I was a big fan of your books in the 1990s. They came along at a time when I had not read anything like them. If the characters made mistakes or committed wrongs, your books actually examined the of the characters’ motives for doing so in some depth. And your characters actually had spiritual lives, often in conflict with a troubled conscience. Concepts like honor mattered to them. Your side characters could be Jewish, gypsy, or gay, yet never the villains in the story. And sometimes even your main characters belonged to minority groups.

Understand, I came to historical romance in the 1980s via the American single title blockbuster books, at a time when they were quite different from today’s romances. The heroes of many of those 1980s books just took what they wanted, and didn’t spend much time agonizing about wrong and right. The heroines embodied feisty. While those books were filled with adventures in exciting locales, and had some qualities I still miss, your books, when I discovered them, were so different from the pack that they were a breath of fresh air.

The Fallen Angels series, while perhaps not the very first series about a group of men who went to Eton together and earned a nickname for their closeness there, was certainly one of the first, and without a doubt the first I read. I remember the books being prominently displayed in bookstores at a time when most historical were still standalone, so I’d venture to guess that for good or ill, the Fallen Angels’ success played a part in setting the series trend.

I was an avid reader of your books at the time and eagerly awaited each release (This changed for me somewhere around the time you switched to writing contemporaries). I remember reading Thunder and Roses, the first Fallen Angels book, when it was released, and while it wasn’t among my most favorite of your books, I think I would have graded it a B or B+ at that time.

When I heard that the series was being reissued in electronic editions, I dug out my old paperback (yes, I still have it – I hate to separate related books from one another) and decided it might be fun to revisit this book in a review. I wanted to see how the book held up. Unhappily, the answer (for me at least) is not well.

Thunder and Roses begins with a prologue in which a gypsy woman delivers her son to his grandfather, the Earl of Aberdare. Marta’s motives for handing her son over to the earl aren’t revealed until late in the book, but Nikki, Marta’s son, is devastated and anguished by his mother’s abandonment, and it is clear the earl is perturbed by his grandson’s dark skin. Marta was legally married to Kenrick, the earl’s son, so the earl is forced to accept a gypsy as his heir.

Flash forward twenty-three years, and Nicholas Davies is now the Earl of Aberdare. Rumors have it that “the Demon Earl” seduced his grandfather’s much younger wife, bringing about the previous earl’s death, and then capped off the crimes by murdering his own wife. But Clare Morgan still goes to confront Nicholas about failing in his responsibilities to the villagers on his Welsh estate.

Clare is a schoolteacher as well as the daughter of the deceased Methodist Reverend Morgan, and is therefore respected in the local village of Penreith. Nicholas has just returned from four years abroad. He is drunk and wants nothing more than to be rid of Clare when she shows up at his home and insists that the dearth of jobs and the dangerous conditions at the coal mine in Penreith are forcing the villagers to risk their lives and that since Nicholas owns both a slate quarry and the land on which the mine is located, he must do something about it.

To get rid of Clare, Nicholas proposes a trade –he’ll help the villagers only if she’ll sacrifice her reputation to the cause.

To be clear, Nicholas is not asking Clare for sex. He merely wants her to move in with him so that everyone will think they are having sex. If Clare, Reverend Morgan’s daughter, is willing to destroy her precious reputation to save the same villagers who will condemn her, she will enlist his help. Otherwise, it’s a no go.

Oh, and there’s also the matter of a little side bet about whether Nicholas can actually succeed in seducing Clare during the time she’s in residence at his home. To that end, Clare must allow him a kiss a day. He will not go beyond that without her consent.

This being a romance novel, Clare agrees rather than telling Nicholas to go to hell. Nicholas, who mostly wanted her to go away, is instead obliged to check out the quarry and visit the mine. Clare takes on the redecorating of his house and discovers that a portrait of his late wife infuriates Nicholas.

Eventually the two travel to London where Clare gets a new wardrobe and Nicholas introduces her to his other “Fallen Angel” friends, Lucien and Rafe. A fourth friend, Michael, owns the mine on Nicholas’s Land, but Lucien warns Nicholas that while he was traveling, Michael conceived a hatred for him for unknown reasons.

While Clare and Nicholas await an opportunity to approach Michael about the mine, their daily kisses grow more passionate. But though Nicholas thinks that being “ruined” could only be a good thing for Clare, Clare vehemently disagrees. Since she’s never felt a deep spiritual connection to God, she feels she’s a fraud both as a Methodist and as the reverend’s daughter. Nicholas’s kisses amplify that feeling and therefore Clare both looks forward to them and dreads them.

I had a number of problems with Thunder and Roses this time around, but I’ll start with the nature of Clare’s conflict. I have no problem, at least in principle, with a heroine whose religious beliefs prevent her from sleeping with the hero. That was the case with the heroine of your medieval romance, Uncommon Vows, and it worked for me in that novel. But in that book, Meriel was deeply devout and had almost become a nun as a teen. She was also held captive by the hero who wanted her to agree to become his mistress. So she had very strong reasons to refuse.

With Clare, the religion vs. premarital sex conflict did not work nearly as well for me, and here’s why: Clare’s fears focused on her reputation and what others thought of her and it was in this context that she seemed to find sex sinful. But she couched her objections in terms of religion and spirituality.

As events in the book later proved, her experience of spirituality was in no way harmed by sex; the real issue was what others thought of her. I think I would have had more sympathy for Clare if she had called a spade a spade and just admitted that it was her reputation and her standing in the community that mattered to her most, not the state of her soul.

Moving on to Nicholas. I think I was supposed to find Nicholas a charming rogue, but I found him pretty off-putting. First, there was his hypocrisy. He goes on about how he doesn’t force women, but he insists on the daily kiss a number of times when Clare is reluctant. He also touches her in casual ways early on in their relationship when he knows she’s not entirely comfortable with it.

Second, Nicholas also insists that losing her reputation would be the best thing in the world for Clare. Dude, if she cares about her reputation, and you really want the best thing in the world for her, then get a clue: destroying her reputation isn’t it.

Third, there’s the fact that even after Nicholas realizes conditions at the Penreith mine are horrendously dangerous, he threatens to withdraw his support from that cause when Clare tries to leave him. That’s right – he doesn’t force women, but a bunch of villagers will have to die unless Clare stays at his side and puts up with his kisses.

Okay, yeah, Clare is turned on by these kisses, and obviously so is Nicholas. Maybe he’s even falling for her. But threatening to endanger the lives of the miners, which include children, in order to have this chick is not cool.

But here’s my most important point: I think I might have been fine with all of the above had Nicholas been portrayed as a morally ambiguous character. If he’d owned up to his dark side, the way the hero of Uncommon Vows does. Sadly, that doesn’t happen here. A couple of people chide Nicholas for what he’s doing to Clare but Nicholas himself doesn’t seem to realize what a jerk he’s being.

Moreover, Nicholas is continuously referred to as charming. He has peacocks and penguins and a sad life story about all the people who betrayed him, and all that is somehow supposed to make him a nice guy even when he’s being selfish, childish, and obnoxious.

The book does have some good points – interesting details about mining conditions, a sexy game of strip billiards, and a nice suspense sequence involving fire. I appreciated that Nicholas was frequently described as dark skinned (even now the historical romance genre is too white), and liked side characters like Clare’s friends Owen and Marged. And when the conflict between Nicholas and Clare came to a head, it finally got compelling.

Other aspects I felt less keen on. The pacing of the story felt slow, though that may be partly because I’d read the book before and knew where the story was going. The language was occasionally pleasing but occasionally anachronistic. The gypsy side characters were portrayed stereotypically, but at least that they were also portrayed as a safe harbor for Nicholas. I mildly liked the resolution of Michael and Nicholas’s relationship, but hated what came between them in the first place.

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On the whole, a good part of Thunder and Roses frustrated me, and I was a little surprised that I managed to finish it. I feel like I am slaughtering a sacred cow here, since I know how beloved the books in this series were for many readers, myself included. It feels churlish to write this after the many, many hours of reading pleasure I have received through your books in my years of reading, but as a reviewer, I have to be honest, and the truth is that while my 1993 self enjoyed this book, my 2012 self found it dissatisfying. D

Sincerely,

Janine

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I should probably preface this review by saying that I’ve chatted with you on Twitter and what I know of you, I really like.

Ever since they met in The Dangerous Viscount, book two of your Burgundy Book Club series, I’ve wanted to see Minerva Montrose and the Marquis of Blakeney (known to his acquaintances as Blake) hook up. Confessions from an Arranged Marriage, Blake and Minerva’s story, opens with a London ball in Minerva’s honor.

As a favor to their nephew, Minerva’s brother-in-law, the Duke and Duchess of Hampton have agreed to hold the ball. Their son, Blake, is to open it with Minerva. But Blake is enjoying his mistress’s company, and arrives too late. By the time he dances with Minerva, she is greatly irritated. She and Blake snipe at each other and are both glad when the waltz ends.

Minerva has already picked out a husband – a Member of Parliament named Mr. Parkes whom she believes she can groom into the next Prime Minister. Very much in favor of political reform, Minerva believes she can help bring it about by steering the sober, responsible Mr. Parkes through the waters of politics and diplomacy. But Minerva’s hopes to encourage this courtship are thwarted by a migraine. She takes headache powders and goes to lie down in the library.

Meanwhile, Blake is having an even worse evening. Though handsome, athletic, and heir to a dukedom, he carries a shameful secret. Blake suffers from what contemporary readers will recognize as dyslexia, although back in 1822, its existence was unknown. Consequently Blake believes his inability to read is due to pure and simple stupidity.

Blake does tries to cover up this flaw by pretending to be arrogant, lazy, and disinterested in anything intellectual. To Blake’s misfortune, his family has a long history of being in the thick of politics, and Blake is expected to follow in the same tradition. Relations between Blake and his cool, standoffish parents are therefore strained.

Even more unfortunate, Blake has confided his secret in an Eton friend, Mr. Huntley, and Huntley has used the secret to blackmail Blake. Now, just when Blake’s resulting debt has finally been paid, Huntley corners him. Blake manages to extricate himself from the conversation before Huntley can launch into his next demand, but he feels flooded with shame.

Escaping into an unoccupied room, Blake gets drunk on champagne overhears his friend Lamb planning a tryst with the amorous Duchess of Lethbridge, with whom Blake has slept in the past. As Lamb and the duchess plan to meet in the library in an hour’s time, the drunken Blake has a brainstorm. He and Lamb have a tradition of playing pranks on one another. Wouldn’t it be hilarious to arrive at the library first and take Lamb’s place with the duchess?

In the library, Blake discovers a tall woman lying on the couch, her hand covering her eyes. Believing her to be the duchess, Blake feels certain she is feigning sleep, playing at a naughty scenario. Blake has his head under her petticoats when the woman wakes up and shrieks “What are you doing?” Only a moment after her realizes she is the irritating Minerva Montrose, Blake turns and sees a group of people in the doorway.

Thus Blake and Minerva reluctantly become engaged. But when Blake realizes what his father wants most from him and Minerva is a grandson, an heir more worthy of the dukedom than his son, Blake indulges his hurt and anger with a petty decision: he will refrain from consummating the marriage so as not to give his father his heart’s desire.

Blake also believes all Minerva cares about is whether or not he can satisfy her political ambitions, and at first, he’s not entirely wrong. Minerva is so upset that her hopes of marrying Mr. Parkes were dashed that she is terribly disappointed that her husband will be Blake. Never having seen him read or discuss books or even events in the newspapers, she is not at all convinced that he is intelligent.

Since Blake believes himself lacking in intellect, Minerva’s initial lack of respect for him, and later her desire to mold him into a political figure, something he knows he can never be, hurt him enough that even after they are engaged, he does not dismiss his mistress.

Minerva’s is disappointed and unhappy to learn that Blake was seen with his paramour at the theater. When the two marry and travel to Paris for their honeymoon, there is a great deal of tension between them. Although Minerva is dreading her wedding night, she is also hurt and upset when Blake doesn’t come to her room.

But Blake was tasked by his politically inclined brother in law Gideon with finding which of the French are loyal to the crown and which to Napoleon’s son, and when he finally shares this objective with Minerva, they turn it into a friendly contest. The hunt for political intelligence brings the couple together, and Blake realizes what a fool he was not to touch his smart, confident and appealing wife.

Minerva for her part begins to see that Blake is intelligent as well as handsome, but wonders why he doesn’t apply himself more. She feels certain he could be so much more than he is, and if only he would allow her to persuade him to enter the political arena, they could be a couple to contend with.

Standing in the way of both Minerva’s ambitions and the romantic relationship is Blake’s secret. How can he trust a woman as bright as Minerva with the knowledge that he is stupider than he appears?

Confessions from an Arranged Marriage engaged me only partly in the beginning, because Blake and Minerva were so preoccupied with their personal needs and desires that neither looked beyond the surface of the other at first. While there is something refreshing about a pair of lovers who start out disinterested in one another, I would have liked for a few more hints of attraction to pierce that disinterest a little sooner.

Additionally, though this is a minor concern, the presence of most of the characters from the earlier books in the series during the ballroom scene felt like prequel baiting. While I realize there were natural reasons for them to be there, even so it can still feel artificial when several characters from earlier books appear in the same scene.

(As long as I’m on the subject of characters from earlier books, I’ll add that I felt a little sorry for poor Diana, in her third pregnancy in roughly as many years. I wondered how many children she and Sebastian would have by the end of the 1820s!)

Once Minerva and Blake began their honeymoon trip, though, their interest in each other as people sparked, and I started really caring about them as a couple. The more they started understanding and caring about each other, the more invested in them I became.

Blake starts out self-focused, but he grows up a lot over the course of the book. I didn’t always like him, since his decisions not to dismiss his mistress right away and not to consummate his marriage struck me as insensitive to Minerva. But even at his most immature, I felt for him over the dyslexia issue.

As the story progressed and Blake showed greater and greater maturity and love for Minerva while still fearing to disclose his secret, I understood more and more what a source of fear and shame his belief that he was stupid was, and how sensitive he had always been under his indifferent exterior.

Minerva, though more concerned with the greater good and England’s fate than Blake, and outwardly much more mature, had a different flaw. Her self-confidence was such that she started out certain that she knew what she wanted in a husband and that Blake was about as far from what she needed as a man could get.

But the more Minerva realized that Blake was not an idiot, the more I came to care about her. One of the pleasures of this book was her growth into a woman capable of seeing that intelligence comes in many stripes and therefore, one capable of not just accepting, but also respecting and admiring the man Blake grew into being.

By the middle of the book I was totally rooting for this couple, though their trials were far from over. I smiled at their witty repartee, found their love scenes hot, and one scene between Blake and his father even made me tear up a little for Blake.

Having now read all four books in the Burgundy Book Club series, I can say that your characters’ vulnerabilities, insecurities and quirks are consistently well conveyed. There is a warmth to the writing that comes from acceptance of the idiosyncrasies that make human beings imperfect and human.

I have just one more issue with the book, which is that sometimes I feel that the style of narration has an effect that is slightly distancing. At times I feel I’m being told about the characters rather than experiencing their emotions from the inside.

Even so, I ultimately had great sympathy and affection for Blake and Minerva, and was so glad to see them triumph over all the obstacles their relationship faced. I closed the book smiling and satisfied. B+.

