I was ambivalent about investing my time in the last of your Hellions of Halstead Hall series. I’ve read the first four with varying levels of satisfaction.  I found The Truth about Lord Stoneville, the first book, that of Oliver, the eldest Sharpe child, to be a contrived and insubstantial tale. I enjoyed the second, A Hellion in her Bed, Jarret’s tale—you did a nice job of explaining the ins and outs of making ale in the 19th century. I loved the third, How to Woo a Reluctant Lady, Minerva’s story—it was one of the better romances I read in 2010. (Giles was a dream hero: sexy, smart, and completely encouraging of his love’s dreams for herself.) The fourth, To Wed a Wild Lord, was a chore to read and, at its end, I didn’t give a damn about who killed the Sharpes’ parents—a mystery woven throughout all the books—or whether or not their busybody of a grandmother would release her fortune—all the books are based on her threat that the five siblings must marry within a year or else she will disinherit them. But, I did read the first four and, after contemplating the final book for several weeks, I decided I’d see how the series concluded.

My verdict is: not especially well. A Lady Never Surrenders, the story of Celia, the youngest Sharpe sister, isn’t the worst historical I’ve read lately. (That would be Susan Johnson’s Seductive as Flame.) But as I read it, I wondered at its mediocrity. Actually, that’s a lie. As I read it, I was vexed the book was phlegmatic and prosaic. I’ve enjoyed a number of your other books:  How to Woo a Reluctant Lady is a jewel of a love story; the 1999 book The Forbidden Lord is an excellent tale, full of steam and wit. I’d hoped for better here and was thwarted.

This novel’s pairing was inevitable—anyone who has read even one of the Hellion books knows Celia Sharpe and Jackson Pinter, the Bow Street Runner hired by Oliver to investigate any number of things, are destined to have hot sex and realize the other is their soul mate.  So, I began this book—after skimming the preface, an artificial sounding letter from the meddlesome grandmother, an annoying plot device used in all the  Hellion books—wondering what Celia’s and Jackson’s story would be. What would restrain their romp toward romance? After reading almost 400 pages—the lyric “the long and winding road” kept popping into my head and not in a good way–I was disgruntled to see their story is nothing more than a wisp of a conflict explained by the overused axiom: “we can’t be together because we come from different worlds.”

This plot already appeared in The Truth about Lord Stoneville. Yes, the sex roles were reversed. In that tome, Oliver’s of the nobility, Maria’s from the commercial class. Readers know the Sharpes have already dealt successfully with this challenge. It makes no sense to devote hundreds of pages of prose to surmounting an obstacle this family has already overcome. The Sharpes themselves point this out several times. It’s clear to Celia’s brothers and sister that Jackson’s a good guy and Celia has the hots for him as does he for her. Everyone can see they should be together. So why aren’t they?  Because, in a character conversion I found baffling, Celia’s grandmother, a woman who has been pushy in the other books but still pleasant, becomes an officious harridan. Hetty Plumtree goes from likeable—I was excited, in the last book, she acquired a lover; old people never get laid enough in historical romance—to horrid. She’s like the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio; Hetty makes up random rules Celia must follow to succeed and then threatens to ignore or alter those same rules all in the name of protecting Celia.

This contrived plot would have been infuriating enough on its own but added to it is an inordinate amount of self-pitying whinging on the part of Jackson. Over and over again, he tells himself, “She could never be never be never be mine.” His reasons are all insulting to Celia: she has to have the big bucks and the hundred room home to be happy; she’d never consider a bastard good enough for her; she’s so snobbish, she’d only be happy married to nobility.  Celia is a more tolerant, open hearted woman than he gives her credit for being. I was relieved his limiting attitude toward Celia annoys her. The two probably could have worked through Jackson’s insecurities on their own but every time they grow close, horrible Hetty insinuates doubt in each of their minds about the values and feelings of the other.

