Category Archives: book review

The Three Sisters Trilogy: Beauty and the Spy, Ways to Be Wicked, & The Secret to Seduction by Julie Anne Long

book review September 4, 2014 Leave a comment

Before I begin: Thank you, Malin, for the loan of these books. My Julie Anne Long collection was not going to complete itself.

These three historical romances are an early trilogy from one of the genre’s best writers. Good, but not great, one can feel Julie Anne Long picking up speed and confidence as one moves through the novels. The heroines of each of the three books are the daughters of a Member of Parliament and his beloved mistress. Although never married, their parents had an exclusive, long-term relationship until their father was murdered, their mother was accused of the crime and fled into exile, and a loving family friend took it upon himself to see to the welfare of the three little girls. It was the worst Tuesday ever. The sisters’ efforts to reunite and to bring their father’s murderer to justice is the through line of the trilogy.

Beauty and the Spy (Kit/Susannah)

Susannah is feeling a skooch squelched in her perfect life. Everything is fine, but she’s not really able to completely be herself. Don’t worry, complications are about to enter her life like whatever the Regency version of a Mack truck is. Her father dies, she is left penniless, subsequently fiance-less, and she has to move to a remote village to begin a life of genteel poverty. Fortunately, Kit is there conducting a wildlife survey on his estate.  It’s a McGuffin within a McGuffin as Kit’s convenient presence is at the behest of his tired and protective father. Sparks fly, romance ensues, family secrets are discovered and create a through line for the next two books…

Ways to Be Wicked (Tom/Sylvie)

Ways to Be Wicked offered a pleasantly different take on the Regency era. Everyone actually works for a living – QUELLE HORREUR! – and no one looks askance at taking what opportunities for increased financial security may come.

Sylvie has just learned that she has a sister in England (Hint: It’s Susannah.) and runs away from her life as a Parisian ballet dancer/aristocrat’s mistress to find her family. She ends up working in an, um, gentleman’s theatre as one of a collection of young women whose job it is to wear diaphanous clothing, twirl, and exclaim “Whee!”. She’s not to happy about it, but the man who hired her, Tom, is meshuggah good-looking and fascinated by her. Sparks fly, romance ensues, family secrets are discovered and create a through line for the next book…

The Secret to Seduction (Rhys/Sabrina)

I don’t find the remnants of feudalism all that appealing, but they are very important to Rhys who is an aristocrat of some sort. An earl, I think. I can’t remember this book well. Sabrina is a vicar’s daughter and joins her friend as a house guest (It’s coming back to me.) at Rhys’s recently restored estate. She falls ill and has to stay behind, Rhys is a jerk who decides to  compromise her as some sort of egotistical entertainment – Rhys does not start well, readers – they get caught in a MAJOR clinch, and end up in a marriage of convenience.  (I remembered!) Rhys and Sabrina live separate lives for a bit, he shows up of an evening for procreative purposes, they find their way into a good marriage, then Rhys’s deep dark secret comes out and everything goes KABLOOEY! before being put back to rights. Note: The KABLOOEY! inducing plot twist is pretty darn good.

The Secret to Seduction wraps up the Three Sisters trilogy with a neat bow thus freeing Julie Anne Long to move on to her current Pennyroyal Green series. I have read all of her output and will now spend my time eagerly awaiting her next book. Unfortunately for the readers, but pleasantly for the author, Long’s publishing schedule is about one novel a year. She is a clever and fun writer with a deep and joyful love of sarcasm who pens entertaining and charming novels. Long’s most compelling work so far is What I Did for a Duke. In it, she pulls off a huge age difference and creates a fantastic hero. The heroine is pretty terrific, too, but he is magnificent. All of Long’s books have themes of vulnerability and the necessity of laying oneself bare in order to take a chance on creating genuine happiness for oneself. It’s a lovely thought and she does it so well.  I like to keep her handy on my autobuy list.

A complete summary of Julie Anne Long’s catalogue, with recommendations, can be found here.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

 

Sisters in Love by Melissa Foster

book review September 3, 2014 Leave a comment

Sisters in Love is a facile and trite contemporary romance laden with clichés and complex problems simplistically resolved. A large part of my reaction was, “Maybe I could write a whole book. Melissa Foster did. It’s not like I have to write a good book. Melissa Foster didn’t.” It’s very freeing when one thinks of it that way. The rest of my reaction was to be grateful Sisters in Love was free and to be very pleased when I finished reading it – which I did strictly for review honestly purposes and I want points for that.