Sincerely,

Janine

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So. I’m thinking that I’m not quite the right reader for your books. “Between the Duke and the Deep Blue Sea” is meant to be a comedy, a piece of frivolity. It’s a tale of frippery, if I can borrow a period phrase. There is nothing wrong with frippery but sometimes it can be too overdecorated or too flimsy. I thought this story was both.

This book starts out with Prinny ordering six bachelor Dukes to marry. Who knew that Prinny was involved in making a gaggle dukes get married? This was the set up for the Kieran Kramer series (among others). In the Kramer series, Prinny stumbles through a secret door and commands all the members of the room to marry one after the other. In this book, the first Duke to marry is Alexander Barclay, the newly minted Duke of Kress, who lost his newly acquired fortune in a debauched bachelor party that has made the monarchy look bad. The debauched bachelor party led the Duke of Candover to miss his wedding and jilt an unknown bride at the altar. Har de har har. (I never knew when I was supposed to laugh in this book but I presumed this setup was supposed to be witty).

Alexander is a city boy and he does not want to be sent to Cornwall to rebuild, in one month, a crumbling estate while also hosting a house party so that he and his fellow ducal miscreants can find wives. Prinny is allowing Alex to use the treasury to restore the estate until such time as Alex can find a wealthy heiress. Alex isn’t a particularly nice guy. One reviewer at Amazon called him a frat boy and that is the perfect description. He doesn’t think much of the country folks (calling them tin as opposed to the gold of the burnished town folks, or in some cases fool’s gold). He is often prosing about making generalities about women being complaining, whiny, and overreaching. Unfortunately, none of these are recognized as flaws through which he must grow. Instead, they are part of what is supposed to make him charming and witty.

Alex comes across Roxanne Van­ derhaven, the Countess of Paxton, (Vanderhaven, really?) when she is hanging off the side of a cliff after her husband had tried to kill her. She realizes her husband’s murderous intent after she falls and he doesn’t return with the promised help. Instead Alex finds her hanging off the cliff and saves her. Roxanne begs for Alex to hide her after he tells her he will spirit her to a magistrate who will, of course, see that the Earl of Paxton is brought to justice:

He bit back a smile. It was unkind to find humor in any part of this unfortunate lady’s circumstances. “All right. Here is what I propose,” he continued. “Let us get you to the magistrate of the parish. He will sort this out and mete out the justice your de­ lightful husband deserves. No one is above the laws of the land, no matter what his station.”

After Roxanne convinces Alex that a magistrate is not the answer, they journey to his home whereupon hijinks occur. I’m pretty sure that the story was a mistorical. There was the outspoken valet of the newly made Duke of Kress who interjected his opinions in front of Prinny and six dukes, a couple of them royal dukes. There was the last name of Roxanne. Vanderhaven as the last name of British nobility seems quite rare. The entire modern tone of their discourse. The scene were a squatting crofter comes up to the Duke (Alex) and tells him that his family has been squatting for centuries and he’d like to go on squatting and Alex gives his blessing.

The story had a thing about details. It takes a fierce dislike to details. Who cares how Roxanne would dress at this house party attended by dukes and maids meant for Dukes. Why she would wear Alex’s Great Aunt Meme’s clothes. Or how Roxanne got her male disguise to attend her own funeral complete with a fake mustache. Or how she managed to take a horse from the Duke’s stable. Or to whom Alex lost his fortune or how Alex had even become a duke. Or why the Earl had a burial with no body. Or how Roxanne intended to assert ownership to her deceased father’s hidden fortune of gold guineas which were not left to her in the will.

Probably the most troublesome aspect of this story was its huge cast of characters and the non stop heavy handed sequel baiting. Not only are there several dukes at the party but there is one missing duke and everyone took turns wondering where he was. Things would occur that aren’t well explained to the reader but are clearly to be set up for later books. The unrequited feelings one of the guests had for another guest was more interesting than the furtive actions to be revealed later and the missing duke.

As I read the book I often thought to myself that there were definitely readers who would find the book funny and there were moments of humor and times in which the dialogue could bring a smile to someone’s face. I wondered why I couldn’t just lose myself within the text. Clearly this book wasn’t to be taken seriously. I kind of feel like the No Fun Police by pointing out the flaws in a book like this but every time I resolved to try to set aside my issues, a new problem would arise such as when it was revealed that the Duchess of March (clearly modeled after the Duke of Marlborough’s progeny) was only 17. Yet she was “the only female in the prince’s entourage”, the one female attending the morning after debauchery; the one female that was present with a bunch of men in a state of dissolute repair and undress after their bachelor; the one female who was present in His Majesty’s bedchambers with all the other dukes and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Oh, and the valet of Alex. I mean, What. The. Fuck.

The good thing is that Roxanne goes from trying to be the perfect wife to taking life into her hands, traipsing about as a man; helping rebuild (literally with her own hands) the crumbling manor; saving people from drowning. There are some nice women in the story with whom Roxanne forms a friendship. These ladies, of course, will be married off to the Dukes in latter books. The main conflict of the story I thought would be Roxanne being a) alive and b) married but it was primarily that Alex was instructed to marry someone wealthy and titled. The book was too crowded and the characterizations too weak for me. D

Best regards,

Jane

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This is the first of your books I’ve read, and it’s the first in quite a while that I’ve considered applying the mistorical tag to. Given the muddled nature of Regency history in Romance, as well as my insecurity regarding how much I really know that’s true about the period, I decided against tagging the book that way. However, the internal debate is indicative of my overall response to A Rogue By Any Other Name, specifically my inability to feel immersed in the lives of its characters or their world. Despite some likeably competent writing and some truly entertaining scenes, I pretty much stayed at arm’s length from the book and felt unconvinced by the progression of the romance.

At 21, only six years after his parents’ tragic death, Michael, the young Marquess of Bourne lost all of his unentailed property in one hand of vingt-et-un. In a cruel irony, the man who took Bourne’s fortune was the man who helped him build it back over the past six years. So for nearly the past decade, Michael has been planning his revenge against the Viscount Langford, while building the wealth to re-aquire a stretch of land that, for Bourne, seemed to represent his future. As a partner of a notorious London gaming hell, The Fallen Angel, Bourne has the money to buy out most of his fellow aristocrats, but the deed to Falconwell remains elusive. Until, that is, Michael happens into a little bit of luck in Surrey.

At 28, Lady Penelope has had five proposals of marriage, none of which have resulted in a wedding. Her latest, from childhood friend Thomas Alles, was probably the easiest to reject, in part because after being spurned by a duke who went on to marry for love, Penelope would rather be a spinster than unhappily married. And now that her father, the Marquess of Needham and Dolby, has placed Falconwell in Penelope’s dowry, that chance has drastically increased. As much as Penelope would like to marry for the sake of her younger sisters’ matrimonial chances, she cannot imagine how that could ever happen. The one man she wished for has been gone from Surry for almost a decade, and for years her letters to him have gone unanswered (and lately unsent). So when, in the middle of the night, she decides to walk the neighboring land, Falconwell, in fact, she is absolutely stunned to come across Michael, who is equally surprised to see her.

Michael knows that if he lets Penelope go safely back to her home and bed, he will never again have a chance at Falconwell, so instead he basically abducts her to the long-abandoned Bourne estate, ensuring her “ruin” by ripping her dress practically in half and introducing her to the hot pre-marital sexxoring. Penelope, who had long been a young woman of propriety and respect for her parents and the many rules of society, is both incensed and tempted by Michael’s actions. Part of her has always wanted him to love her, and yet, as he makes clear that first night,

“I do not fool myself into thinking that the goal of marriage is happiness for one or both of the parties involved. My plan is to restore Falconwell’s lands to its manor and, unfortunately for you, it requires our marriage. I shan’t be a good husband, but I also haven’t the slightest interest in keeping you under my thumb.”

Still, it is difficult for Penelope to accept that her childhood friend Michael is now this seeming hard, uncaring man bent myopically on revenge, which establishes a difficult dynamic in their relationship early on: she consistently hopes for more, and Michael consistently shows her less. Until he doesn’t. But more on that later.

Some of my favorite books in the genre feature heroes who – through a mixture of traumatic loss and a diminished sense of self-worth – struggle with unaccustomed feelings of emotional dependence on the heroine and, in the process, end up hurting and disappointing her. One of the reasons those books are among my favorites is that the process of successfully redeeming such a man is both torturously painstaking and cathartically rewarding in direct proportion to the degree of alphahole behavior. And for almost the first half of A Rogue By Any Other Name, Michael is one serious alphahole, telling Penelope over and over again how incidental she is to his twin goals of Falconwell’s restoration and revenge against Langford, leaving her for days at a time, seducing and abandoning her without a word, etc. Standard alphahole behavior, in other words.

For her part, Penelope is tired of living in response to the whims of men, and if she cannot have the kind of happiness in marriage she once imagined, she can use the position her new marriage affords her to secure good matches for her sisters. She bargained that deal with Michael the first night he took her to his abandoned estate and convinces him that it will go much easier if they convince everyone they have a real love match. And unfortunately for Penelope, Michael is an incredibly good actor, which adds to Penelope’s confused feelings, her stubborn hopefulness, and the disappointment she feels when Michael reminds her, for the umpteenth time, how uncommitted he is emotionally to their marriage. It’s not until Penelope decides to take the freedom Michael’s disinterest offers her more seriously – making a late might trip to The Fallen Angel to explore Michael’s world – that her own marital fortunes change.

The character trajectories of Penelope and Michael are clear: as she becomes more independent of will, he becomes more connected emotionally, and thus they ultimately grow together. Because this is a Romance, we know they will end up happily and in love, so the main mystery in the story is how Michael will resolve his revenge plans, which implicate not only Langford, but also his son, Tommy, the mutual childhood friend of Michael and Penelope. Penelope, of course, does not want Tommy to suffer for Langford’s betrayal and Michael’s righteous anger, which creates a good deal of emotional tension between her and Michael, who is alternately jealous of his wife’s desire to protect Tommy and resigned to seeing himself as unworthy of Penelope.

Unfortunately for me, that tension around Michael’s revenge and his feelings for Penelope were just not enough to emotionally invest me in the story. Part of the issue was the way the two protags evolved. Penelope, for example, is initially introduced as this reasonable, proper young woman who has always put her responsibilities first and who even failed to stand up for herself when her thoughtless younger sister, Olivia, makes snide comments about her marriage prospects. And then suddenly she’s walking around outside – alone! – in the middle of the night, pursuing the strange light that turned out to be Michael’s lamp, demanding he take her home and then letting him have his wicked way with her. It wasn’t that I disliked her; it was more that I felt a fundamental lack of consistency in her character that made it difficult for me to trust her. I found myself annoyed at her constant waffling between dreaming of Michael falling in love with her and being let down by his alphaholery. And yet, despite the lack of consistency, she possessed a predictability that further distanced me. There was one point where Michael offered her an adventure, and I think I actually yelled out loud at the book, “Don’t say you want to go to the gaming hell!!!!!,” right before she did, indeed, say she wanted to go to the gaming hell.

Still, my bigger issues are with Michael, who spends at least 200 pages in alphahole mode, only to flip like the coin he gives Penelope as a marker when he promises to help her sisters. What facilitates the flip? Among other things, a late night therapy session at The Fallen Angel with his business partners, who tease and goad him, challenge and, when all else fails, brawl with him in service of getting him to see what he’s missing by spending all his nights at the hell. Now don’t get me wrong: this was one of the funniest, not to mention, truly unexpected, scenes in the book – all these tough guys gossiping like women and trying to get Michael in touch with his suppressed emotions. But the whole thing seemed kind of crazy to me, as well, both in its character and effectiveness. Like Penelope, I was taken aback at Michael’s change of heart, although unlike her, I was more unconvinced by the way it happened than by the fact that it did. After all, I expected that. Unfortunately, the process was unexpected in a way that made it feel more cartoonish than authentic to me. Even Michael’s backstory left me with questions: what happened to his entailed property while he disappeared from society? Didn’t he had many people who were counting on him to be responsible and take care of them? Did the Bourne manor house sit on Falconwell, and if so, why was it not part of the entailed property? And with so much property lost to Langford, why was it just Falconwell Michael wanted so badly? Part of me was never able to see Michael as the good guy, because I had no sense he felt there was anything wrong with taking off  for a decade after he had lost what he perceived to be “his future.”

I think, in the end, it was this combination of clichéd predictability and eccentric inconsistency that kept me from loving the book. Where I wanted more unpredictability – in how the characters developed and reacted and evolved – I felt it was too superficial, and where I wanted consistency, I felt like I got artificial shifts that propelled the plot forward. Instead of the plot serving the characters, it felt to me as if the characters served the plot, and I think they really suffered for it. I felt this even extended to some of the historical details. For example, I’m certainly no Regency expert, but I understand that gambling and cards were quite popular among men and women. And yet one character in the book boisterously insists he won’t deign to play cards with a woman, and vingt-et-un is basically described as a man’s game, in order, I think, to ramp up the dramatic tension of the scene. And while I understand that the book is set in 1831, it still feels very much a Regency Romance to me.

I cannot say, though, that I would not read another MacLean historical, as the writing was likeable, and at some points, really quite nice, especially some of the descriptions of The Fallen Angel:

Penelope had never seen anything so stunning as this place, this marvelous, lush, place, filled with candlelight and color, teeming with people who called out obscene bets and rolled with laughter, who kissed their dice and cursed their bad luck.

Perhaps my reaction would have been different had I read the book containing Penelope’s backstory. I will soon find out, as I will likely read Pippa’s book, as her match is quite an interesting choice. For A Rogue By Any Other Name, though, a C.

~ Janet

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I really enjoyed your latest novel, The Revenge of Lord Eberlin. Recently, thanks to the many thoughtful and well-written reviews here at Dear Author, I’ve been reading books out of what I think of as my comfort zone. And it’s been great. I loved Heat, disliked Beautiful Disaster, and am reading my first M/M romance. But my first love in romance is the historical and this entry into your The Secrets of Hadley Green series was a great reading date. It’s completely traditional, uses tropes common to historical romance, and even has an epilogue, a currently en vogue plot device I usually deplore. It’s set in one of those common and oft annoying British small towns full of judgmental old women and lavish estates kept running smoothly by a servant class completely satisfied with their lowered status in life. I loved it.

I’ve read the first book in the series, The Year of Living Scandalously, and thought it pretty good. That book begins when the heroine of this book, Lily Boudine, is eight. Lily, an orphan, lives with her uncle and aunt, at Ashwood, a palatial estate in the small West Sussex town of Hadley Green. It is the summer of 1793 and the night of the annual Ashwood gala. Lily sees two things that night that change the lives of many. The first is a couple whom she can’t quite make out embracing in the shadows on the stairs. The second, which she sees just a few minutes later, is a horse trotting away into the night. Lily recognizes the horse; it’s that of Mr. Scott, the woodcarver who has spent many an hour at Ashwood carving the detailed dual staircase that dominates the mansion’s main entry. She wonders why he would have been at Ashwood—the gala is for the Quality and Joseph Scott is certainly not that.

In the morning, Lily awakes to commotion. A dreadful theft has happened. Sometime during the night, someone pilfered the Ashwood jewels, a set of large priceless rubies given to the first Lord Ashwood by Edward the IV for the former’s loyalty during the War of the Roses. As Lily watches her beloved governess be questioned unsympathetically, she blurts out, “I think I know who took them.” She tells of seeing Mr. Scott riding away and, within days, Mr. Scott is hanged for the crime.