Celia and Jackson are nice, good people. I like that Celia’s untraditionally unfeminine and that Jackson’s a sweetie to his aunt. Both merit the other and I was glad they found their way to true love. But watching them do so was not a lot of fun.  For much of their courtship, the two are so confused about the feelings of the other their conversations are awkward and stilted. (I was happy when, midway through the book, they managed to escape Hetty and spent some quality time together in which they didn’t speak as though starring in a bad Regency parody.) This gracelessness made many of their love scenes uncomfortable to read. I found their banter the first time they made love cringingly comical. Jackson shucks his drawers to “reveal the ballocks hanging down,” and she says, “Oh. Of course. But I didn’t expect them to be so hairy.” (Just what every guy wants to hear, right?) I squirmed through this interchange between the two as Jackson’s about to pierce her hymen,

“He forged deeper, eyes alight with a fierce hunger. “And I always thought you a goddess.”

She eyed him skeptically. “Even when I tried your patience?”

“You tried my patience? he quipped.

“You know I did.”

Halting in his press inward, he turned solemn. “I’m afraid I’m about to try your patience, most sorely.”

I’m all for wit in the boudoir, but, in this scene, the repartee is off-putting.

So, I had little love for the love story. I had even less love for the resolution of the long running mystery threading through the series. The Sharpes were orphaned when young and, over the course of the books, it’s become clear that what was initially deemed a murder/suicide was in fact something far more nefarious. (Isn’t spousal murder/suicide is inherently horrific enough?) Each book has added mysteries to the mystery: was it only their father who philandered or was their mother a cheater too? Could their loathsome cousin Ned and his father have played some role? Why did that skanky older woman seduce Oliver when he was but a lad? By the time I’d reached the end of the penultimate book in this series, To Wed a Wild Lord, I was completely confused and supremely uninterested. After reading A Lady Never Surrenders and now know what happened to Lady and Lord Stoneville, I still don’t care and think the mystery’s resolution is pretty freaking odd. Suffice to say; when the villain relies on a bad accent and painted-on hair dye, he’s unlikely to garner my interest. Furthermore, I didn’t get the sense the Sharpe children are now at peace, their souls soothed, because they no longer wonder what happened to their parents. This feels wrong to me. Perhaps the only thing more horrific than having someone you love murdered is having no idea why. That knowledge is, for the families of most victims, crucial. For the Sharpe children, it seemed to be interesting, but not profound.

The book ends with an epilogue—one of those ones that assumes readers haven’t a whit of imagination and must be told in arch detail about the wedding, the wondrously congenial relationships the couple now have with his and her families, the obligatory pregnancy, and the overpowering lust that still—and will forever—spark between the two. The last line is this: “…in matters of love, a clever lady always surrenders.” I disagree—I am a clever lady and I should never have surrendered so much time to this lackluster tale of love. I deserve—as do readers—better.

With disappointment (I’m giving this book a lowly C-.),

Dabney

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Dear Miss Jeffries,

A Hellion in Her Bed is the second in your Hellions of Halstead Hall series; the hellion of the title is book's hero, Lord Jarret Sharpe. He subscribes to most of the usual Regency romance hellion habits, the most significant of which to this story's plot is that he's a card sharp.

He's also an irritation to his grandmother, who raised Jarret and his siblings after the scandalous death of his father and mother (presumed to be a murder-suicide, although questions have been recently raised) and he is in Gran Irritation Mode when the book opens.

Gran runs the family brewery, Plumtree, and she has taken ill. Not so ill she can't remind her grandson of her ultimatum that he marry within the year or be disinherited – a threat he soon skirts – but ill enough that she needs Jarret to take over the family concern. However, when he arrives at the brewery, he finds Annabel Lake waiting for him.

Annabel is a brewer; her brother, Hugh, owns Lake Ale in Burton. Annabel hopes to convince Gran – or now, Jarret – to partner with Lake Ale in selling the brewery's October beer and bolster both their businesses. Jarret doesn't want to do it, although Annabel and her proposition intrigue him.