The hero and heroine of Sisters in Love meet painful when he accidentally elbows her in the nose when they are in line at a coffee shop. While tending to her, she notices he is incredibly physically attractive and that he is also checking out another woman whilst helping staunch the flow of blood. The heroine is appalled, but nonetheless can’t get him out of her head. The hero can’t get her out of his either. There is nothing like a woman asking “Are you done?” while she bleeds and you are checking out someone’s chest to make a man think about his life.

Adonis-adjacent Blake is very messed up. Not messed up in a romance novel way where he just needs a good woman, no matter what Melissa Foster thinks. He’s the kind of person who has almost no close relationships and uses his looks to bang every woman he can. He is detached. He identifies himself as sleazy. He’s “that guy”. He needs therapy and likely some kind of 12 Step Program. Conveniently, the heroine, Danica, is a therapist and soon takes the new acquaintance she desperately wants to sleep with as a patient, but I’d like to put a pin that egregious violation of client/therapist ethics to tell you about this: In one of the early chapters, there is a full description of an anonymous encounter in Blake’s own store restroom. Not even his office. The restroom. It’s far more detailed than the consummation scene with Danica. That was an interesting choice on the author’s part. It’s perfectly emblematic of how messed up both Blake and the book are. An anonymous woman says, “Jawanna?” and he’s all “Sure,”  and on to ignoring the fact that the porcelain must be really cold on the “cougar’s” behind. Afterward, Blake doesn’t like what he sees in the restroom mirror and wants to stop being “that guy” which is nice. Then, he does stop with ease and minor guidance which is ridiculous.

Danica, she of the elbowed nose, is a psychologist deeply invested in her career. The reader knows this because she doesn’t get out enough and she needs a makeover. Anyway, even though she is (unfathomably) sexually attracted to the deeply messed up Blake and is introduced to him socially, she takes him on as a patient. I’m not a doctor, but I play one in book reviews, and I cannot for one second believe that this is anything less than unethical. She stops being his doctor EVENTUALLY, right before they cross the line into a physical relationship, but it’s so twisted: He’s an emotionally vacant sex addict and she’s his doctor. He starts therapy, she gives him guidance, he resists a one-night-stand with her sister and suddenly the plot is on a steam locomotive to Love Town and he is almost all better. No. NO! Their entire attraction is physical and the reader is, I suppose, obliged to fill in the blanks on their doctor/patient ethics defying emotional connection. Ugh.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

Wallbanger by Alice Clayton

book review September 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Wallbanger by Alice Clayton is a fluffy, reasonably entertaining, and quick contemporary romance. It is the first book in her Cocktail series about twenty-something professionals building careers and finding life partners. The book had very little conflict and read like a romantic sitcom: she is an interior designer and he is a nature photographer; they each have two friends that are perfect for their counterpart’s two friends; they have no money concerns despite living in notoriously expensive San Francisco.

Caroline has a noisy neighbour. The night she moves into her faboo sublet, she is awakened by the headboard next door banging into the wall behind her. It happens the next night and the night after that. The sounds of female approbation on the other side of the wall change, the banging stays the same. To make matters worse, Caroline is in a romantic and auto-erotic slump. After the umpteeth night of tauntingly disrupted sleep, she storms over and complains directly to the Wall Banger himself. He is, of course, gorgeous and amused. She is annoyed and scantily clad. Things proceed in the anticipated fashion.

While reasonably funny, Wallbanger is the first in a trilogy of books that I will not bother exploring further, although, for what it’s worth, they are highly rated on Amazon. There is no real obstacle to the characters’ relationship. A goodly portion of the novel is devoted to delaying the relationship’s transformation from romantic partners to the consummation devoutly to be wished. I estimate that a solid 25% of the book is the putting off of sex and then the sex that follows the putting off. I didn’t buy it for a second. Neither the delay, nor the cataclysmic consummation. Further, Caroline refers to her body parts in the third person, such as Brain, Nerves, Heart, and “Little Caroline”. They have trouble coming to an accord. I am Mrs. Julien’s side-eye for this narrative decision.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

When a Duke Says I Do by Jane Goodger

book review August 25, 2014 Leave a comment

Short version: “I need to finish this book so I can stop reading it.”