The Revenge of Lord Eberlin also begins in a summer, this one in 1808. For the first time in fifteen years, Tobin Scott, now 28, the eldest son of Joseph Scott, has returned to Hadley Green. The past years were harsh ones for the Scotts. His father’s execution destroyed his family; his mother and youngest brother died within a year of his father’s death, ruined by filth and poverty in the slums of London. Unable to provide for his younger sister Charity, Tobin took her to a church run poorhouse where she found work as a chamber maid. Tobin himself was impressed into service on a ship as a cook’s helper and, for ten years, sailed the world, never knowing whether or not his sister lived.

Tobin, though, like all heroes, is a survivor and now has all the trappings of success. He’s Lord Eberlin—he bought the title from a beleaguered Dane—and has unlimited wealth earned as an arms trader. He’s rescued Charity (and her illegitimate daughter) from a life of cleaning the refuse of others. He has everything he’s ever wanted except for the one thing he desires most: revenge on the house of Ashwood, currently headed by Lily Boudine.

I liked Tobin. He is, for much of the book, a complete and utter dick. He’s unethical, cold, manipulative, and cares little for the destruction he leaves in his wake. Even were he not seeking to ruin Ashwood, he’d still be a pitiless, bitter man. He is so damaged by his past he hasn’t the ability to feel or value joy, empathy, and compassion. He’s like the Grinch, but worse; rather than having a heart two sizes too small, Tobin hasn’t one at all. And yet, you make him exceedingly alluring. To begin with, he’s smart and interesting—his plans to destroy Ashwood are well-thought out and intricately planned. His complete lack of shame allows him to say whatever the hell he wants and much of what he says is great fun to read. He’s also sexy as hell.

When Tobin returns to Hadley Green, he buys and then pours oodles of his ill-gotten gains into building an estate to rival any in England. His home, Tiber Park, has every luxury imaginable. In contrast, Ashwood is on the brink of bankruptcy and Lily, though a countess, is sinking into poverty. In fact, Lily’s life pretty much sucks.

Lily’s childhood was, in general, a sad one. Her parents died when she was little, and although she was happy during the few years she spent at Ashwood, after she accused Tobin’s father, she was sent to Ireland and never again saw her beloved aunt, Lady Ashwood. While in Ireland, she lived with her cousins, one of whom, Keira, is the heroine of The Year of Living Scandalously. Kiera spent several months at Ashwood, prior to Lily’s arrival there, pretending to be Lily (this made sense—readers who wonder at this simply need to read the first book), and now the villagers of Hadley Green distrust Lily and, in general shun her. Her only close friend is a charming child, Lucy, who is leaving Lily for Ireland to live with Kiera and her husband. Lily is lonely, terrified she’ll fail all those who depend on Ashwood for their livelihoods, and helpless to stop Tobin’s ruination of all she has. I liked her as well. She too is smart; but where Tobin cares for nothing, Lily cares not only for those around her, but for herself. She longs for love, children, joy, and passion with a fervor that, given she has so little of those in her life, is heart-breaking.

When Lily realizes Lord Eberlin is actually Tobin, the boy with whom she played as a child and whose father was hung on her word, she is horrified to learn the tragedies her accusation caused. But she, sanely, sees what she did as a confused eight year old doesn’t give Tobin the right to annihilate either her or her home. She tells him his revenge is unfair and he tells her he doesn’t care, but, he’ll give her a chance at redemption. He’ll stop his ruination of Ashwood if she’ll let him completely ruin her.

“Shall I say it plainly?’ he murmured. “I propose to have your virtue… or I will have Ashwood. The choice is yours.”

Like I said, your hero’s a dick.

But he is, to Lily, an arousing dick and she, after giving it some thought, agrees to his proposition. She, of course, hopes to somehow dally with him without giving up her virginity, but, you make it clear, from their first kiss, she will find that damned difficult to do. I loved the heat between Lily and Tobin. You make the desire they feel for one another palpable. This is a book that made my heart race and my skin tingle. You write wonderfully sensuous love scenes. Each time they touch, Lily, Tobin–and I–long for the two to become lovers.

In some ways, the expected happens. As Lily and Tobin spend time together, he slowly–very slowly–regains his humanity and his heart. He and Lily are hampered by the past and both work to free themselves–Lily from her guilt and Tobin from his black bitterness. When, by the book’s end, Tobin is again able to care and Lily is given the love she’s longed for, it’s lovely.

I don’t mean to imply, however, the book is without aspects unusual in historical romance. Unlike many small towns found in Regency romance, the people of Hadley Green aren’t especially likable. Many are petty, selfish, and annoying. They behaved horribly to Tobin’s family when his father hung and are nasty to Lily despite all her efforts on their behalf. Lily loves Lucy and suffers for that love. And, no matter what choice Lily and Tobin make, a match between the two will never be one that does anything but lower Lily in the eyes of her peers. Tobin never truly pays the piper for his sins and his sister, Charity, never finds peace. These deviations make the book stand out in a genre where saccharine convention is too often the norm.

The only part of the book I found lacking is the tale of those rubies. We are only two novels into the series; already, this plot line is wearing thin. This book offers little new or exciting information about the mysteries of the past. It’s clear Mr. Scott was not the thief and that someone, somewhere, has those damn jewels. Their whereabouts leaves me unconcerned and I’ve a hard time imagining an entire series built around their pursuit.

All in all, though, The Revenge of Lord Eberlin was a terrific read. I love a well-written, sexy, moving Regency romance and you, Ms. London, have written just that.  It’s almost perfect and thus, I give it a strong B+.

Thank you,

Dabney

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I loved your 2009 book, Scandal, and very much enjoyed Indiscreet, which came out later the same year. So when I learned that you were publishing a new historical called Not Wicked Enough I got excited, and asked Jane if she could send me the ARC. Having now read it, I have mixed feelings about Not Wicked Enough. The novel has quite a bit of elegance and charm, but it’s in a lighter vein than Scandal and Indiscreet and was not quite as satisfying to me.

Lily Wellstone arrives in Bitterward, the home of her widowed friend Ginny, at night and in the middle of a downpour. Occupying the entrance hall is an unsmiling gentleman in rough clothes. Yet despite his ill-fitting attire, Lily correctly identifies him as Ginny’s older brother, the Duke of Mountjoy. Lily and Mountjoy converse and when Lily mentions that she is rarely tired enough to sleep before four in the morning, Mountjoy shows her to the library.

Once there, Mountjoy learns from Lily that she is a wealthy heiress, the owner of Syton House, a very prosperous property, and that she was once disowned by her father for her wild nature. Lily offers to leave Bitterward before Ginny learns of her arrival, but Mountjoy, who finds her uncommonly attractive, welcomes her into his home despite the misgiving that Lily may “disrupt his peaceful country existence.”

Mountjoy is not wrong about that, since Lily proves to be a “managing” kind of woman, a bit like Sophy in Heyer’s The Grand Sophy, but more whimsical and less madcap. Lily likes to take others in hand and assist them in finding happiness by enticing them to have fun.

Lily’s first and foremost project is Ginny, who has been mourning her late husband too long, to a point of isolating herself and not allowing herself to enjoy life. Under Lily’s encouragement, Ginny begins to blossom once more, to wear colors and smile again.

But Lily does not confine herself to amusing Ginny alone, she also engages Mountjoy’s near-fiancée Miss Jane Kirk, and his brother Nigel, in such experiments as writing with glowing (and flammable) phosphorous ink. Which would be bad enough, to Mountjoy’s thinking, even without Jane’s suggestion that she write “Mountjoy has not smiled these seven years.”

Although Mountjoy and Jane are not betrothed, the entire neighborhood, Mountjoy included, expects they eventually will be. That Jane is shy and even fearful in his presence is disconcerting to Mountjoy.

Mountjoy and Lily encounter each other at night, when Lily wanders the house or the gardens because she has difficulty sleeping. The first time they meet in the garden, they kiss and then restrain themselves from succumbing to their mutual attraction.

That same night, Lily shows Mountjoy the medallion she says she received from a gypsy king in thanks for rescuing his dog. The gypsy king promised the medallion would unite its wearer with the person with whom he or she “is happiest in love.” But Lily does not expect that will happen for her, since she has already met that man.

Lily loved and still loves Greer, a soldier she meant to marry who died in the war before their union could come to pass. It’s been five years since Greer’s death, but Lily does not believe she will ever love again. Nonetheless, she still has an appreciation for a man’s body and has not forgotten carnal pleasure.

Thus it happens that Lily and Mountjoy become lovers, although neither of them admits that is what they are. During their nighttime encounters, one thing leads to another, and another, and another. Eventually they become what today would be termed “friends with benefits,” neither intending to fall in love with the other, although they like each other very much.

Lily will never love again. Mountjoy will someday marry Jane. Yes, he should stay away from a gentlewoman who is also his sister’s friend. Yes, she shouldn’t touch her friend’s brother. But when there is so much pleasure to be had, how can they keep their hands to themselves?

Not Wicked Enough has considerable strengths to recommend it. First, the characters are delightful. Lily, for all she takes charge of others’ happiness, is endearing because of her generosity of spirit. Her desire to bring joy to her friends makes her appealing, as well as charismatic and outgoing.

Although she had a lonely childhood, Lily looks forward rather than back, and displays a great deal of strength of character regardless of the occasional moment of vulnerability. Her love of color, clothing, and other beautiful things, her sense of whimsy and adventure make her stand out in Mountjoy’s eyes like a bright, exotic flower.

Mountjoy is just as appealing, though in a subtler way. He was a gentleman farmer who came to prominence when it was discovered he was the heir to a dukedom, but he continues to dress like a gentleman farmer in an attempt to prove something to people who are superficial enough to dismiss him on the basis of his garments.

And that is not the only difference between him and Lily. Whereas she is extroverted, he is shy of crowds and social occasions. While she looks for ways to enjoy life, he is dedicated to hard work. And when she takes risks, he feels protective of her. (I especially appreciated that despite those protective feelings, Mountjoy does not attempt to control Lily but gives her the freedom to be herself. He also acknowledges at times that she is in the right and he is in the wrong.)

The affection between these characters is palpable, for all that it grows out of a physical relationship. Their energetic lovemaking sessions are filled with humor and teasing, and I could see them bonding with each other in a way that reminded me of some of Susan Johnson’s earlier erotic romances.

To add to the novel’s strong points, your writing style has a beautiful clarity that I love. There is smoothness to the writing that made me want to savor the words.

Still, while I liked Not Wicked Enough I found myself reading a few chapters and then putting the book down for the day. The reason, as best as I can articulate it, has to do with the relative absence of either external or internal conflict.

While Mountjoy was almost engaged, his near-betrothal never felt like a real obstacle to me. Although he kept thinking that he ought to propose to Jane, his heart was never in it, and it was also evident that Jane’s affections had settled on someone else.

Yes, Lily believed her own heart belonged with Greer and she could never love another, but since she rarely thought of Greer except to repeat this mantra, it was hard to feel that her disloyalty to Greer ever truly upset her. I also didn’t get much indication of what Greer had been like as a man, so I did not feel that Lily was haunted by her past love.

Additionally, the subplots didn’t have much forward momentum except near the very end of the book. Lily’s cousin the Marquess of Fenris skulks around Bitterward’s neighborhood for much of the story, but doesn’t really reveal his motives until close to the end. Nor do we find out the reasons behind Nigel’s odd behavior any sooner, although I guessed what was going on there early on.

Because of the above, and because Mountjoy and Lily were such good friends and lovers, and clearly got on like a house on fire, I didn’t feel their relationship faced real obstacles. The stakes felt relatively low, and consequently I wasn’t deeply driven to find out what would happen next. I also don’t know how much this book will stick with me. Still, while I read about them, the characters charmed and entertained me, and I enjoyed their sexy relationship and the hours I spent in their company. B-.

Sincerely,

Janine

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I always seem to be behind in keeping up with this series but I think it’s because I want to be sure I have a Pink Carnation book on hand. And in this instance it worked beautifully for me. You see, I’ve been in a reading slump for it seems like ages (actually about 3 months) and “The Orchid Affair” is what I needed to finally pull out of it. So thank you for doing me such a service. Now, on to our regularly scheduled review:

Miss Laura Gray has been a governess for sixteen years and is convinced that if she doesn’t do something different now, that this is all she will ever be. Her chance arrives when she is recruited by the Pink Carnation. After a short stint at the Selwick spy school, she leaves on her first assignment. Her job is to take a position in the household of Andre Jaouen who is the right hand man of Bonaparte’s minister of police. True she’s pretending to be a governess for his two young children, but if she does well perhaps her next assignment will be something a tad more exciting.

However, she has to survive this job first and things begin to get dicey after she’s recognized by an old friend of her deceased parents. Is Antoine Daubier merely a friend of her employer or is there something else going on here? Should Laura be worried that Gaston Delaroche, Andre’s sinister colleague, knows not only the names of Andre’s children but hers as well? And who is behind the Royalist plot to remove the First Consul and restore the monarchy? Laura wanted exciting but maybe merely interesting would have been a better wish.

I’ll start by saying that there are some details about the book and its setup that don’t make a great deal of sense and are perhaps best skimmed over. How was Laura discovered and recruited? Why was Andre willing to bring someone new into his household given what was going on? And though I know that the Treaty of Amiens was still in effect during the timeframe of this novel, how are two so obviously English people as Miss Wooliston and Mr. Whittlesby so accepted in the circle of the First Consul’s family? After pondering these questions a bit, I realized that to continue was to not only invite a headache but to also ruin the story for me.

Laura Gray – or Laure Griscogne since she decides to use her real French name while on the assignment – is a great heroine. She’s intelligent, she’s resourceful, she thinks quickly and acts decisively yet she’s not a typical “kick ass” woman. She has been trained – a little – in self defense and how to use weapons but she rarely relies on this. Instead, she acts like the best spies do and that’s to blend in and not attract attention. Sixteen years of blending and being “gray” for lack of a better word serve her well. She’s also not all angsty. Life hasn’t treated her spectacularly well – she lost her parents at age sixteen and has fended for and survived on her own since then – but she doesn’t weep and wail about it and, when the opportunity appears, she takes a chance to change things.

Andre is more complicated than he might initially appear. Laura’s first impression is of a cold, matter-of-fact man who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. As her time in the household passes, she sees a man who loves his children even if he might not think he knows how to show that. She also discovers that he isn’t at all what she or her superiors believe him to be. She – and I too – wonder how can this be? Here is a man who has been dedicated to the changes that have taken place in France over the past fourteen years. A man who worked to bring about those changes. So, why is he doing what he’s doing? The way you have him explain it to Laura makes sense. He is a man who wants a better future for his country and, especially, for his children. But he also wants a stable world for them. Since he isn’t a swashbuckling man-of-action, he works for this end in his own way.

I like their relationship. They aren’t flamboyant people and the way they fall in love is slowly and gently. When the misunderstanding arrives, it’s not really a Big Mis and it doesn’t derail their feelings. Instead of a “you betrayed me you beyotch!” scene, there is initial astonishment followed by thought and a reconciliation.