It quickly becomes clear that the only reasonable way to settle such an important business matter – one that affects not only the livelihoods of the Sharpe and Lake families but also the livelihoods of hundreds of brewery workers – is to play a sexually-charged game of whist.

So that's what Jarret and Annabel do. Annabel proves better than Jarret expected and when Jarret is distracted for a moment, Annabel wins. So it's off to see Lake Ale and cobble out the details of the arrangement.

It's established early on that Annabel is no virtuous miss. When she was 16, she enjoyed one night of passion with Rupert, her first love, after which he died a war hero and she was left in a delicate condition. The result is Geordie, a child who she bore in secret and gave to her brother Hugh and sister-in-law Sissy to raise.

It's to the benefit of the book that Hugh, Sissy, Annabel and Geordie are a family: They are genuinely kind to each other, and treat each other with respect. Part of the reason Annabel has never married is because to do so she would have to leave her son – or take him with to her new home, revealing to her future husband and child the truth of Geordie's origins. The potential scorn she would bring on Geordie – as well as her brother and Sissy – is enough to bring her serious pause. And she would have to leave the brewery business, something she also cannot bear to do.

Unfortunately, Hugh has had some recent, uh, elbow trouble. After a downturn in the Russian beer market (in Mother Russia, beer drinks you!), he began knocking back the whiskey.

Storytelling-wise, this was a delicate area, and I thought Jeffries handled it well: She let it be known that Hugh wasn't always in this trouble, just going through a bad patch. That way, when he stopped a third of the way through the book, I didn't feel as if he'd been handed a miraculous snake oil cure. It was only that he had pulled his head out of the bottle and gotten himself back on track, which – even with my somewhat extensive personal experience with alcoholism – seemed probable, considering what we knew about his previous history.

What I liked most about Annabel was that she was not the guilty type. At times, she acknowledged feelings of guilt – about Rupert's death, about lying to her son and to Jarret about Hugh's mysterious illness – but it wasn't what drove her. She had done things about which she was not proud, but it wasn't a millstone around her neck.

Jarret, by contrast, was the one layered with emotional baggage. After the death of his parents, he felt that fate was fickle; the feeling intensified after he was bundled off to school. He tried not to care about people and property (a typical hellion affliction, I have noticed) and, of course, didn't realize how much he had come to care about Annabel. When he did, he still had difficulty expressing it properly.

Consider his clunky marriage proposal:

"A legitimate connection," she repeated dully. Amazing how he managed to make a marriage sound like a business arrangement.

"It would be great for Lake Ale," he said, as if he thought that was her only objection. "People would see our association as a family thing, which would give more weight to our new project. The East India men would be assured that I could follow through. Or make your brother follow through."

He was right. And with every word, he drove another nail in her heart.

What I didn't understand was why Jarret reacted so poorly when he discovered the truth about Hugh's mysterious illness. As a so-called "hellion," I felt he should be slightly more forgiving; I mean, isn't he supposed to be sleeping in gutters six nights a week himself? Kettle, pot. Pot, kettle.   But he recovered quickly enough, I suppose, so points to him in the end.

The relationship between Geordie and Jarret was a gentle joy. Children are a dicey prospect in romances; they're often so twee as to make me feel I've got a cavity coming on, or they serve only as obstacles. Geordie veered into the latter territory at the end, but by this time, he had my support, so I was willing to look the other way.

Jeffries has a way of taking common romance scenarios and weaving interesting historical information into the story in a way that doesn't make me feel like I can see the infrastructure that holds the whole thing up. (For example: An heiress school is common. But chemistry that could kill, or at least maim? That's interesting. Hellions are common. But Mr. Darcy in a brewery? That's interesting. And frankly, kind of hot.) I can't think of any other author that does this quite as consistently, or as well. Although I would say A Hellion in Her Bed was a bit more sweet than saucy, especially as compared to some of her other romances, it worked for me nevertheless.