Long Version:

gunn yes

When a Duke Says I Do is a historical romance with a lot going on, some of it interesting, but that gets lost in the details. The best way to explain is to summarize the plot and that will involve SPOILERS:

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The Beautiful Series: Beautiful Bastard, Beautiful Bitch, Beautiful Stranger, Beautiful Bombshell, Beautiful Player, Beautiful Beginning, Beautiful Beloved, & Beautiful Boss by Christina Lauren

book review August 12, 2014 Leave a comment

The Beautiful series is reasonably inept romance and reasonably ept erotica, although I don’t really know where the rumple in the sheet lies between the two. I would have thought that the main difference was in courtship by coitus and the point at which emotions become involved, but there are plenty of romances where sex precedes love, so it really just comes down to the level of detail. The Beautiful series love scenes were not much more explicit than a fairly typical romance other than greater frequency and the use of rougher language than I am used to. Not shocked but surprised, I am unaccustomed to certain words being bandied about, nor do I necessarily like it when they are. In an interesting twist, the books alternate between the hero and heroine as first person narrator which gives a perspective that was new and fun.

Plot Summary (All): Casual but proclivity compatible and intense sex leads to love.

Characters (All): Hardworking and successful, everyone is lithe and gorgeous.

  1. Beautiful Bastard
  2. Beautiful Bitch
  3. Beautiful Stranger
  4. Beautiful Bombshell
  5. Beautiful Player
  6. Beautiful Beginning
  7. Beautiful Beloved
  8. Beautiful Secret
  9. Beautiful Boss

Beautiful Bastard (novel)

Finishing her MBA, Chloe Mills has worked for the Ryan family for several years, but only for six months as an intern to the eponymous bastard Bennett Ryan. They have a politely hostile relationship that breaks down when they start having The Angry Sex then spar and copulate their way to togetherness. The alternating narration gives a good and necessary insight into Bennett and just how crazy he is about Chloe. He may be a bastard, but Chloe is equal to the task and he is besotted.  Despite the underwear rending (every single time) role Bennett takes in The Angry Sex, there is never, in any of these books, any suggestion that the women are anything but equal partners and the men find it exhilarating.

Beautiful Bitch

A short novella, Beautiful Bitch was simply more of Chloe and Bennett picking up one year later and then flashing back and forth to their reunion and ongoing relationship. More sex. Engagement.

Beautiful Stranger (novel)

Mercifully, the stranger of the title is singular and not plural because that’s not so romantic, but this novel is about an indulgence in anonymous sex that leads to love and a secure, sexually compatible relationship. Sara Dillon has just moved to New York City to start a new life for away from her cheating ex. Celebrating Chloe’s engagement, she meets a very tall, handsome stranger who propositions her. She turns him down, but later notices him watching her dancing and decides she likes it. They have sex against a wall of the club, then Sara walks away. No names were exchanged, but her stranger, Max Stella, is captivated. Through a series of friendship coincidences, Max finds Sara and agrees to a strictly sexual relationship with her. Their specific proclivity is exhibitionism, including photography in media res, so they indulge in a number of increasingly risky scenarios as they expand their indulgences and fall in love. Apparently.  I’m not sure exactly where the falling in love part came in, but they do and the relationship moves to the next level which, in this case, means a bed in a private home. It was rather sweet.

Beautiful Bombshell (novella)

Another novella shoehorned into the series and the one in which things veered toward farce. Bennett and Max are in Las Vegas with friends for the former’s bachelor weekend. Chloe and Sara happen to be there as well and the couples find ways to have The Angry Sex and The Public Sex in and around the party events and hoping to evade detection. It was quick, and fun, but also ridiculous.

Beautiful Player (novel)

Don’t let the hep language of the title fool you. This is the story of a rake and a wallflower, a trope I particularly enjoy. Delicious player Will Sumner is bored with hot and cold running sex. When his best friend asks him to help his younger sister get out more, Will accepts. Hanna Bergstrom is straightforward and has no filter. After their first meeting, Will spends several chapters falling in love in slow motion. His friends delight in his smitten state. A PhD student who has long been too distracted to have a social life, Hanna gets a quick makeover [eye roll] and she revels in the company of the man who was the object of her first crush.

So how do you cure a player? You go back to basics. Although not yet in love, Will and Hanna’s relationship builds slowly from reasonably tame foreplay to consummation. This book had the most relatable characters and she was a pip.