The tension and atmosphere of the novel is excellent. I can feel the cold, wet damp of Paris in the winter. Likewise, the ravaged Hotel de Bac echoes its past glory and sulks in its present gloom. The feeling of political change is in the air as the fervor of the Revolution has almost died down and the status quo is shifting. But there are still throwbacks to recent past methods of dealing with dissension. Andre might not enjoy putting suspects to The Question as much as does Delaroche but he still gets results for his superiors. He is, after all, a practical man who does what is needed to try and bring about the changes he wishes to see take place. It all makes sense given the way you’ve developed the plot and the characters.

The modern portion of the book doesn’t interest me or hold my attention as much as you’d probably like it to. This relationship and Eloise’s research is moving so slowly – glaciers move more quickly – that when it pops up, I feel more impatient to get back to the main action than any burning desire to know about what is going on with her and Colin.

A heroine who is strong in a “period” way, a beta hero who comes to love and admire her for who she is as well as being strong in his own non-flashy way, two children who I haven’t really discussed much but who don’t annoy me – and that’s saying a lot from me, the slow building to a bang up finish and a wrap up that doesn’t require a gooey sweet epilogue means I like this book a lot. Good job and I’m looking forward to the next installment which hopefully I’ll get to sooner than I did for this one. B

~Jayne

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I didn’t pick up the first title in this series. I think I was put off by the concept of the Ministry of Marriage (although that’s probably why the series was bought by the publisher).  The Ministry of Marriage (and the fact that is has a name) is this corny idea where the old folks get together and arrange marriages for the young folk. Some of the old folks aren’t all that old.  The Duke of Montford, the central figure in the Ministry of Marriage, is in his 40s. The stories are about the wacky hijinks of getting the kids together and showing how clever the olds are at matching them up.

The Duke of Montford has a collection of five wards.  This was the confusing part of the story to me.  In the first two chapters there are a slew of new characters and many of them were related and had similar titles.  Lord deVere is a Baron and the hero is from the deVere family and he is the Earl of Tregarth.  The heroine’s cousin is the Marquess of Steyne who is also referred to by the name Westruther and then there was his cousin the Viscount of Westruther. And so on and so forth. I eventually went to your website and gleaned some understanding from the minimal family tree information that was provided but I was irritated that it wasn’t better explained in the book itself.  Maybe a family tree would have been helpful or a cast list?

Rosamund Westruther had been betrothed to Griffin deVere in the summer of 1812.  She was thrilled. She gazed at his tiny portrait, an odd and not very attractive compilation of features, often imagining his lovely proposal and his sweet, soft betrothal kiss.  What she hadn’t bargained for was the beast of a man to not want to marry her.  When she overhears deVere’s grandfather speaking with Montford about deVere’s reluctance, she has the choice to flee in tears or fight.  She chooses to fight which completely baffles Griffin.  He cannot believe that Rosamund, a woman so beautiful that men stop in their tracks just to gape at her, would be interested in him.

“Fury burned through him, the same kind of frustrated anger that ultimately crashed in after an encounter with a willing bit of muslin.  Those women never cared what he looked like as long as he paid handsomely for their favors.”

Yes, he wanted her so much, he was near crazed with it.  But he hated the feeling. The hurt and resentment of it tangled inside him until he couldn’t see straight.  And that same impulse that made schoolboys pull pretty girls’ hair made him step toward her, boxing her in between his body and the stone wall behind her.

She didn’t shrink back or cry out or weep.  She simply looked up into his face.

While I enjoyed the sentiment his “want her so much, he was near crazed with it” occurred on page 18 of the book and merely minutes after their first encounter.  This represents the problems I had with much of the book.  Every emotion was troweled on but dealt with superficially.

Griffin thinks of himself as a lout, a brute and that no woman could ever find him desirable.  We never see any one snubbing Griffin nor are we shown why he believes that women would hold him in disgust.  When he bursts onto the London scene every one of Rosamund’s family views him as the stablehand but he’s not dressed appropriately and he had just come from the stable.  Unfortunately for Griffin, he needs something from Rosamund.  In exchange, she wrings an agreement from him to court her.

My main complaint (other than the hook) was that I didn’t feel that the story went deep enough into the emotional conflict.  The resolution was too easy.  Griffin’s big character change was believing that Rosamund loved him but I didn’t feel like Griffin’s insecurity manifested itself in other ways.  Rosamund read as a more static character for me.  While the interactions were lovely between the two, the plot moves along more by external threats to their relationship rather than internal angst.  It’s a sweet and sexy romance but it doesn’t have a stickiness of other stories.  Still, I am a sucker for a beauty and the beast story.  C+

Best regards,

Jane

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I haven’t read too many regencies lately because they were all beginning to smear together in a Duke/spy/fiesty heroine filled blur. I had Regency ennui. When I started this book, I kind of got the feeling that it was part of a series but nonetheless, I took the plunge and dove in. I also decided not to seek out any other reviews of your previous books so that nothing would cloud my judgement or color my view. After finishing it, I can understand the variety of grades as some aspects worked for me while others were tired retreads.

Adelaide Ward never wanted to be the head of her little family – was never trained for it – but after the death of her parents and her younger brother is imprisonment for crushing debt, she has little choice. At twenty-seven, she’s not looking for romance or passion. All she wants is a respectable marriage to a man who can support her and hopefully pony up enough money for her younger sister to have a Season, help pay off her brother’s debts and take care of his son, her little nephew George. She thinks she’s found the man in Lord Robert Maxwell, (incorrectly called Sir Robert on the back blurb) a Baron of modest means but means enough for Adelaide. She’s positive he’ll come up to scratch at the house party they’re both attending – at least she prays he will as time and her modest funds are running out.

But fate has something different in store for Adelaide in the form of Connor Brice who suddenly appears on the scene and gently romances Adelaide before deliberately compromising her. Now Adelaide finds herself with two suitors and two proposals though it’s looking like they both see her more as a bone to be fought over because of a private feud rather than a bride to be won. Connor and Robert have a long and bitter history which Adelaide painfully discovers as each attempts to sway her his way. Connor sweeps all before him and wins Adelaide’s hand in marriage but can he possibly win her trust after all the half truths he’s told or allow himself to focus on love instead of revenge?

I’ve read tons of Regency historicals and revenge plots aren’t my favorite so why did I start and keep reading “An Unexpected Gentleman?” Adelaide, that’s why. I have a thing for the quiet, unobtrusive heroine who isn’t The Most Beautiful, or The Most Outrageous, or The Most Fill in the Blank. I like a practical heroine who doesn’t expect a Grand Romance but who gets one anyway. And if she isn’t physically transformed from the brown wren she starts out as, so much the better. Adelaide might be the practical one, and she does this well, but she doesn’t want to martyr herself either. Yes, she does need to marry either Robert or Connor a) for the money, b) because Society demands it and c) because her younger sister’s chances would be ruined if she didn’t but Adelaide doesn’t rush nor allow either man to force her choice. In the end, the choice is fairly obvious but Adelaide still gets to make it. And she stands up for herself after marriage. She doesn’t cut her nose off to spite her face, she attempts to make the best of it, she goes for what she wants and is the first to lay it on the line. Adelaide is truly the stronger of the two, IMO, and she is the one I’m rooting for to get a HEA.

Now Connor has been dealt a raw deal by Robert and I can understand his driving need for revenge. What salvages the revenge plot for me is that Connor already has feelings for Adelaide even before he incorporates her into his plans. He’s not willing to call his emotions love yet but he doesn’t plan on making her life miserable just to get back at someone else. In fact, he wants to spoil her, wants to take away the burdens she’s been laboring under and wants to take on her family obligations. He’s not an asshole. He also comes to his senses about who and what is more important to him and I can almost see the pieces falling into place in his head and heart as the penny drops. He’s the one who has the furthest character arc distance to travel yet I do feel that he has accomplished this by the end.

Though this is the third (?) book in the series, I didn’t feel lost nor that the previous heroes and heroines were trying to shill their past books. There is a realistic family dynamic that ends the book which some people might not like but that I’d rather see occasionally instead of forced happy bunnies and rainbows reunions. Anything else would have diluted what went before. However I do wish that the final scene with the villain isn’t something I saw coming a mile away based on having read it so many times before. A heroine I enjoy watching get her HEA, a hero who isn’t a Duke – oh, thank God, and nary a spy in sight. Looks like there are a few single title Regencies I can manage to finish after all. B

~Jayne

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: An Unexpected Father by Lisa Ruff
2. REVIEW: What a Gentleman Wants by Caroline Linden
3. REVIEW: What a Gentleman Wants by Caroline Linden

I’ve been reading your books since I discovered Beauty and the Spy back in 2006. Beauty and the Spy is still on my keeper shelf, and three others of your books have since joined it: The Secret to Seduction, I Kissed an Earl, and What I Did for a Duke. What’s more, I’ve read every book you’ve published since then. Even those I haven’t kept I have generally enjoyed or appreciated, so I am sad to say that your latest entry in the Pennyroyal Green series, How the Marquess Was Won, did not live up to my hopes.

How the Marquess Was Won opens with a man stumbling into Pennyroyal Green’s pub, the Pig & Thistle. The man has been shot and when Chase and Colin Eversea rush to his aid, he identifies himself as the Marquess Dryden. Julian Spenser, the marquess, appears close to death, and although his reputation as a cool customer, “Lord Ice,” precedes him, he cannot stop talking about a woman who appears to have devastated him in some fashion. Chase sends for the vicar, an Eversea cousin, and the action then shifts six weeks back in time.

Phoebe Vale and “Jules,” as Dryden is called, first meet in Postlethwaite’s Emporium of Lady’s Goods. Phoebe, a schoolteacher, jokes with Mr. Postlethwaite, pretending to be wealthy. The two also gossip about Lord Ice, whose exploits are detailed in the London broadsheets, emulated by many young men and sought after by young women. Though Pheobe has never met the reckless Dryden, she believes she is an expert in that subject.

While at Postlethwaite’s, Phoebe picks up a letter from Lisbeth Redmond, a former pupil now being courted by Dryden. Apparently Lisbeth’s parents are in Italy and her mother wants Phoebe to act as “a suitable friend or chaperone” at a two day house party in the home of her aunt and uncle, Isaiah and Fanchette Redmond.

(I found this puzzling since surely Lisbeth’s aunt would have been a more appropriate chaperone than a twenty-two year old schoolteacher who, as we later learn, spent her early childhood in Seven Dials).

Phoebe is pondering the offer, inclined to accept, when who should arrive at Postlethwaite’s but none other than Dryden himself. He carefully selects a silk fan whose intended recipient is surely Lisbeth Redmond. Waterburn, a viscount with a penchant for wagering, enters the shop shortly afterward, and wagers Dryden that he cannot steal a kiss from the “unkissable” Phoebe.

A hurt Phoebe leaves Postlethwaite’s intending to turn down Lisbeth’s offer, but she runs into Dryden again when he arrives at her place of work, Miss Endicott’s academy for young ladies. Dryden is there on the behalf of a recalcitrant niece, and Miss Endicott asks Phoebe to give him a tour of the academy. There Jules and Phoebe make a connection – each manages to surprise the other – and Phoebe is well on her way to being in love with Jules, so much so that she not only reverses her decision about attending the house party, but also thinking—though she rejects the thought—that he is meant for her.

As for Jules (who is far from being reckless as his reputation suggests and has amassed the fortune his father lost only through very careful planning), he too is smitten, though it takes him a long, long time to recognize it. But he does realize that he wants to impress the startling Miss Vale, and once the house party gets underway, he spends an unseemly amount of time in Phoebe’s company, endangering his plans to marry Lisbeth.

Yet Jules is determined to marry Lisbeth. It so happens that Lisbeth’s dowry is the last piece of land that once belonged to Jules’ family. Because Jules cannot let go of that piece of land, and because there is no other way to obtain it than to marry Lisbeth, he believes that no matter how he feels about Phoebe, he can’t offer her a place in his life except as his mistress. But when Waterburn makes another wager, this one with the potential to damage Phoebe, things become complicated…

Several weaknesses kept me from loving this book. The foremost is the speed with which Phoebe and Jules fell in love (It happens within a day or two of their first meeting). It’s not that I don’t believe in love in first sight. I do. But to sell me on love at practically first sight in a book is exceptionally hard, and in this case I wasn’t sold.

As a consequence, the falling in love part of the book felt rushed, and the result was that the chemistry between Jules and Phoebe seemed forced. While I very much liked Phoebe and very much liked Jules, I just didn’t care all that much about the two of them as a couple. And since I felt detached from the fate of their relationship, I wasn’t all that engaged in the narrative.

Another problem was that despite Phoebe’s thoughts about how people are more complex than surface appearance would indicate, but for two or three exceptions, the side characters came across as flat. There’s not much depth to Lisbeth or such members of the ton as Waterburn, d’Andre, and the Silverton twins. Sophia Licari, who was such a memorable “other woman” in The Secret to Seduction, makes an encore appearance here but shows little of the facets that made her so interesting in the earlier book.

Jonathan Redmond does show a glimmer of depth, and Olivia Eversea is as intense as ever. The most interesting side character to me, even off stage, is Lyon Redmond, but I think that has a lot to do with his terrific portrayal in I Kissed an Earl and the fact that ever since I found out his reasons for staying away from Olivia, I’ve been dying to see more of him. Alas, he does not actually appear in How the Marquess Was Won, nor does his sister Violet.

I don’t recall reading about Lisbeth, a Redmond who is cousin to Lyon, Violet and Jonathan, before this book. It’s possible I did and I just don’t remember. In any case, I think I would have felt more invested in the triangle between Phoebe, Jules and Lisbeth if I had remembered Lisbeth from earlier books or if she’d been a Redmond sibling. It is hard to have much sympathy for her, and while that makes it easier to root for Pheobe and Jules, it also makes the central conflict feel less significant.

For example, a scene in which Jules and Phoebe are nearly caught kissing in the woods dragged instead of riveting me. In addition, Jules’ determination to marry Lisbeth at all costs did not seem in keeping with his perceptiveness. It was easy for me to see through Lisbeth so I felt he should have been able to do so sooner. I understand that Phoebe’s background was unsuitable for a marchioness but surely Jules could have found another well-born girl to engage himself to, one who was more tolerable than Lisbeth. Yes, Lisbeth had the land he wanted, but she was so clearly not a match for him.

Perhaps because I was less engaged in this book than in earlier ones in this series, I found the anachronisms more glaring. I was able to gloss over some of them, but one in particular stood out: a botched waltz between Jules and Lisbeth starts a fad reminiscent of disco. Some readers may find this cute, but I was pulled out of the story each time the fad was mentioned.

It may sound like I didn’t enjoy or appreciate anything about this book, but that would not be true. I appreciated that the prose was as usual, much above average, with many lovely turns of phrase. And I enjoyed, albeit mildly, getting to know Jules and Phoebe. Each was sympathetic and appealing, Jules careful and methodical in his focus on keeping his promise to restore his mother’s dowry to her family, Phoebe at once young and filled with wonder yet clever, crafty, and also careful, in her own way. Both guarded their hearts and had no one to whom to “surrender their cares” which made me want to see them find happiness.

I just wish I could have felt more invested in Phoebe and Jules’ romantic relationship. Because I didn’t, much as it pains me, I cannot grade How the Marquess Was Won higher than a C/C+.

