Grade: C+

First thing’s first: I enjoyed reading this book. I thought the interactions between the characters were wonderful and the dialogue was pretty witty and hilarious for the most part. As an ensemble piece reminiscent of An Ideal Husband or The Importance of Being Earnest (the so-so movies, not the actual plays by the awesome Oscar Wilde), it definitely succeeds as I could almost see Minnie Driver playing the role of Lady Griselda, the widowed chaperone of the Essex sisters (this is the third of the series). As a romance, however–and according the book’s spine, it is a historical romance–it fails miserably. The two leads don’t interact as much as they should, the potential GIANT misunderstanding isn’t resolved until the last few pages of the book–and was practically dismissed outright–and when the two of them say “I love you” to each other, it seemed to come out of nowhere and was totally unbelievable. If I took into account the two previous books where the two of them first appear, I guess I could say that their “courtship” began in the first book, but if I hadn’t read the other two, the relationship would never have made sense to me. The more interesting storyline is the one between the duke’s bastard half-brother and the woman from whom Imogen, the female lead, stole the man she married (who later died), if only because we saw the two of them actually “acting” attracted to each other. If this hadn’t been marketed as a romance, I think I would have been fine with it, but as it is… I don’t actually know what to call it except wallpaper fluff.

The hero of this book, Raphael Jourdain, the Duke of Holbrook, started out interesting. He’s sloppy-looking, sports a middle-aged paunch, isn’t a walking hard-on like most romance heroes, and is an alcoholic! From the two previous books, the Essex sisters always made fun of what a slobby lush he was, so when I heard that he was going to be the hero in this one, I immediately ordered it on Amazon. I thought, “Finally, an unconventional hero who looks like every other schlub on the planet!” but by the end of this book, he has transformed into your usual hard-bodied, well-dressed, Ken doll himbo that’s a dime a dozen in these books. Anyway, Rafe is a drunk. He has been drinking steadily since his beloved brother Peter died and he had to take over the dukedom, and has been drinking in increasing amounts ever since he inherited the guardianship of the four Essex girls when their gambling wastrel father died. And Rafe loves to drink. Lurves the whiskey like crack. And he has been drinking a lot more since Imogen, the second to the youngest Essex, has started acting like a tramp, throwing herself at any good-looking guy who’d pay her any attention. As if that weren’t enough to have Rafe pouring the whiskey down his gullet, a half-brother that he didn’t even know existed, has shown up at Rafe’s estate with his illegitimate infant daughter in tow, and Imogen is getting that look in her eyes again. On top of that, his half-brother wants to use the estate’s theater to put on a play starring his former mistress and the mother of his child and he wants Rafe to help out with the production. Oh, and he also wants Rafe to stop drinking.

Imogen Essex, Lady Maitland, was a lot more fun in the previous books. She was selfish, inconsiderate, a bit of a bitch, and was pretty much the type of woman to take a man, chew him up, and spit him out. The second to the youngest of four girls, Imogen pretty much suffers from the Jan Brady Syndrome, because her older sisters are now both happily married and Imogen, who married the man she loved, feels that she should have been as happy as they are. Unfortunately, the guy she married Draven Maitland, was a useless asshole of a man who didn’t love Imogen as much as he loved his horses and actually died while trying to win a horse race in the first book. In the previous book, Imogen did nothing but question if what she felt for Draven was real or if Draven had actually loved her, while subconciously trying to create a scandal for herself by throwing herself at various men (first at her sister’s husband-to-be, then at the guy who tried to ruin Helene’s happy ending in Your Wicked Ways) so that she would be unmarriageable. In this book, she decides that Draven definitely did not love her as much as she thought he did and now wants to get on with her life. Because Imogen is a bit insecure about her place in life and absolutely cannot live without the attentions of a man, she sets her sights on Gabriel, Rafe’s half-brother, and begins to pursue him. Much to Imogen’s consternation, however, Rafe is very much opposed to the match, and seems to be showing signs of wanting Imogen for himself.