Beautiful Beginning (novella)

More “I hate you, do it HARDER!” and promises of post-coital ambulatory issues in this novella about Bennett and Chloe’s destination wedding. The travel element allows all the characters to be in close proximity and, like other final get together novels of this type, the current story is irrelevant. Max, Sara, Hanna, and Will make appearances, although I would have liked more of them. Chloe and Bennett have vowed not to have sex for FOUR WHOLE DAYS and gradually build up a head of steam for some epic The Angry Sex on their wedding night. Sometimes funny, they have skirmishes and make vulgar displays in front of their family and I was both a bit bored by it and a bit put off.

Beautiful Beloved (novella)

The central characters from Beautiful Stranger, Max and Sara, are back as well as the supporting cast. Sara was pregnant in the previous two books and this story picks up when their daughter is four months old. (Aside: Thank goodness, it’s not Chloe and Bennett having children because neither of them are parent material.) Max and Sara are as blissfully happy as ever, but their perfect union is sullied – lightly sprinkled with dust motes, really – by the lack of violently intense (hopefully public) sex in their lives. Not a lack of sex, mind you, but a lack of amazeballs sex. What follows are unsuccessful attempts to rekindle the fire of their pre-baby state with failed nights out. Gay-assistant-stereotype-George spends a night caring for the little one, then the adorable Will and Hanna, and finally Max’s brother Niall whose presence foreshadows his novel coming out in April.

I know that these books are escapist, but speaking as someone with very little money and alone on the prairie in terms of help when we had a newborn, I confess my bitterness interfered with my enjoyment of Beautiful Beloved. Max and Sara are wealthy and surrounded by potential caregivers. The only thing really stopping them from leaving the house alone is the baby quicksand all new parents fall into. There is something in Beautiful Beloved about society not wanting to see mothers as sexual creatures, as well as the conflict between the desire to go back to work and notions of being a good parent, but honestly the series just unravels its gossamer tether to reality a little more with each entry, so thematic discussions seem kind of pointless; moreover, it had a climax that left me cringing and saying, “Ew! Really? How many fetishes do these people have? Ew. WHAT? EW!” regardless of what points the authors might have been trying to make.

Beautiful Secret goes here in the reading order.

Beautiful Boss (novella)

As a quick follow up to Beautiful Player, I do wonder how many of these latter series novellas are just cashing in. I don’t begrudge the authors that, by the way, I just wish it had more of what made Will and Hanna’s full length book fun. Instead her enjoyable cluelessness turned into a stumbling block for the couple.

Beautiful Boss picks up on the eve of Will and Hanna’s wedding, trips lightly through their nuptials, and moves on to the more urgent details of their life together. Hanna has just completed a post-doc year and is crushed under the weight of offers to either teach or run a lab for prestigious universities. When was the last time, do you suppose, even the most gifted graduate had such a plethora of opportunities? She waffles through the book as Will is fantastically accommodating, but grows increasingly frustrated with her unwillingness to discuss where she thinks she’d like to end up. Sometimes, they take a break to get it on. They fight. They make a decision. Life goes on

Sidebar with a detail I LOVED: Will Sumner and Hanna Bergstrom both change their last name to the Sumner-Bergstrom. It’s unwieldly, but who cares?

The two woman writing team of the books, working under the pseudonym Christina Lauren, are pumping out these and more novels with alacrity. Like many genre writers, they have found a successful niche and know what their audience wants: lots of interesting sex which acknowledges that women have the same urges as men and enough of a plot to string things along and keep them interesting. The challenges faced by the couples are all Big Misunderstandings easily remedied, but the same can be said of many romances. The main complaint I have about the series is the constant low hum of dudebro sexism. The male characters interactions focus on insults of feminization and loss of manliness: They are whipped, their “girls” have taken possession of their testes, emotions are female and weak. The otherwise powerful women take it all in stride.  It’s the kind of casual sexism that surrounds us every day and which I hope to escape when reading these books.

Sidebar: Chloe has a gay admin who fills the “sassy gay assistant ” stereotype that the books could have done without.

Christina Lauren has a series, Wild Seasons, in the new adult romance genre which I recommend over the Beautiful books. Their writing just keeps getting better. A complete list of Christina Lauren’s catalogue can be found here.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

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Vixen in Velvet by Loretta Chase

book review July 28, 2014 Comments: 2

The review is in verse for which I sincerely apologise. I was bored. Let’s pretend it never happened.