Sincerely,

Janine

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Since the Surrender by Julie Anne Long
2. REVIEW: I Kissed an Earl by Julie Anne Long
3. REVIEW: What I Did For A Duke by Julie Anne Long

sail under false colours (British & Australian) also sail under false colors (American & Australian)
to pretend to be something that you are not in order to deceive people

When we did a series of reviews on some of Georgette Heyer’s novels, many people listed “False Colours” as a favorite. Since I’d never read it, I decided to give it a whirl and see what I thought. Thought it has its charm, is amusing and is filled with well drawn characters, there are a few things about it that will keep it from the top ranks of my most loved Heyer novels.

As the younger son, Christopher (Kit) Fancot entered the diplomatic service while his elder brother Evelyn was due to inherit the Earldom at their father’s death. The two have always been close and when Kit senses something amiss at home, he rushes back home from abroad. Upon his arrival at the family townhouse in London, his loving but flighty mother, Lady Denville, informs him just how bad things are. She is deeply in debt – again – and, due to the will left by their father, Evelyn will not be able to control the estate funds and pay her vowels until he marries a woman of whom their fraternal uncle approves. He’s been courting a young woman, Miss Cressida Stavely, who the family thinks will fit the bill though there is no violent passion on either side. Only before the match can be announced, Evelyn must past muster with Cressy’s gorgon of a grandmother – the Dowager Lady Stavely.

The problem, as Lady Denville explains it to Kit, is that she lost heavily at cards and pledged a piece of jewelry – one of the many she’s had secretly replicated in paste in order to be able to sell the original to pay down her other debts – to a incorrigible gossip who would take great pleasure in exposing that fact should he figure it out. Thus Evelyn had set off to try and redeem the piece before the man could attempt to sell it. That was days ago and nothing has been heard from Evelyn since. Lady Denville wouldn’t worry except that the Stavelys are expecting Evelyn at a dinner party the next night and if he’s a no show, it’s for sure that the Dowager Lady Stavely will take it as an insult and withhold her approval of the match.

It’s then that a brilliant idea occurs to her. Kit will impersonate his brother for one night and hopefully Evelyn will appear soon and all will be well. As identical twins, the two brothers have often been mistaken for each other. Against his better judgement, Kit agrees and the evening goes well. Knowing he’d better not stay in town and risk being exposed in the ruse, he flees to their country estate but instead of getting better, the situation only gets worse. Lady Stavely announces she and Cressy will visit him plus the one parsimonious sibling Lady Denville possesses sees a chance at a free country house visit for the summer and arrives with his fussing wife and professional invalid son in tow. Not about to abandon Kit in his hour of need, Lady Denville also gives up the pleasures of town along with her long time loyal beau, Sir Bonamy.

With this cast and crew plus several ancient family retainers watching his every move, can Kit keep the masquerade going until Evelyn, where ever he may be, finally arrives? And what will happen as two people who shouldn’t fall in love find themselves doing just that?

Unlike most books I’ve read from this era, False Colours is told mainly from hero’s POV but this is needed because Kit has to be in the dark about where Evelyn is and as to what Cressy’s feelings are as well as what she knows about what’s going on. I wished for at least some small hint that Evelyn was alright as I began to worry about him too as the story progressed with no clue as to his whereabouts. The plot moves forward in increments. Entire days are described in – take your pick – exquisite or excruciating detail. The opening two chapters of the book should give you a feel for the style/speed of the story and if you don’t like it, move on to another book. There are plenty more Heyers left to choose from.

Amabel, Lady Denville, is a charming widgeon, as Dowager Lady Stavely says. Vivacious yet flighty, mannered yet able to think on her feet when curveballs are thrown their way while attempting to maintain Kit’s disguise – it does not do to underestimate her. I laughed at how she almost consoles Kit for being the sensible, level headed man he is. But she’s also a tigress in defense of either of her sons as well as a staunch friend to Cressy. Cressy is an unknown entity for much of the book. Read carefully and it’s noticeable when she begins to catch on that something isn’t right and also when she declares her love for Kit. Though she doesn’t declare it to Kit.

Poor Kit is the one upon whom the burden of maintaining the charade mainly rests. He’s got to remember to act like Evelyn in public and attempt to mimic his twin’s mannerisms with a snuffbox while keeping straight how Evelyn is supposed to feel about everyone at the house party. On top of that, he’s also worried sick about his twin and sick at heart that he’s falling for the one woman he feels he can’t have or else the whole house of cards will come crashing down on the Fancot family. The “I love yous,” when they finally arrive, are done with quiet fervor rather than loud fireworks but are just as satisfying, I find.

I had great fun reading about the relationship between the Quality and servants. Kit gets away with very little around Evelyn’s valet or the groom who taught the boys to ride or their nurse who still enjoys fussing over both of them. Old time retainers like the valet, groom, town butler, and old nurse have much more leeway in what they can get away with vs the newcomers like the Ravenhurst butler and housekeeper. But everyone closes ranks against outsiders such as when Kit easily depresses the pretensions of Mrs Alperton whom even the country butler pegged at her much lower social status and was ready to fob off as well.

What didn’t I like? The cant, cant, cant – I would guess almost every phrase Heyer either learned or made up is here. Kit speaks cant, Amabel speaks cant, the valet and groom speak cant, the guests spout it. It’s almost like a chocolate cake with chocolate chips and topped by ultra rich chocolate frosting – too damn much. Give me a glass of milk and get back to plain speaking. A little cant goes a long way.

The romance is very slow. Very, very slow. It’s not until almost the halfway mark that things begin to move faster than glacial. If you want details at a stately pace, this is the book for you but if you’re used to today’s faster clip, mentally prepare yourself to sit and savor.

This is not a Heyer book I would recommend to someone unfamiliar with traditional Regencies or with Heyer books. There are better places to start with her oeuvre. It would also help if you’ve got some grounding in the Regency era. As I said, it’s not the first Heyer book I’d suggest but if you want something different as well as liking a country vs London or Season setting, then False Colours should be on your Heyer list. B-

~Jayne

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer
2. REVIEW: Powder and Patch by Georgette Heyer
3. Flying False Colours

We at Dear Author get sent a lot of requests to review books and many of us have lamented at the frequency of Jane Austen themed ones. Yet, despite that, another reviewer and I were interested in the description of your book “Definitely Not Mr. Darcy.” A reality dating show with a 1812 theme and $100,000 at stake for the lucky contestant who “nabs” the handsome Regency guy? Could be fun.

Chloe Parker is a 39, divorced single mother with a failing business who desperately needs to win the grand prize of the contest which she’s been selected to be a part of. A long time Jane Austen fan, she can quote the books, knows the details of life in Austen England and thinks having the chance to actually live as a Jane Austen heroine for the duration of the show is a dream come true. But the reality of life without hot showers, deodorant, modern bras and hampered by chaperones turns out to be more than she bargained for.

And then there’s her main rival among the contestants who won’t stop at breaking the rules but stoops to sabotaging Chloe at every turn. If that weren’t enough, Chloe finds that the accomplishments of a Regency Miss are harder and less interesting than they appear on film. Sebastian Wrightman is a hunk in his skintight breeches though and with her business needing a serious cash infusion, Chloe pursues him like a hound does a hare. If only she could stop thinking of his intelligent, younger, and penniless, brother Henry.

The PW blurb for the book promises sidesplitting faux pas as Chloe attempts to play a young woman on the hunt for a man in 1812 England. Well, amusing at times? Yes. Bust a gut laughing? No, not me. It’s also kind of sad in a way to watch as Chloe’s infatuation with the era is slowly stripped away though after watching some of the historical “reality” shows on PBS and the BBC, I kind of knew it was coming. Modern comforts are hard to let go of, as Chloe discovers. But along the way, she does discover something much more interesting – herself. She also unearths some business savvy and a well of inspiration that will allow her to save her business herself which I quite liked.

Now as for the romance…even if I hadn’t been a bad girl and skipped to the end to confirm my guess on who Chloe would actually fall for, as the story progressed it would have been pretty obvious. I was surprised that she didn’t bother to Google Sebastian Wrightman before leaving Chicago but then the book would have been over before it began. I like the man she falls for and who falls for her but since the reader must be kept in the dark about a lot of things, we never see his POV, or in fact anyone else’s, throughout the book. But, once Chloe knows what is going on, I have to agree wholeheartedly with her reaction. Clotted cream to the face wouldn’t be enough for me, though the way she tells him off in public is satisfying. Still, to be manipulated that way no matter what the reason would leave a bad enough taste in my mouth that any forgiveness would be a damn long time in coming. I was reminded of Patient Griselda from The Clerk’s Tale – a story I’ve always despised.

As a humorous tale about what life in Regency England was really like, “Definitely Not Mr. Darcy” has its moments and entertained me. As a romance, the hero leaves a lot to be desired no matter how much money he was or how much he enjoys Jane Austen books. I finished the book thinking Chloe deserves more which is not a good thing for this genre. C

~Jayne

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Darcy’s Story by Janet Aylmer
2. REVIEW: Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart by Beth Pattillo
3. REVIEW: Me and Mr. Darcy by Alexandra Potter

It’s always exciting to read a debut book by a fellow blogger, although it can be a bit daunting, too. What if I don’t like it? Will that affect the way I read your blog? Fortunately, I enjoyed The Lady’s Secret, a book that mixes old and new genre conventions in interesting ways. In one sense it reads like a love letter to many older trad Regencies, but with a progressive streak that updates and adds new dimension to vintage tropes like the cross-dressing heroine and her brother who is trying to prove his legitimate claim to an earldom.

While her brother Harry travels the English countryside, looking for written evidence of their parents’ marriage, Georgiana Knight works at the Camelot Theatre in London, where she makes sets and costumes, her promising acting career cut short by crippling stage fright. Georgy and Harry inherited their actress mother’s share in the theatre, but Georgy still works hard, in part because Harry is using a good portion of their savings trying to confirm their parents’ marriage and, ultimately, his claim as the legitimate Earl of Dunsmore. Their parents married in secret after their father was told he’d be disinherited if he married an actress. After his death, their mother was paid off to keep quiet about the marriage, and her suspicious death has left Harry and Georgy financially stable but technically illegitimate. And while Harry is optimistic that he can find evidence of the marriage, Georgy has another plan: get into the current (i.e. illegitimate) Earl of Dunsmore’s house and search for evidence there.

Finding a way inside one of Dunsmore’s homes is easier said than done. However, a position becomes available in the Earl of Harland’s household, which would give Georgy the opportunity to visit Dunsmore’s house with Harland’s other servants for Dunsmore’s holiday house party. The problem is that it’s a position as valet to the earl himself, which would require Georgy to function in a state of daily intimacy with the man she is trying to fool into believing she is both a male and an experienced valet. Still, the temptation of being able to search Dunsmore’s house for evidence is immensely appealing.

It is a foregone conclusion that George Fellowes will get the job; the real challenge is in putting her considerable acting skills and somewhat androgynous appearance to use in close quarters with other servants and a “beautiful” man who makes her “ache.” Where Georgy is slight and almost boyish in appearance, Nathan has “lushly, extravagantly lashed” eyes and a mouth that “might have been thought almost feminine in its beauty, were it not for the firm, purely masculine line of the jaw beneath.” Where Georgy is spare in speech and manners, Nathan is elaborate and highly decorated, and elegant dandy who nonetheless thrives under Georgy’s unassuming but highly attentive maintenance.

For me, the first half of the book is the most interesting, because there seems to be no rush to reveal Georgy’s secret and let the sexxoring begin. Instead, Georgy spends the first part of the book watching and learning about Nathan and his household – how he prefers to be shaved and dressed; how his cravat should be tied, how his body looks and moved as he casually displays himself in Georgy’s presence. She is attracted and intrigued, but not tempted to reveal herself. And Nathan suspects nothing amiss, even after a facial massage Georgy gives him to relieve a headache physically arouses him:

Bloody hell. He had been aroused by Fellowes! No, he amended the thought quickly. He had not been aroused by Fellowes. Just by Fellowes’ hands on him. An anonymous pair of hands had brought him pleasure—that was all. Any pair of hands would have done the same.

These rationalisations did nothing to relieve his horror though. He felt embarrassed and awkward. And exploitative. Especially when he remembered what had brought Fellowes to his door—a master who had tried to take advantage of Fellowes’ youth and inexperience.

But still there is no unveiling, or even suspicion on Nathan’s part, that George is other than he seems. I appreciated this, because as difficult as it often is for me to suspend my disbelief that these young women make convincing young men, it is particularly frustrating to me when the cross-dressing device is used primarily as foreplay. In The Lady’s Secret, however, Nathan and Georgy move on from the massage incident, and it is not until some time later that Georgy’s secret is revealed. And even then the relationship between them does not change. I won’t spoil the secret of how Nathan finds out, because it’s quite a delicious scene, but I will say that his discovery is probably my favorite part of the book, because instead of calling Georgy out, he decides instead to observe her:

She was like that secret drawer in Lady Dunsmore’s tea chest. Now that he knew the secret, he wanted to know how it worked too. He wanted to see her with other people and watch how she did it.

Nathan, who has a scientific bent of mind, studies her like she initially studied him, although for different purposes. And what is wonderful about this part of the book is the way their relationship beyond master and servant, but not yet friends or lovers, begins to develop, with Nathan testing and teasing Georgy, trying to understand what she’s about and enjoying his secret knowledge of her:

He levered himself off the bed and stretched his long body with languid grace while Georgy, who was trying not to look, brought a straight backed chair forward for him to sit on while she shaved him. As soon as he sat down she began to dab lather over his face, noticing that his eyes were on her own face as she did so. It was disconcerting. Usually he was inattentive, his gaze elsewhere, but today he followed all her movements, and when she finally leaned over him, brandishing a razor, he tilted his chin to stare up at her. The silence between them seemed to take on weight and charge—it became a physical thing with uncomfortable edges.

It’s not just a sexual thing, although mutual attraction is part of it. There is a real intimacy in the relationship between a man and his valet, and the way Chambers plays with the budding sexual attraction in the context of this other intimacy is very well-done – you feel the tightness of desire between the two, the uncertainty, the slipping of the masks and yet at the same time the remoteness between two individuals of such apparently different social status. The writing throughout is also quite nice, not florid but not completely spare, either.  There is some over-description and explanation of things I wish had been trimmed a bit, but overall there is a real deftness to the construction of this part of the book.

Where things break down for me is when Georgy discovers that Nathan knows her secret, and the two begin what feels like a much more conventional relationship. The snapping tension loosens and for some reason the growing emotional intimacy did not feel as powerfully wrought. Georgy’s agenda – which she does not immediately share with Nathan – keeps some distance and tension in the relationship (can she trust him?; can he trust her?), as does the social inequity between the two and Georgy’s own resistance to leading the conventional life of an earl’s mistress. That Georgy does not give up on her quest to find evidence of her parents’ marriage at Dunsmore’s home adds a good deal of plot suspense, as well, and much of the second part of the novel is taken up with the complications that arise from Georgy’s determination and Nathan’s curiosity about what she is up to. In fact, I really love a curious and scientifically minded hero, although I even felt that part of Nathan’s character weakened over the course of the book, giving way to the equally clichéd and definitely not my favorite insensitively boorish aristocrat type.

