read the book to see the true beauty of the work.

Of course, now I am beset with another fear. Can any work of yours possibly top this one? A

Best regard,

Jane

This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers on June 30, 2009.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran
2. REVIEW: Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran
3. REVIEW: The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran

• DELICIOUS by Sherry Thomas*, Grade A
• CRY WOLF by Patricia Briggs, Grade A
• PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS by Sherry Thomas*, Grade A-/A
• WICKED INTENTIONS by Lydia Joyce, Grade A-
• “LOS CONVERSOS” by Jesse Sandoval, in the anthology TANGLE, Grade A-
• “EMBER” by Bettie Sharpe**, Grade A-
• THE EDGE OF IMPROPRIETY by Pam Rosenthal, Grade A-
• THE DUKE OF SHADOWS by Meredith Duran*, Grade A-
• “REMEMBER” by Astrid Amara, in the anthology TANGLE, Grade A-
• YOUR SCANDALOUS WAYS by Loretta Chase, Grade B+/A-
• GRIMSPACE by Ann Aguirre, Grade B+/A-
• “LORD RONAN’S SHOES” by Astrid Amara, in the anthology TANGLE, Grade B+/A-
• QUEEN OF DRAGONS by Shana Abe, Grade B+
• “FERAL MACHINES” by Ginn Hale, in the anthology TANGLE, Grade B+
• LOVE THE ONE YOU’RE WITH by Emily Giffin, Grade B+
• MINE TO POSSESS by Nailini Singh, Grade B+

*Full disclosure from Janine: Meredith Duran and Sherry Thomas are my good friends and critique partners, but since I enjoyed their 2008 books very much, I felt it would be a glaring omission not to include their them on my list of favorites.

**Added by Janine in 2009: Readers should know that I am now exchanging critiques with Bettie Sharpe as well. However, that was not the case when I read “EMBER.”

Related posts:

1. Best of 2008 List: Reviewer Jennie F
2. Best of 2008 List: Reviewer Jayne
3. Best of 2008 List: Reviewer Jia

Jennie F is one of our “new-ish” reviewers. She reviews sporadically and has ecletic taste.   Her list includes a variety of fiction books, not all of which are romance:   

• VICTORY OF EAGLES by Naomi Novik, Grade A
• THE EDGE OF IMPROPRIETY by Pam Rosenthal,  Grade: A
• DELICIOUS by Sherry Thomas, Grade A
• FROM DEAD TO WORSE by Charlaine Harris, Grade A
• PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS by Sherry Thomas, Grade A-
• YOUR SCANDALOUS WAYS by Loretta Chase, Grade A-
• WHERE SERPENTS SLEEP by C.S. Harris, Grade: B+
• DUKE OF SHADOWS by Meredith Duran, Grade B+
• LOVE THE ONE YOU’RE WITH by Emily Giffin,  Grade: B+
• CRY WOLF by Patricia Briggs, Grade B+
• POWER PLAY by Deirdre Martin, Grade B+

Related posts:

1. PW Best Of List
2. May 11, 2008 Bestseller comparison list
3. Random House Loses Big Authors; Charlaine Harris Dominates the Bestseller List

One of my fellow reviewers knows you, but I went into this book without any preconceived notions. I didn’t read reviews (including those here), interviews, cover copy, even your posts here at DA. I knew nothing except Janine thought highly of your work. And while that’s usually a good recommendation for me, sometimes we don’t see eye to eye. This time I think we do. This is truly one of the best romances I’ve ever read.

I keep trying to think of how to express the superlatives that went through my mind reading it. I fangirled at each little perfect turn of phrase I’d come across that described a character or situation to a T. I started marking pages to use for quotes, only to find I’d torn a paper napkin to shreds and my book looked like a tissue flower.

For once in a romance it wasn’t a question of loving the hero or heroine, but of loving them together. Of loving their journey to get to know one another, watching them change subtly, slowly, realistically, inevitably. You wrote it with a clarity that on occasion stunned me and had me reading sections over and over.

The first love scene between them opened up the heroine to us even as the hero did the same. Everyone should read this love scene, if they want to know how to do one the right way. It’s that good. From just its beginning paragraph we given so much of Emma’s thoughts and feelings. Her reactions to the unknown say so much about her.