Also, there's no need to read the first in the book; I confess that I didn't, but I picked up on the general narrative arc quite easily: the Marquess and Marchioness, Jarett's parents, were presumed to be a murder-suicide, but recent events have encouraged everyone familiar with the situation to believe it was something more sinister. Read on and all will be revealed, etc.

As for A Hellion in Her Bed, I would call it a solid B.

~Liz

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***

Some of you probably know I started my writing career as Deborah Martin and Deborah Nicholas. Since that was nearly 18 years ago, I can barely remember my first call. So I’m going to talk about my first call as Sabrina Jeffries, because that was the one that really launched my career. And when it came, my life was in the toilet.

First, a little background-’in 1996, my career was in flux. Those were the crazy days when no one knew what to do with paranormal romances or suspense, and as Deborah Nicholas, I wrote both. I might as well have put a scarlet "U" on my forehead for "Unpublishable." These days it’s hard to believe no one saw the potential, but back then publishers had no clue how to market them. My publisher dropped me before even publishing the second book in my two-book contract (it actually returned the book to me-’one of these days I may clean it up and try to sell it again). The reason: "We aren’t having any success with contemporary romantic suspense." I was dropped at the same time as another romantic suspense author who now regularly hits the New York Times bestseller’s list. She and I share a laugh about it often.

Meanwhile, things were horrible at my historical publisher as well. The historical market was shrinking, and I was placing my stories in Restoration England and Creole New Orleans. I also hadn’t really found my voice. So my historical publisher dropped me a few months after the first, just in time for Thanksgiving (happy holidays to you, too).

My husband was working for peanuts as a library assistant at the time. My autistic son was headed into puberty and a host of new needs. My agent was sending my books everywhere, and they were being rejected everywhere. One of my former editors who said she would love to work with me again wouldn’t even look at my six-chapter historical proposal for Pirate Lord.

"We aren’t having any success with historicals," she said.

The rejection was coming in stereo.

As I headed into Christmas, I had no publishers, and we had no money. Five publishers had rejected Pirate Lord. I had pinned all my hopes on it because of the high concept: a band of pirates eager to retire kidnaps a shipload of convict women to make them their brides, ala Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I felt the book was different from my previous books. I’d finally embraced my inner Georgette Heyer and was writing the sort of books I’d always enjoyed reading: witty Regency-set historicals with plenty of sexual tension.

Until then, I’d avoided the Regency era for fear I’d screw up the research, but I couldn’t deny that my keeper shelf held primarily Regency-set novels (and I’d cut my teeth on Barbara Cartland as a teen). So I had taken the plunge and started the "book of my heart." Now nobody wanted it! We were waiting on one last publisher, but I wasn’t optimistic. My numbers were horrible, and historicals weren’t selling well. I was depressed.

Shortly before Christmas, I broke down and went to my old employer, the contractor to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. They hired me as a temp, promising it would turn into something permanent eventually. As a tech writer, I knew I’d be making good money even as a temp, so I jumped at the job.

Two weeks after I started, Micki Nuding at Avon called. They wanted Pirate Lord.

There are no words for how I felt. I’d already started resigning myself to being washed up after 11 published books. When her call came, it was as if the heavens opened up.

They wanted to change my name.

"Sure!" I said.

They wanted the book in six months.

"Absolutely!" I said.

We were trying to sell our house and move to North Carolina for better benefits for our son, I was working nearly full-time, and I had no caregiver for my son when I wasn’t working, but I didn’t care. Someone had given me another shot at the brass ring, and by God, I was going to take it!

To this day, I worship Micki Nuding. She gave me a chance when everyone else looked at my numbers and said, "No way." She saw the potential and, brilliant editor that she is, knew how to hone it. I learned more about good writing from Micki than I’d learned in my entire career, which is why she’s my editor to this day.

So if you’re still waiting for the call or your present writing career is in the toilet, take heart. It isn’t over till the fat lady sings. And this fat lady is singing loud and happy these days

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