There is also a secondary relationship between two male aristocrats that intersects in interesting ways with Georgy and Nathan’s relationship. I liked that the relationship was not included for titillation or novelty; Chambers constructs several clever scenes that make a substantial contribution to the central plot and romantic relationship, and for the most part she handles the relationship with a cognizance of its necessary secrecy. However, there is a point later on in the novel where a very unlikely (and dangerous) public scene seems to contravene the previous discretion shown (and while homosexual feelings themselves were not a capital offense, in 1810, arrest for sodomy was still very much a frightening possibility). This shift wasn’t a deal breaker for me, but it did seem a bit inconsistent, given the previous handling of this relationship.  I also think it is a difficulty inherent in wanting to give two men a happy romantic outcome during a period in history when their relationship was a crime.

Ultimately, it was the gradual slipping of Nathan and Georgy’s relationship into the conventional romantic mode, combined with the rather dramatic and somewhat clichéd resolution to the unfairly-denied noble inheritance subplot, that kept The Lady’s Secret from being a perfect read for me. Not that I did not enjoy the book as a whole – and I especially appreciated its generous length – but the promise of the first half or so was just so high, I wanted that wonderful engagement I had with the characters to last longer. Still, I would recommend The Lady’s Secret as a book that makes nice use of many genre conventions, making it both a familiar and a novel read and a substantially promising debut. B-

~Janet

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The Danger of Desire opens in the POV of a young woman named Meggs. Meggs, a London street thief, and her younger brother Timmy, are preparing to steal near the Admiralty building. Meanwhile, Captain Hugh McAlden is in the same building, meeting with Admiral Middleton, who tells him the Admiralty Board has been infiltrated by a traitor who is passing secrets to the French.

Hugh is tasked with catching the traitor, and promised a knighthood if he succeeds (he is the son of a gentleman father and his mother is a viscountess through her second marriage). In the past, Hugh has used street kids to help him ferret out information, and he decides to do so now. On exiting the building, he sees Meggs execute her theft, and he pursues her and then makes her an offer.

A suspicious Meggs escapes Hugh, but injures her hand in the process. When the wound becomes infected, Meggs decides she has nothing to lose by finding out more about Hugh’s proposition. Eventually she agrees to help Hugh. A surgeon treats Meggs’ injury, and she and her brother Timmy move into Hugh’s house, where Meggs trains as a scullery maid in preparation for infiltrating the spy’s household once that spy has been identified.

Hugh and Meggs are attracted to one another from the beginning, but neither trusts the other fully. As they track the suspects down they begin to grow closer, though Meggs worries that Hugh will take Timmy away from her. Meggs was born in the country, and everything she has done has been to provide for her brother and to save enough money to escape their London street life.

Eventually Meggs and Hugh do identify the villain, and Meggs enters his house posing as a scullery maid. She faces great danger there, but sees her growing feelings for Hugh as equally dangerous, since the gap in their stations still threatens to separate them.

The Danger of Desire starts off at a leisurely pace and then ramps up midway through. For that reason, I enjoyed the second half more. Most of the romantic development in the first half consisted of Hugh and Meggs wanting each other but refraining from acting on these feelings, and with the exception of one or two scenes in which they shared something of their past, they didn’t get to know each other as well as I would have liked.

Once Meggs infiltrated the villain’s house though, the tension thickened and this was one of my favorite parts of the book. The emotions resulting from the risk to Meggs made for a deeper romantic connection between the characters in the second half.

Speaking of the characters, I preferred Meggs to Hugh. Hugh was mostly a good guy and I did like him, but for a good chunk of the book he was not only Meggs’ employer, but also in a position of power over her due to their disparate positions in society. For that reason, I had mixed feelings about his lusting after Meggs.

Meggs was a lovely character, outwardly hardened by her years on the street, but with a core of softness inside. She began the book almost feral in her reluctance to trust most people and her transformation felt believable to me. Her protective relationship with Timmy, her twelve year old brother, and her feelings for Hugh touched me and evoked my sympathies.

You have a gift for writing endearing heroines and hot love scenes. Even the lust leading up to the consummation wasn’t too bad. The reason I say “even the lust” is that like Jayne, I am not a fan of mental lusting. I think it can often feel repetitive and intrusive in a book. It has to be exceptionally well-written, used very sparingly, or played for humor (a la Loretta Chase or Jennifer Crusie) for me to enjoy it. The lusting did feel somewhat intrusive and repetitive in this book, but wasn’t as big an irritant to me here as it is in many books.

There were some inaccuracies in the book – for example, Meggs, Timmy, the butler and the housekeeper dine with Hugh at his supper table, although this is acknowledged to be unusual. Hugh is so egalitarian that it is difficult to believe he was brought up within a class structure. The navy was said to be the reason, but I still found it unlikely. Also, contemporary expressions like “Gotcha,” and “What are you gonna do” pepper the dialogue.

As I was reading The Danger of Desire, I was reminded just a tiny bit of the books of Julie Anne Long, another author whose books contain inaccuracies, and who uses well-trod tropes in ways that still manage to feel fresh. She is also another author whose heroines are frequently endearing and whose use of words is lovely.

I thought of Long because her writing can make me willing to overlook departures from historical fact. You have an appealing prose style that gets me over similar humps, and the heroines in A Sense of Sin and The Danger of Desire are also lovable in a way that felt real.

SPOILERS:

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

When it comes to grading The Danger of Desire, I feel torn. It wasn’t a perfect book, but I did enjoy it. Robin/Janet once said that a book edges into the B range when it is written with flair, and despite its imperfections, I feel that The Danger of Desire has that quality. B-.

Sincerely,

Janine Ballard

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This is the latest entry into the “Emma” canon, released in 2009 by the BBC. I guess it would be more accurate to call it a miniseries rather than a movie as it’s told in four roughly one hour parts. And while I didn’t think it would take over the place of my favorite adaptation, I was pleasantly surprised to discover how much I enjoyed it.

Young, rich and more than slightly snobbish, Miss Emma Woodhouse (Ramola Garai) is the social center of the village of Highbury and convinced that she is a brilliant matchmaker. Though determined never to marry, she happily pairs everyone else off, much to the frustration of Mr. Knightley (Jonny Lee Miller) who watches her machinations and offers sage advice, which Emma rarely takes. After the marriage of her long time governess and companion (Jodhi May), Emma takes young Harriet Smith (Louise Dylan) under her wing and begins to scheme. She persuades Harriet to decline the offer of marriage from a local farmer and sets Harriet’s sights higher – first on the stuffy vicar Mr. Elton (Blake Ritson) – who secretly admires Emma instead. Then, when that falls through, on Frank Churchill (Rupert Evans), recently returned to the neighborhood after a childhood away with his aunt.

Another recent addition to the scene is Jane Fairfax (Laura Pyper), niece of the silly Miss Bates (Tamsin Greig) who has extolled Jane’s virtues to Emma until Emma is heartily sick of them. Emma carelessly flirts with Frank who flirts right back. Meanwhile, the little community is ruffled by the further addition of Mr. Elton’s new, and snobby, wife (Christina Cole) who seeks to take over as the social leader. Mr. Knightley tries to warn Emma that Frank and Jane seem to have a secret attachment but Emma laughs at his warnings – that is until the two reveal their hidden engagement. It’s only now that Emma discovers that Harriet aspires not to Frank Churchill but to Mr. Knightley himself. And it’s this revelation which gets Emma to finally examine her own feelings for the man. Is there a chance for her to recover what she’s afraid she’s lost or will her actions cost her the man she now knows she loves?

There is much to love about this “Emma.” The costumes and music are wonderful and both are the subjects of special features on the discs. Instead of pale pastels, the hues are rich and vibrant for the leading characters and subdued and faded for Miss Bates as would befit clothes washed and faded out over the years. The locations are also a treat with attention paid to the estate of the wealthy Woodhouses as well as the cramped, low ceilinged rooms inhabited by the Bates ladies.

Garai, as Emma, has to carry much of the story and manages well, except for her tendency to odd facial grimaces. She’s suitably self centered and unthinking but can still convey Emma’s basic goodness and ultimate realization of what’s at stake for her heart. I didn’t think I’d care for Miller as Mr. Knightley but he won me over – for the most part. I do think that these two play their early relationship more as equals in age rather than as the 16 year difference between them should dictate.

The longer 4 hour length allows for much more exploration of the secondary characters and I understood far more about the backgrounds of Frank and Jane and why that piano should cause so much fuss. There’s more time allowed for Frank to demonstrate why Mr. Knightley should take Frank into suspicion and why he is ultimately the inferior man to Knightley. Tamsin Greig plays a wonderful Miss Bates – annoying yet obviously proud of her niece Jane then finally hurt by Emma’s thoughtless comment at the picnic. Sir Michael Gambon who plays Mr. Woodhouse is also given a great deal of screen time and I love the father/daughter relationship he has going with Garai. Look for an interview with him on the second disc.

Louise Dylan does a good job as the young and artless Harriet Smith who is more untutored rather than silly. However I find I don’t care for Christina Coles as Mrs. Elton as she seems to try too hard in the snobbery department. Evans is a good social climbing Mr. Elton and is obviously made smaller by his poor choice in a wife. Sadly I find Jodhi May thoroughly forgettable as Mrs. Weston while Robert Bathhurst is wasted as her husband since he has so little to do. A welcome change here is the larger roles for Dan Fredenburgh as John Knightley.

The longer length of the miniseries doesn’t drag as I was afraid it would. Instead it allows ample opportunity to see just how tightly knit the community would have been and how bound up the characters are in business not their own. We can see how it would be almost impossible not to meddle in the lives of those around you for sheer lack of anything else to do. At the same time, the easy ‘come and go’ relationship between Knightley, the Westons and the Woodhouses depicts long time neighbors and friends.

This is supposed to be a modernization of the novel and it’s here that I have the most problems. The courtesies that should be inbred in Emma and others are sometimes sloppily done, the deportment at the Box Hill picnic leaves much to be desired and Emma’s hysterical refusal of Mr. Knightley’s proposal is far too waterworks-y. I finished the viewing with the impression of people merely playing at the manners which would have been an unthinking part of these people.

I am by no means a Jane Austen expert and as such will sit back and await the opinions of those who have spent far more time dissecting the novel and the various filmed adaptations. I find much to recommend in this version along with a little that left me dissatisfied. But overall I am pleased with the addition. B

~Jayne

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I have been anxious to read your books since The Heir came out and circumstances (and other books) have always interfered with that goal until this month.  I bought The Virtuoso the day that it came out and sat down one evening with great anticipation.  The sad fact is that there scarcely seems a page goes by that does not include some kind of historical inaccuracy. The unstated invitation is to enter the book and put aside any form of reality and simply immerse oneself in the Burrowes world, as it is constructed.  The voice is lovely but the period feel of this story ranges from Regency to Victorian (both early and late) to even modern day sensibilities.   There is no resemblance to the Regency period as written by Heyer, Austen or even Quinn.

I can’t really catalog all the errors in the book and while I am a historical rube, there were obvious ones such as the hero, Val Windham being referred to constantly as Mr. Windham.  This is explained later that it is at Val’s insistence but people who do know he is a duke’s son refer to him as Mr. Windham before he expresses his desire to be plain mister.     Val did not have a valet despite coming from a wealthy titled family and having quite a bit of money of his own. Instead, his friends such as a son of an Earl and another gentlemanhelp him dress and undress and ready for his bath.  In other scene, the landed gentry friend actually shaves Val and unbuttons Val’s pants for him.  Val is highly regarded for own two piano factories and being a wealthy “merchant.”  This is a duke’s son, the youngest, but a member of the nobility, and he and all of his friends (nobility and gentry) are doing manual labor refurbishing his own estate.

There is a certain nonchalance in which class is treated. For instance, Val dallying with a maid in a friend’s home. Val didn’t seem the type to exert his power over lowly help and take advantage of her in that fashion. Instead, it is just another example of the fluidity of class in the Burrowes book. It’s a modern sensibility, at times reading like a contemporary rather than a Regency set historical.

Ellen, the widow, baring her feet and ankles to dangle her naked feet in a pond next to Val, whose breeches are rolled up around his bare calves. Then he whips off his shirt and uses it to dry her feet.  It is the country and Ellen is a widow, but it seemed odd. They are mere acquaintances although they both feel an attraction toward the other but this scene is on the heels of Ellen chiding Val for using her christian name without her permission.

This propriety mismatch occurs throughout the book. At one point, Val is sitting with Ellen, at night and alone, with her in her nightgown and with Val’s arm around her. He muses that perhaps he should have written to her after stealing a kiss but then acknowledges that it would not have been proper:

Now he wished he’d written, though it would hardly have been proper, even to a widow.

Val often runs about with just a shirt that he sheds at any given moment but notes:

Val quirked an eyebrow at his friend, who had foregone cravat and waistcoat in deference to the building heat. “You’re in dishabille.”

Later Val and Ellen are lying outside during the day on a blanket.  They nap in a spoon fashion.  They awaken and proceed to touch each other intimately, with Val pulling up Ellen’s dress and Ellen removing Val’s shirt.  There is no concern exhibited by either that servants or individuals working on Val’s home just a walk away could come upon them.  Even in a contemporary, most individuals aren’t so brazen as to engage in public coitus like this without even a smidge of concern.

The plot is this.  Val is a virtuoso of the piano but after his brother died, he began suffering pain and discomfort in his hand.  He is advised to not use his hand and it is suggested that he may not be able to play piano again.  Rather than resting it, as instructed, so that he may play piano again, Val decides that he can do gross motor skill activities such as laboring which includes roofing and other refurbishments of an estate he won in a card game.  (As an aside, was there a delineation of fine v. gross motor skills at this time?)

Ellen is the Baronness Roxbury, Roxbury being one of the oldest titles short of the monarchy.  She lives on the estate that Val has won and apparently met Val a year ago where they flirted and shared a scorching kiss.  She also grows flowers and makes soaps and lotions.  These she sells in the village from a wagon.  There is some secret about her percuniary difficulties.

Ellen and Val rekindle their attraction when Val tries to come to terms with his infirmity.  Val tells Ellen that he can’t offer for her because of his crippled hand, but he does want to dally with her.  About half way into the book, a suspense plot is introduced.

Another drawback is the huge cast of characters.  There are so many people in this story and it is quite the challenge to place how they are all interrelated. For instance, Nick is a character referred to in the beginning as having overprotective tendencies toward Val. He’s a friend but why should he send his brother and the sons of another friend to “spy” on Val?

Val extended a hand, recognizing the tall blond fellow from his friend Nick’s wedding to Darius’s sister Leah just a few weeks past.

Nick himself does show up for a scene in the latter part of the book along with any number of men who may have appeared in previous books (or not).  When the story is just about Val and Ellen without all the extraneous people, it’s much easier to catch the threads of the story.  And there is a lot to like in this book.  There is some lovely imagery such as when Val is sitting next to Ellen who is in her nightgown and wrapper on the back porch of her home and she is rubbing salve into his inflamed left hand.

As she worked, he felt tension, frustration, and anger slipping down his arm and out the ends of his fingers, almost as if he were playing—

HIs arm is a barometer for his feelings.  Everyone recognizes it before Val despite it being spelled out for him by his doctor/Viscount friend.  His identity is that of being the Virtuoso, the fine musician.  It is what set him apart in a family of five boys and various number of sisters.  He regularly refers to Herr Beethoven and I found it strangely ironic that Val could idolize Beethoven without acknowledging Beethoven himself was a handicapped musician.