He grasped her face in his hands to slant her head, to give him deeper access, to fill her. Yes, do it, she thought, consume me, swallow me whole. Odd feelings with no root tore through her. She felt frenzied, almost angry, ready to jump out of her skin. He would take her before she went. How would she go? Would she die? Would she face the water again? Could anyone keep the promises she suddenly wanted from him? The questions fluttered up through her mind; then his hand was under her skirt, tracing a pattern on the back of one thigh, and they scattered like startled birds. His fingers slid down, gripping her a few inches above her knee, as his mouth ran down her throat.

Just typing that paragraph melted me. This is extra-strength characterization combined with heat creating some primal understanding between them. Alchemy. It’s exactly what a love scene should be. And it’s this chemistry between them that kept me riveted throughout the book.

If the book had a failing for me it was in the villain. He was stereotypical, and some of the elements of the plot in the very last section of the book were worn ones. But even then, you breathed new life into them with the way your main characters behaved, and I was laughing at how you made me enjoy it despite plot elements that normally annoy me.

I was bored at no point in this book, including the first half. I read the novel in two sittings, sleep and work between them. And the most telling thing is, I think, that when I reached the last page I opened it back up to the first and began reading again, loving it as much the second time around.

I was just telling the others that a couple of the books released this month have made romance new and exciting to me again. We speak of the Golden Age of Romance, of Putneys and Gaffneys and Ivorys as if it’s something we’ll never see again. Your book makes me think we’re wrong. A.

Sincerely,

ジェーン

(Jān)

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon, Powells or in ebook format.

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran
2. REVIEW: The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran
3. My First Sale by Meredith Duran

Your path to publication is fairly well known to the readers of Dear Author. We posted updates about the Gather contest, had the opportunity to read your first two chapters online, and celebrated your victory in winning the first ever Gathers.com romance writing contest. A little while later, Janine shared with us that she is a critique partner of yours. You’ve been a frequent commenter and your insights into the genre have always been fascinating. It is because of that this review is doubly hard to write. I may be the only one with this contrary opinion as well, but in the interest of fairness to the readership here at DA, I was compelled to give my thoughts of this book.

I won’t belabor the plot as Janet carefully articulated it in her review. I found the prose to be good, but not extraordinary and for me, the prose was not enough to lift the characters and plot out of average status.

The story begins with a tumultuous shipwreck wherein Emmaline Martin is the only survivor. The prologue is a powerful emotional scene. Unfortunately what follows is an immediate denouement featuring fairly stock romance characters. In some sense, I felt that Duke of Shadows was a traditional historical romance wrapped in a fancy India cloth rather than having that cloth woven throughout.

Emma is a bluestocking with ordinary bluestocking concerns. She is bored with the British colonial society. She questions her role amongst these people. She’s attracted to the native culture and the native people. Her fiance, Marcus, is the villian. He is also a bit cardboard-ish. He is greedy (marrying Emma for her money), flagrantly cheats on Emma, and hits her too. I was waiting for the obligatory villian sex scene with one of his female relatives, but that, thankfully, never happened. Julian, the hero, is a half Indian, half English heir to a dukedom. He’s darker skinned, honorable, and disgusted with British imperialism while being heir to the highest title in the land.

In a twist, the heroine is the tormented character of the book. She’s beset with survivor’s guilt probably in part due to the shipwreck but seemingly more related to the events that take place in the second half of the book. I actually felt the opening scene with the shipwreck could have been completely removed and it would have had no impact on the overall story. That was a disappointment.

I also thought that for most of the first half of the book, heroine was less of a character and more of a vessel for whatever message the story was trying to convey at the time. Initially Emma was the bluestocking that was out of sync with the British colonial society. Then she played the role of the pro-colonial message as a foil for the anti-colonial hero. It wasn’t until the second half of the book that Emma came alive as an individual for me.

The good thing about this book is that Julian is not an alpha asshole. He’s actually a decent guy who wants to use his position to help those around him. Emma, too, is a likeable character when her emotional conflict becomes the center of the story. Emma and Julian’s connection is strong and romantic.

Ultimately, my biggest problem with the story is the first half. I think Duke of Shadows competently written with a sophisticated voice but I had a difficult time getting emotionally attached to the heroine. Even though the setting is fresh, many of the themes and motifs are traditional, particularly when it came to the characterization of the heroine. It was a struggle to get to the second half and I think for any other book, this would have been a DNF for me. C.

Best regards

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon, Powells or in ebook format.

***

Ann Aguirre loves this book and is holding a contest to readers who blog about this book. Your opinion might be quite different than mine. The prizes include gift certificates to bookstores. We love those, don’t we?

Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran
2. My First Sale by Meredith Duran
3. REVIEW: Shadows of Myth/Shadows of Prophecy by Rachel Lee