Venus_and_Mars

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The Chicago Stars Series (Most of It): It Had to Be You; Heaven, Texas; Nobody’s Baby But Mine; Dream a Little Dream; This Heart of Mine; Match Me If You Can by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

book review July 26, 2014 Comments: 3

All of the books in the Chicago Stars contemporary romance series are built around the world of professional athletes and the women who want to climb them like trees. It’s a rarefied bubble that allows for the same kind of lifestyle fantasy as the aristocratic and wealthy world of historical romance. Almost every story also features an older couple getting a second chance at love.

  1. It Had to Be You
  2. Heaven, Texas
  3. Nobody’s Baby But Mine
  4. Dream a Little Dream
  5. This Heart of Mine – only Kresley Cole has ever made me angrier
  6. Match Me If You Can
  7. Natural Born Charmer – very entertaining and I recommend it

Susan Elizabeth Phillips is a good writer with a successful formula and a long career. She’s clever and witty, but more than one of these books suffers from tropes that are outdated and/or offensive. Since Natural Born Charmer is the most recent of the series, it is the one I would recommend. I did try Call Me Irresistible and The Great Escape from her more recent collection. The former never captured my attention and the latter had a love scene involving the literal use of a licorice whip. Yowch.

It Had to Be You – 1994

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The Brothers Sinister Series: The Suffragette Scandal by Courtney Milan

book review July 16, 2014 Leave a comment

The Suffragette Scandal is an instant classic and a master work of romantic fiction.

In a genre that wallows in cultural necrophilia, you have to love characters fighting actively against the  aristocracy and existing power structures. Or at least I do. Apparently, so does author Courtney Milan because she is doing it again in a novel that is easily one of the best historical romances ever written and one that simultaneously subverts and embraces the genre. Never afraid to beat romance tropes about the head and shoulders, The Suffragette Scandal, like The Countess Conspiracy before it, takes feminism and themes of identity and wraps a love story around them.

In 1877 Cambridgeshire, Frederica Marshall, Free to her friends, runs a newspaper that is, by, for, and about women and the issues they face, much like the romance genre. A radical who has chosen her battles carefully, she is the target of derision and efforts to silence her. Into Free’s life walks Edward Clark. He approaches her with a warning that someone is trying to sabotage her and an offer to help stop him. He makes it clear that he is not doing so out of altruism, he claims to be incapable of it, but because the enemy of his enemy is his friend. Already aware of the challenge Edward mentions, she decides to trust him even when he says she shouldn’t. Free knows better than Edward. She knows better full stop.

Free’s current problem comes in the form of Lord James Delacey, a man whose overtures she had the temerity to reject. It would seem farcical that a man should react so extremely to rejection, if we didn’t know that it is sometimes so sadly true. A woman standing up when virtually the whole world is telling her to sit down, Free makes a convenient public target for Delacey’s ire:“That’s precisely it. You said no, so that is what I am giving you. No newspaper, no voice, no reputation, no independence.”

Spending her life lighting candles against the darkness, Free is a magnificent character. Sanguine and undaunted, she hides none of her intelligence and knows she should not have to. She is not naive, she knows what she faces, but she has decided who she will be and acts accordingly. Her choices have a price she is willing to pay and she finds strength in small victories and in laying the groundwork for the victories to come, even the ones she knows she will never see. Her swain is one of those alluring rogues one encounters in romance. Edward has a disaffected view of the world and of himself, but he is also heartbreaking, appealing, and understandable. As a younger man, he tried to stand up and was forced down so violently that he tells himself he has withdrawn from considerations of right and wrong. Free makes him see that “maybe pessimism was as much a lie as optimism” and in each other they find a suitable partner to stand against the world with.

I cannot possibly do The Suffragette Scandal justice. It is everything a romance novel can be when giving full rein to the genre’s central tenet of a woman’s right to self-determination and in conjunction with Milan’s undoubtedly masterful skills as a writer. It’s a glorious homage to the brave and quiet warriors of the world insisting on what is right. It’s romantic. It’s funny and moving and entertaining. It’s on sale now and you should buy it.

Reviewer’s Note: As a captious reader (I maintain a list), I want to give kudos to Milan for the little details, too, such as the fact that Free’s long hair is held up by nineteen pins instead of the usual two, and, although Free is “small but mighty”, Edward acknowledges that their height difference makes kissing somewhat awkward.