Ellen is a lonely widow who feels insubstantial because of her inability to provide an heir to her deceased husband. She dropped the title and does not socialize with the locals other than to sell her wares.  She’s a bit moody, a bit secretive, a bit sad.  Her affection for Val wasn’t just sexual in nature but arose out of a need for comfort and companionship.  I felt like we knew Val better; however, as much of the story seemed from his point of view.  Perhaps this was an intentional effort to make Ellen more mysterious.

The tone of the story is gentle; the physical relationship graphic and sensual; the unwinding langorous.  I found Ellen and Val both  engaging.   I enjoyed how the slowly the physical part of the relationship developed, no matter how inappropriate their encounters.  The prose is very nice.

This book would read so much better as a fantasy historical or perhaps even a country set contemporary.  If the setting wasn’t “historical”, then perhaps the obvious thumbing of authenticity wouldn’t really bother me.  Unfortunately, nearly every scene had me raising my eyebrows despite all the potential.  I wished that I could have accepted the invitation to lose myself in the text, but I simply could not do it.  C-

Best regards,

Jane

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For the first third of this book, I had real doubts about whether I would finish it. The hero, Major Sir Harry Lidge, had fallen in love with Lady Catherine Anne Hilliard Seaton, Dowager Duchess of Murther ten years prior but because he believes that she tried to foist a bastard baby on him when she was fifteen and he was twenty, he despises her and attempts, at every juncture to wound her.

Harry is now one of “Drake’s Rakes”, a spy organization designed to bring down the Lions, a group of Englishman who want to see Wellington killed, and the current royal regime replaced. (at least that is what I think is the purpose of the Lions).  Harry kidnaps Kate on the very thin pretext that she might be a Lion.  This kidnapping sparks an idea in Edwin, the current Duke of Livingston, and Kate’s brother.  He uses a painting of a nude with Kate’s head on it to provide justification that Kate must be institutionalized.  Kate’s family has always held Kate in disgust.  Harry finds himself battling his conflicted feelings toward Kate while trying to protect her from the Lions and her brother.

Jayne mentioned in her review of Barely a Lady that she was troubled by the portrayal of Jack who was inexcusably cruel to the Grace, calling her a whore, casting out her pregnant self, and heaping abuse on her head. Harry follows a similar path. At twenty years old, Harry, the local squire’s son, had worshipped Katie’s father, the Duke of Livingston. When he met Kate that summer, he fell in love with her. Kate begged Harry to marry her, to save her from a marriage Livingston had planned with Murther. Yet Harry was told by Kate’s father that she was pregnant with a groom’s baby and given the opportunity to enter the Army to get away from Kate.

Harry hates Kate for lying to him, making him fall in love with her, for making him enter the Army, and for two failed engagements in the past ten years. Harry isn’t a rational thinker because none of these things are really Kate’s fault. She never lied to him. Harry fell in love with on his own. He blamed Kate for the Army commission (and at one point said it was a banishment) but he was the one that choose that direction. While Kate may have whispered a few things (although this is never elaborated), the inconstancy of his fiancees never seems to occur to Harry.

Harry isn’t a thoughtless, action first type of guy thus his actions toward Kate can’t easily be excused by a natural character flaw. But writing the overly angry cruel hero is one way to ratchet up the angst. It builds sympathy for the heroine and creates a perfect scenario for the grovel, something that seems pervasive in this series based on the reviews of the Drake’s Rakes books from Jayne and Lazaraspaste.

What made Harry’s actions problematic was not only that he has nursed these hard feelings toward Kate for ten years but that they are so easily resolved with just one discussion. It is true that he observed Kate for a few days and discovered she had suffered a terrible marriage with Murther, but not once did he doubt the lies that Kate’s father told him, not even with the stunning evidence of Murther’s cruelty toward Kate. He did not doubt the lies of Kate’s father even after he realized that Kate wasn’t the whore he called her, but more chaste than perhaps any woman he knows.

That Harry’s obtuseness toward Kate, whether deliberate or unconscious, can be resolved with one discussion was incredibly frustrating, yet, once this revelation happens, the story takes a complete turn. Harry goes from being the worst kind of man enacting revenge to a solicitous and tender lover, trying to help Kate overcome her fear of intimacy created by years of abuse at the hands of her former husband, Murther.  Harry is given this opportunity when Kate is kidnapped by her brother, Edwin, and taken to an asylum.  Harry steps forward to say that he is Kate’s husband and thus only he can make decisions about her mental fitness.

The writing tics that were noted in Jayne and Lazaraspaste’s reviews are obvious in this book as well. There are multiple PsOV from characters who have had their own books which added very little. For instance, Grace’s musings about how she wished Harry and Kate could overcome their differences to find happiness appeared out of nowhere and was, I suppose, to seed hope in readers that Harry would get his head on straight. The use of Lady Bea Seaton, an elderly woman who speaks in riddles, is a convenience because she inevitably hold the answers to the mystery that Harry is pursuing.  The overarcing mystery of the group named the Lions pervades the story, provides suspense, and is used to set up later books yet because little about the Lions is ever resolved in the story, I felt it more irritant than aid.

There were two competing internal conflicts. One conflict was that Kate did not want to give up control and the second was that Harry’s dream was to travel the world and see the marvels of the world’s architecture. Kate’s issue with control is dropped and never really resolved and the emotional conflict centers itself around Kate’s desire to stay at her home and Harry’s desire to travel.

Yet, despite this, Kate and Harry’s romance is inevitable and necessary.  Kate is presented as an indomitable spirit.  She has survived and flourished despite her neglect as a child and her abuse as an adult.  What I did wonder is why Kate hadn’t found a beard in society to serve as her husband and protect her against Edwin and his machinations in the past.  She lived a scandalous life and surely she could have found someone who would not be interested in her person or in her property.  But, of course, if she had, she would not have been available for Harry.  If there was one flaw in Kate’s presentation is that she was constantly being saved by Harry.  I would have liked to see Kate save herself once. She was surely capable of it.

For me, Kate was the best part of the story.  Ballsy, sharp witted, and loyal, Kate’s ability to stare down her worst danger brightened every page.  I wanted to spend more time with her and in her head, and less time with Harry.

Harry, setting aside his behavior toward Kate in the early part of the story, was presented as a battle hardened Army man who suffered from nightmares and emotional fatigue from the war.  Their characters, as written, matched and there were scenes in the book that poignantly showed that as the two held each other through the night taking turns comforting the other from their night terrors.

This is an emotional and angsty historical romance beset by spies, dropped plot lines, and bad hero behavior.  I think a reader who has enjoyed the Dreyer series in the past will find this one to be satisfying.  For a new reader to the series, like me, some of the Lion mysteries will be confusing and distracting.  In a less talented author’s hands, I think the problems would overcome the beauty of the romance.  C

Best regards,

Jane

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | nook | Sony | Kobo

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You received a glowing endorsement from Courtney Milan and I had to try this book out. While I am not sorry I read it, perhaps heightened expectations left me with a disappointed feeling during the book. I think, too, the book was a bit too lighthearted for me. I seem to be enjoying the darker, agnsty historicals more these days.

James, Viscount Matheson, comes to visit his new fiancée’s family and while there feels an incredible pull toward his fiancée’s sister, Julia Herington. James decided it was time for him to marry and he runs into Louisa hiding in a library at a ball. They strike up a conversation and James believes that Louisa would be a perfect match for him.  Louisa quickly agrees to his marriage proposal.  Now they are endeavoring to get to know one another better.

Nothing much seems to happen for the first half. James visits his fiancée’s family. Julia runs around interrupting people and cursing while James wonders at his physical and emotional attraction toward Julia. Louis is a nearly silent spectre.

A storytelling technique is utilized here to create mystery about characters’ motivations.  We know that James had to get married soon but we don’t know the reason why.  We know that Louisa is anxious about being married but we don’t know why she accepted James’ proposal.  When the reasons are revealed later in the story, they make sense, but it was hard to understand the actions of the characters when the motivations were completely hidden.

I also found Julia a bit too much of a conventional romance heroine. She’s in charge of her family’s household despite being of young age (and despite having a living mother, father, and close in age stepsister). She’s quirky. She careens around her home and curses. She says whatever comes into her head. Voila. Perfect for James, the hero. The plan to find Julia a spouse conveniently leads James to jealousy because no man was right for Julia in his eyes (except himself).

I kept envisioning Julia as this excitable terrier, always running around, yipping, and chewing holes through dresses. The introduction of the bawdy, irascible aunt who reminded me a bit of Dolly in Hello, Dolly, was thrown in for humor purposes and to serve as a foil for James’ uptight mother. I wished for more depth from everyone.  The technique of the delayed reveal actually made the characters superficial and unrelatable.  For instance, Louisa’s initially stated cynicism regarding courtship and marriage seemed at odds with her mother’s happy marriage to Julia’s father and her being raised in a loving family. Later, we find out that her earlier feelings were the result of misery and true discomfort at being part of society.  If I had known this earlier on, perhaps her actions would have been viewed differently.

The other thing I found odd was that so much time was spent showing James and Julia spending time alone and talking and very little time showing James and Louisa together. I understand that this was to show us the connection that Julia and James had, but whenever there is a severing of an existing relationship, a promise between people of marriage, I admit to feeling uneasy. That uneasiness stayed with me and granted it stayed with James and Julia, but my discomfort over the situation remained. Why were the two spending so much time together? Why did Louisa appear so nervous of James? Why did James have these salacious thoughts about Julia? I mean, I know the answer is because Louisa doesn’t really want to marry James and James must show that his soul mate is Julia, right away, but because of his promise toward Louisa, I was disturbed by his feelings and his actions:

Louisa bit her lip as she considered, then admitted, “If we marry soon, I shall have to sponsor Julia during her season next spring.”

This seemed like a total non sequitur to James, but he tried to respond as he thought Louisa would expect him to.

“I think that would be delightful. You could begin your life as a London hostess with one of your favorite family connections.”

His groin tightened. Delightful. Julia, in his house, nearby always, saucy and willing.

Oh, yes. And under his wife’s supervision. The vision popped as quickly as a soap bubble.

There is a definite tinge of infidelity that swirls around the forbidden love of Julia and James, even if Louisa did not love James, he did not know of her feelings and his actions could have caused a huge rift between Julia and Louisa not to mention cause real conflict and further disgrace for his own family.  Perhaps I was to see this as James’ being swept away by passion.

The first half of the story was all undone by the second half of the story and while that might be a technique that works for some readers, it didn’t work for me. It kept me distanced from the characters, their romance, and their emotional struggles. From a distance, I could see what I should have been feeling during the book: longing for the forbidden lovers to find each other, sadness at characters’ inabilities to overcome their insecurities, enjoyment that true love would triumph. Knowing, however, isn’t the same as being in the moment.

I think that readers who enjoy Julia Quinn would enjoy this book. There is quite a bit of heart to the story, but it never resonated with me. C

Best regards,

Jane

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | nook | Sony | Kobo

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I have been anticipating the release of your novel, In Total Surrender, since I read about the Merrick brothers in your last effort, One Night Is Never Enough. There’s just something about a pair of intellectual thugs that gets my blood pumping.

In Total Surrender is Andreas Merrick’s book. The one in which the taciturn and deadly Lord of the Criminal Underworld falls in love with the upbeat daughter of a merchant.

Andreas Merrick is once again the object of an assassination plot. A plot he has anticipated, for the assassination attempt is the direct result of his own plan to bring down his arch-nemesis, Lord Garrett. Andreas has been plotting this man’s downfall for ages and he is so close to finally destroying him that he can taste the victory. Unfortunately, things are not going quite as he had intended. There have been . . . set-backs. A warehouse has been burned down and other attacks against the Merricks’ empire have been made, the assassination attempt not the least among them.  More irritatingly still, his brother Roman is on his honeymoon and has left him to deal alone with the various employees, spies, and cogs in the wheels of their empire. So when a cloaked and hooded woman enters his offices after a particularly irritating evening of dealing with various attacks, Andreas is expecting—well, he’s expecting to have someone try to kill him.

What he is not expecting is Phoebe Pace, the daughter of the merchant James Pace. The family Pace has been under his gaze for quite a while now. He’s been watching them, interested in their comings and goings. For the Pace family is a key ingredient in his machinations against Lord Garrett. In fact, one of the set-backs his plot has suffered was the disappearance of the only son, Christopher and the reclusive nature of the father. The only time, it seems, that the family leaves their home is to attend the theater. So Andreas has been writing to James Pace, trying to convince him to meet. But James Pace is strangely reluctant. He keeps refusing, and no one refuses Andreas Merrick.

That Phoebe Pace should come to him in the dead of night is absolutely extraordinary. It doesn’t take him long to figure out that the person who he has been corresponding with has not been James Pace at all, but Phoebe. That this girl has been the one running the company since the disappearance of her brother and the seclusion of her father is astonishing. And not just a little bit irritating.

Phoebe Pace proceeds to become more irksome still for what she wants from Andreas Merrick is information. She seems to believe that he knows or can find out what happened to her brother. Is he dead? Is he missing? Kidnapped? By whom? And for what reason? Phoebe isn’t put off by assassination attempts and ruffians. She begins a campaign to insinuate herself in the Merrick household through baked goods and kind words. But Andreas isn’t fooled. What is she up to? And how much does she know?

Andreas is sure she knows something. He also realizes that her interference in his plans is his own damn fault. After all, his fascination with her has led to this. It was through his doings and schemes that the Paces are involved with him at all. It was his design that entangled them with his vendetta against Lord Garrett.  He was using them like pawns in a chess game. So whatever Phoebe wants and whatever Phoebe is, her optimism and good nature are just a front, a tactic to throw him off and let down his guard, because he knows that what she is after is far more intertwined in the danger that surrounds  them than perhaps either of them are aware.

But more distressingly still, he thinks about her. He goes to the theater to watch her and he hates the theater. She seems to be able to see into him. And he, he is totally unable to see into her. He cannot understand her. This disturbs him, because she, herself, disturbs him. She’s disturbed him from the first moment he saw her at the theater:

It had been immediate. How the hell that could be, he didn’t know. But her eyes had connected with his, somehow, as she’d entered the box on the opposite side of the theater—connected with his even through the dark shadows he surrounded himself with. And her mouth had bestowed a warm smile on a random stranger in the crowd.

Barbed warmth sinking under his skin, biting and clawing.

Her body was cloaked in the color of innocence, but her lips were passion-stained. The warmth of the lamps seemed to converge on her at all times, no matter where she moved, or with whom she spoke—a bright spot pushing back the shadows.

In many ways this novel is playing with and manipulating romance tropes and forms.  On the surface it seems to be the classic tale of the good girl and the rogue. But this is quickly dispelled. Mallory makes a point of adjusting the story just enough that it doesn’t read quite the same as it ought to. I am for this adjustment. I am for the manipulation of tropes and conventions. I think it gives us wonderful romances when romance authors dare to twist, turn and pervert the usual generic standards. Mallory often does this in her books. She tweaks things. Starts at odd points and places in the story. She doesn’t reveal or fully explain the characters past, even at the end of the story. She uses time and perspective in slightly idiosyncratic ways. All of this is very well done. All of this I support.

For instance, In Total Surrender is predominantly told from Andreas’ perspective. Particularly in the first seven chapters when we, the readers, are privy to none of Phoebe Pace’s thoughts. Phoebe is an utter and complete mystery to Andreas. Her motivations, her goals, her desires are totally foreign to him. He knows, quite perfectly well, that she is up to something. He simply cannot figure out what it is. In fact, Mallory makes Phoebe a mystery—in my humble opinion—precisely so that she might play with the trope of sweet, optimistic young women who invades the dark lord’s home and turns it upside-down for the better. Because Phoebe, as we learn, is not exactly sweet, is not exactly optimistic and is invading Andreas’ establishment the way that Catherine the Great invaded Turkey, turning things upside-down in pursuit of her own warm-water port.

Ms. Mallory uses, like most romance novel authors, limited third person perspective as her narrative mode. However, there are many ways to use third person. In most romances, the narrator is invisible. This is in contrast to other books like Middlemarch, where on occasion the narrator offers an opinion about the characters manners and behaviors. Or, as in Jane Austen where there might not be an actual intrusion into the narrative, but there is an ironic distance to the tone in which events are related. Mallory, like her sister romance authors, remains mostly invisible in the text; however, she also does this thing where she closes the distance between herself and the character. She imposes upon her narration a very limited and constrained perspective. Often the reader finds herself in the dark about past events and motivations, even when occupying the space inside a character’s head. Moreover, Mallory has a particular talent for visceral and claustrophobic narrative. Her stories are rather gothic because of this.

The effect of all of these narrative devices is to heighten the tension and the friction in the relationship between the hero and the heroine. By not being able to know what the other is thinking, and by imposing that same limitation on the reader, Mallory ratchets up the sexual tension to quivering levels. We, the readers, feel the effect of this tension. We share it, for neither are we able to understand or to know the object of the hero, Andreas’ desire. Instead, we must wait, like him, to find out about Phoebe; to find out about her secrets, her thoughts, her knowledge and her plans.

The problem with In Total Surrender is that it doesn’t deliver. I think it does work quite well in its manipulation of certain tropes and genre conventions, but it fails in three significant ways, three significant ways which are primarily confined to the end of the book rather than the beginning.

First, the sex scene. When I talked about this with Jane she described it as vague and unsatisfying and I would have to concur with that assessment. The sex scene is vague and unsatisfying. Unsatisfying because the sexual tension is practically thrumming by the time you reach that point in the story. You can feel Andreas’s nerves about to snap. So the fact that the sex scene is so brief really does little to dissipate that tension. This dissatisfaction is exacerbated by the sheer vagueness in which it is related. What, if anything, happens? I wasn’t actually entirely sure they had sex for a minute there. That’s how vague it was.

Now, I’m not all about the sex scene. In fact, there are times I wish there was no sex scene. For example, there are certain authors who rely on the sex scene or the sex scenes to carry the rest of the story to its close. This is both to the detriment of the story and the detriment of the characters. Hero and heroine spend the last third of the book shagging themselves senseless and boring the bejesus out of me. Usually, what remains in these books is some half-arsed mystery plot that I have already solved. Or sometimes the hero just hasn’t said “I love you” but this is not enough to keep me reading another 80 pages.

Mallory has not committed that crime. And if I might be so bold as to presume to know the author’s intentions, I see both the vague and unsatisfying nature of the sex scene in In Total Surrender as endeavoring to do the opposite. I applaud Ms. Mallory for attempting to do something different with sex in a romance novel. It was a bold move. Unfortunately, as if often the case with bold moves, this one didn’t quite work. The tension between Phoebe and Andreas was such that it needed to be consummated more than the sex scene allowed for.

Second, the use of historical personages. Or the historical personage who is the deus ex machina. This one, I don’t understand. It was totally unnecessary to the plot of the novel, to the development of the characters, or to the themes of this book to have a Historical Personage appear. The Historical Personage was inserted with all the deftness and subtlety of a bull in a china shop. Or a toddler with a pair of scissors. Why, dear author, why? In order to explain why this didn’t work I must spoil the surprise, thus:

SPOILER ALERT

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

END SPOILER ALERT

The appearance of the Historical Personage highlights two things: the hasty ending and the sudden upswing to the saccharine. Prior to the appearance of the Historical Personage, the sex scene—though vague and unsatisfying—was the major weakness in the book. The tension and conflict at the heart of Phoebe and Andreas’ relationship was well-written enough for me to ignore some of the flaws, including the sex scene itself.

But the ending. Oh the ending. It wasn’t that it wasn’t happy. It was. It was too happy. It was too damn happy. The first third of the book—nay! Nearly the entire book is characterized by a tone and atmosphere that could only be described as dark and grim. Lord of the Underworld describes not only Andreas himself, but the feel of the book. One feels as if one is in an underworld, a world without sunshine or light, a world of shadows and twilight. But then, first the Historical Personage shows up and, worse, an abrupt flash into the future that shows how blissfully happy our heroes still are twenty years after the events of the book.

Clearly, my problem isn’t HEA. Clearly, my problem isn’t epilogues. But this wasn’t properly an epilogue. Nor was it properly a resolution to the final conflict between Phoebe and Andreas. It was if I was reading an early draft of the novel. It just went from a declaration to a flash forward to a saccharine ending so sweet that it threatened to give me hyperglycemia.

And he kissed her. Not a farewell kiss, or an evening kiss, or a friendly kiss at all. It was a forever kiss, and it was everything she’d ever wanted.

“And I love you too, Phoebe.”

If only that were the ending! But no. Then we get this:

Twenty years later, Phoebe Merrick still anticipated weekly notes, placed in different spots where she had to hunt to find them. No one had ever said the man was not difficult. But now he always smiled readily and laughed when she chased him down.

The twins were a constant joy.

It isn’t that we have not seen this before. But rather that this flash forward ejects the earlier tension, darkness and gothic atmosphere for an entirely different kind of tone. It is the sort of paragraph I would expect in a Julia Quinn. There’s nothing wrong with that but this is not a comedy. Thus, this last part of the book rang discordant for me. It was like listening to Beethoven’s Fifth and then having the recording suddenly, and without warning switch to the opening strains of The Temptations’ “My Girl.” It jangled.

I like Ms. Mallory’s books very much, generally. But some of her backlist has been hit or miss for me. This one is a miss. And it started out so well, too. I feel like I began in different book than the one I finished. As such, my grade dwindled. With the vague sex scene, this book was probably a B. With the historical personage, may be a B-. With the saccharine ending that resolves nothing and changes the entire tone of the book . . .  C+

Lazaraspaste

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: One Night Is Never Enough by Anne Mallory
2. REVIEW: Three Nights of Sin by Anne Mallory
3. REVIEW: The Bride Price by Anne Mallory

I have always enjoyed your romances, ever since I started reading romance nigh on six years ago. I particularly enjoyed The Marriage Spell, which was a hybrid of fantasy and regency—a hybrid that very much appealed to me. Although there is a tradition within YA and fantasy novels of depicting alternate histories of England in which magic is real, this is not a technique that has often been utilized in the romance genre. At least, not to the extent that romance has crossed into horror or urban fantasy with the paranormal romance.

Having read The Marriage Spell, I was really looking forward to future books in The Stone Saints series. Alas, this was not to be. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but for whatever reason that series never saw the light of day after The Marriage Spell. Secondary characters from that book were subsequently transformed into boring, ordinary, totally magic-less heroes for your Lost Lords series. Well, that’s how I read them, in any case.

Thus, it was very interesting to me, indeed, when I learned that you were going to be branching out into the YA genre with a new book, this book. It became even more interesting to me when I realized that you were using the basic world of The Marriage Spell, albeit tweaked just a little. I suspect that other romance readers who have read and enjoyed that book will find themselves on familiar terra firma when they crack the spine of this new book, Dark Mirror.

Like The Marriage Spell, Dark Mirror is set in a Regency England in which magic exists. Not only does it exist but it is openly acknowledged. Neither Church nor State prosecutes magic and the English people themselves are comfortable with the idea of magic and mages.  The only group of people for whom magic is less than desirable is the Upper Ten Thousand or those who have pretentions to make that the Upper Ten Thousand and One. Social climbers and aristocrats find magic vulgar and mean, much in the same way that they would find anyone involved in trade or manufacturing. It is not a sin, but it is a sign of ill-breeding and general lack of taste.

Into this world enters the heroine, Lady Victoria Mansfield (called Tory by her family). Tory is the daughter of an Earl and has no desire whatsoever to have anything to do with magic. Thus, it comes as somewhat of a shock when she wakes up from a dream about flying to discover herself floating above her bed. Startling enough in itself, the situation worsens when her mother walks in on her. Her mother does not act in the predictable way. She doesn’t seem surprised, she just seems sad. Tory discovers that magic is an unfortunate trait that she inherited from her Russian grandmother, a trait that seems to have affected all the women in her mother’s family to varying degrees. By far, though, Tory’s magic is the most powerful. Her mother warns her that it is best to hide the magic lest her father, who is hyper-conscious of his dignity, send her to the notorious reform school, one Lackland Abbey, for all aristocratic children unfortunate enough to have been born with, and who have displayed, a tendency towards magic.

Tory is only too happy to comply with her mother’s request. But I think you can guess, dear readers, where this is going. Tory is presented with a moral conundrum, if there ever was one, not a day after the revelation of her own particular skills. During a garden party her mother is holding, her young nephew goes over a cliff’s edge. Instead of falling to his death, the toddler ends up caught on some branches growing out of the side of the cliff face. No one can get to him because the edges of the cliff crumble under too much weight. But Tory can get to him, of course, because she can fly. The choice is one between saving her nephew or retaining her reputation. Because Tory is a heroine, in the true sense of that word, she chooses her nephew. But it is a choice not without severe consequences herself.

She is immediately snubbed and cut by everyone present (with the exception of her brother and sister-in-law) and worse, her father rejects her near totally, having her pack for Lackland Abbey, to which he will send her the next day. Tory, herself, swings between feeling the injustice of her punishment, betrayed by those she loves the most, and hope that successfully graduating from Lackland Abbey will allow her, once again, to return to her old life. But it is the slow dissolution of that hope that occupies most of the story. Or rather, the realization on Tory’s part that her magic is a gift, not a curse, and that whatever happens at Lackland Abbey, she cannot return to her old life.

Dark Mirror, in these early chapters, has all the markings of a school story. Tory meets the various characters occupying Lackland Abbey: there are the outcasts who revel in their powers, the abusive and mean-spirited teacher, the spoilt beauty, and since Lackland Abbey is a co-ed institution (or rather, there’s a boys’ side and a girls’ side), the requisite unattainable dreamboat.

Warning! Some SPOILERS ahead:

But suddenly the story takes a bit of a twist. Tory discovers that beneath Lackland Abbey are medieval tunnels constructed back when the abbey was a working monastery. It is here, in these tunnels, that two professors—one from the girls’ side and one from the boys’—train a group of students to control their magic. It is the belief of this group that Napoleon is going to attack England before long and, as with the Spanish armada, it is up to the mages of England to push back this threat.

But that’s not all. During one of the yearly raids that the school governors performs on the tunnels of Lackland Abbey, Tory gets separated from her group and stumbles into a tunnel. The raiders are hot on her heels, and before she quite knows what is happening, a dark mirror has appeared before her and she falls into it. Emerging on the other side, Tory has no idea where she is. But she swiftly realizes that she is not in her own time. In fact, she has stumbled one hundred and fifty years into the future at a time when Britain is again threatened by an army marching across Europe. Only this time, it is the Germans, not the French. The rest of the book has Tory and her friends going back and forth through time using their magic not to prevent the invasion of Napoleon, but the invasion of Hitler.

I was not expecting this, but once I got used to the divergent track the story took, I found it much more enjoyable than if it had stayed the school story it had stared out as. In employing the time travel, Putney creates much more complex and interesting plot than it would have been if there was just a lot of midnight meetings and school rivalries. In fact, I get a little sick of the main obstacle in the path of the heroine being whether or not she triumphs socially.

To be fair, though, I think that this switch is so unexpected as to be somewhat abrupt. The earlier chapters really do set this novel up to be a typical school story. I do not see a lot of hints, early on, as to the change that will occur. Once it does, the story moves smoothly forward. But the switch from school story to time travel does seem rather out of the blue—it is as if the book started out in one kind of genre and ended in another. However, once it was done, the story was much more exciting and interesting, so I guess I can forgive the change.

In many, many ways, this book does not differ from other Putney stories. The characters are well crafted and simultaneously adhere to a type, whilst breaking out of the stereotype. Take the character of Cynthia Stanton, daughter to a duke. At the beginning of the story she occupies the position of rival and tormenter, the position Draco Malfoy held in the Harry Potter series; but when the book takes its turn into a different adventure, so too does her character turn. Suddenly, it becomes clear to Tory and, even more so, to the reader, that Cynthia is not the shallow and arrogant miss she seems. I point this out because I think it is one of Putney’s strengths as a writer. In fact, one of the things I’ve always liked about Putney is that she uses the tropes and conventions of the genre she’s working in but she always complicates them in a really interesting way. Cynthia Stanton’s character is just one way in which she does this in Dark Mirror.

Those familiar with Putney’s romance novels should know that tonally the book is much more juvenile and, I think, some would even say anachronistic than other Putney books. That is, the way Putney uses prose here is dissimilar enough from her other books that I noticed it. While the slightly more teenaged tenor of the prose was initially a bit jarring (I mean, Tory as a nickname?), ultimately I did not think that this prose style or tonal style was a problem for two reasons: 1) it is a book meant for a younger audience. Labeling it as a YA means that, not only will it be devoid of sex scenes, but that it will occupy shelf space at libraries and bookstores intended for children ages 12-18, possibly younger as in 5^th and 6^th graders. Because of this the more juvenile tone is appropriate. And 2) because it is a time-travel and book in which magic works, it occupies an alterior space in history. That is, it is a story set in an already anachronistic and ahistorical frame which, while it shares our history, also does not share our history in one important way: it has magic. This might seem like splitting hairs, but I think it is an important differentiation because whether the story works or not is less about being mimetically accurate to a “real world” and more about maintaining and deploying an internal logic that is cohesive with the world in which the story takes place.  Does the magic work? Does it fit itself to those aspects of history it takes from? I think this is a point, quite frankly, that probably needs to be reiterated with every book regardless or setting and supernatural occurrence. However, I did feel both of these points needed to be mentioned since romance readers may be going into this Putney expecting an historical romance (whatever that is) and getting a slightly different kind of book in a slightly different genre.

There is romance in this book. But I do not think that this book is a romance novel. Instead, it is much more kin and cousin to books like Sorcery and Cecelia or The Perilous Garde. The love story is important, but it is not central. What is central is the girl’s own adventure story quality of this novel. Tory is an intrepid heroine: she time-travels, she rescues soldiers, she trains to fight in, not one, but two wars. She begins to think for herself about what she wants, and takes pleasure in her learning about her own powers and talents. In short, she has an adventure and like all adventures, it changes her. It’s very Joseph Campbell, really.

If you are like me, and enjoy the mish-mash of romance and fantasy, then this is probably a book you will enjoy. If you are also like me and loathe unending fantasy series (George R.R. Martin, I’m looking at you, you son of a bitch), then be assured: while this book has a sequel in the works, it also stands on its own.  An enjoyable and engaging read, full of adventure and love. B

Lazaraspaste

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Christmas Revels by Mary Jo Putney
2. REVIEW: The Marriage Spell by Mary Jo Putney
3. REVIEW: Petals in the Storm by Mary Jo Putney