A complete summary of Courtney Milan’s catalogue, with recommendations, can be found here.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

 

The Chicago Stars Series: Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

book review July 15, 2014 Leave a comment

Natural Born Charmer is a contemporary romance of the “you are everything I never knew I always wanted” variety with subplots of familial healing thrown in. Given the number of people with fractured or messed up families, I’m not surprised to see this element featured in several of the contemporary romances I’ve read. In addition to the main couple, there is a subplot featuring the hero’s parents who are also messed up and trying to find their way to stability. Natural Born Charmer has the slightly heightened reality common to romances, it’s sweet without being treacly and cacklingly funny.

Dean Robillard is gorgeous, rich, incredibly well-dressed, and gorgeous some more; to wit, “You look like an ad for gay porn.” (I’m still laughing.) A professional football player, his golden life looks perfect from the outside, but his broken relationship with his mother, his dissatisfaction, and his current road trip say otherwise. All that changes when he sees a woman in a headless beaver costume stomping down a side road. Blue Bailey (Hush, it’s a totally cool name.) is a feisty mess. A peripatetic artist, she moved from Seattle to Denver just in time to be dumped by the boyfriend she moved there to join. Alone, jobless, and broke, her car has just died and she is stuck. Claiming to be gay to make her feel comfortable, Dean offers to drive Blue first to her apartment, then to Nashville, and eventually to rural Tennessee where he is going to check on the farmhouse he is having renovated. She never leaves.

Blue and Dean are both deliciously sardonic and sarcastic. I found myself throwing my head back and laughing in the way they always describe in these books, but you don’t really believe is true until it happens to you. They also have abandonment issues and not necessarily healthy coping mechanisms, but eventually manage to figure things out. While their personal relationships are improved, they are not perfect, and there is a nice examination of what happens when children are let down by their parents, even if it is for a really good reason.

A great example of the genre, Natural Born Charmer is a very well executed and sweet read. I have already taken out three more Susan Phillips novels from my library to start working  through her back catalogue…

I have now reviewed almost every other book in Phillip’s Chicago Stars series as well, although I don’t really recommend them, but I do get tremendously angry with one of the heroines.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my list of books by author.

The Seduction of the Crimson Rose by Lauren Willig

book review July 11, 2014 Leave a comment

crimson rose

Lauren Willig’s Pink Carnation floral espionage series continues with book four of eleven, The Seduction of the Crimson Rose, and features droll characters bantering their way through espionage and falling in love. It’s a turn of the 19th century The Thin Man with all of the wit and irreverence one would expect of a Georgian Nick and Nora. As with the first novel, The Secret History Pink Carnation, the adventure is framed by a PhD candidate, Eloise, conducting research on aristocratic spies of the period and falling for the owner of the archives that make up the bulk of her source material. Their story moves quietly and slowly through the books while the historical portion resolves itself in each installment. Nefarious plots are thwarted and the assorted Pimpernels are drawn back into the fray when a new ruckus erupts as Eloise’s dissertation work continues.

Mary Alsworthy, great beauty and advantageous marriage seeker, has just been jilted for her own sister. Dusting herself off and masking her mortification, she is still hoping to trade her looks and sophistication for a nice title, inherited privilege and, fingers crossed, shiny baubles. Ruthlessly practical and not wanting to take money from her erstwhile fiance/brother-in-law, she agrees to work for Sebastian, Lord Vaughn, on behalf of The Pink Carnation seeking information about The Black Tulip. Mary’s work will help finance a London Season and her husband hunt. Lest one be put off by her mercenary intent, there is a marvelous fight between Mary and Vaughn about the role that choice plays in their respective lives. Mary is simply trying to find security in her life through the avenues available to her.

Romance novel Sebastians are frequently delightful and this one is no exception. He is older, wiser, and more world-weary than Mary, but capable of genuine feeling somewhere under all that wry, detached elan. Simultaneously resolute and a bit dandified, he is a magnificent urbane bastard that Mary finds irresistible. She lobs back his acerbic remarks in kind and they both give in to their attraction. He enjoys her beauty, but he adores her mind. Hijinks and not insignificant complications ensue, but everything turned out alright in the end. I think. I was reading for the love story, so I didn’t really pay close attention to the other elements.

Writing for those of us who love to recognize a reference, Willig is an extremely clever, well read, and deft author. Written with a wonderfully light touch, the books are mostly chaste with badinage standing in for sensuality. Much as a I love a little licentiousness in my reading, it’s a fair trade for such an entertainingly written story. While I prefer the romance to be more front and center, I would recommend The Seduction of the Crimson Rose to readers looking for intelligent and witty escapism.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

nick and nora