Rafe is great… by himself. Imogen is awesome… by herself. The two of them together, however, don’t work out so well. It should have been a great match because the two of them are such strong, interesting characters; the “quiet” scenes they have together are wonderful, but they are so few and far between that when the two of them got together at the end, I wasn’t satisfied with the way things were resolved. Strangely enough, Eloisa James doesn’t start throwing these two together until the middle of the book and for some odd reason, we only get Rafe’s insights when the two of them are together and even from Imogen’s point of view, we don’t really get a lock of how she really feels about Rafe. When she tells Rafe that she loves him at the end of the book, I actually chortled out loud in disbelief because Eloisa James never gave me any reason to believe that Imogen would see Rafe as anything other than a friend. For the most part, Imogen is too busy plotting to get Gabe into bed and thinking of how wonderful he is. Even when the two of them begin hanging out together–Rafe is in disguise as Gabe–Imogen can’t stop thinking of how awesome Gabe is–and Gabe is pretty awesome–and barely spares a thought for Rafe. Why is Rafe disguised as Gabe, you ask? The reason is pretty convoluted and stupid, so you’re going to have to read the book yourself because I really don’t want to give it more thought than I already have.

What really pissed me off more than anything in this book was how Eloisa James resolves the whole Rafe-as-Gabe thing and how Imogen felt about it. I was happy that it didn’t end with Imogen screaming at Rafe that she never wanted to see him again for lying to her and running away to Scotland or something, but with the way Eloisa James dealt with it, I almost wished that the former had happened, instead. I mean, for God’s sake, Rafe dresses up as his brother just so he can get Imogen in bed–creepy–and even though it starts out with Rafe having good intentions about it–preventing Imogen from getting into further trouble–he continues with the charade until the last possible moment because he’s too chickenshit to tell Imogen the truth. The end implies that Imogen may have known about it way before Rafe finally decides to tell her the truth, but I call BULLSHIT on that. No way. Uh-uh. When Rafe reveals to Imogen that he had loved her all along and Imogen says that she loved him, too, I couldn’t believe it, either. BULLSHIT. Nah-uh. I don’t buy it. Up to the very last second, Imogen thought she was fucking Gabriel–and thinking how wonderful he was–and maybe I read it wrong, but there was no way in hell that Imogen could have ever thought that it was Rafe she was having sex with BECAUSE WE READ IT FROM HER POINT OF VIEW and it was Gabriel she was thinking about! Come on, now! Imogen doesn’t even have that “epiphany” that she was in love with Rafe and if Eloisa James was trying to be subtle about it, I must be pretty dense ’cause I didn’t get it, yo! I mean, there’s subtle and then there’s “I just thought of it just now and decided to make it look like that’s how I wanted it all along”, alright?

I was also a little peeved about how Eloisa James treated Rafe’s alcoholism. I mean, this guy drinks pretty heavily for seven years until his brother tells him to stop drinking and I’m supposed to believe that he never wants to touch another drop of alcohol after only a couple of weeks of “drying out”? One of my buddies is a recovering alcoholic and he hasn’t had a drink in years, but he still can’t look at a bottle of beer without getting a “come to papa” look on his face. Rafe whines about it a couple of times, then he’s over it. Are we supposed to believe that his love for Imogen is his new drug? We are? Oh, my bad. I also couldn’t believe that he was suddenly Mr. Hard Body. Seven years of heavy drinking does seven years of damage, man. Just because he stops drinking, rides his stupid horse for exercise for a couple of weeks, and eats less because of appetite loss, doesn’t mean that he’s going to get a superhero body without working hard for it. I don’t know, maybe I’m just bitter about it because all I have to do is look at food and gain about eighty pounds. I guess it’s because I’m not a romance hero, so I can’t automatically have a hot bod. Damn. Also, Eloisa James describes this dude for two and a half books as pretty much a schlub, so I had a hard time suspending my disbelief about this guy being transformed into a hottie in the space of a few pages.

What saves this book for me is the romance between Gabriel, Rafe’s illegitimate half brother, and Miss Gillian Pythian-Adams, the woman that Draven Maitland dumps for Imogen in the first book. Gabriel is an absent-minded professor type–who is a professor–and a single father whose mistress and mother of his child, dumped him (and the kid) because she wants to concentrate on her career. Gillian, on the other hand, is your run-of-the-mill bluestocking and is pretty much a romance novel staple, but the two of them together are just adorable. Gabe doesn’t think that he’s good enough for Gillian because he’s illegitimate, but Gillian thinks he’s perfect for her because he’s scholarly and loves his baby and ohsohot. At first Gillian is reluctant to get involved with him because he is illegitimate and wonders if she would be better off with Rafe, who is a duke, but in the end, she decides that she really wants to be with Gabe and asks him to marry her. I’m sure they would have eventually bored me if they had been the central characters of the book, but at least their feelings for each other were consistent and not wishy-washy like Imogen’s and Rafe’s.

Like I said in the beginning, this is really more of an ensemble piece than a true romance story and if you keep that in mind while you’re reading this, you might have a better time. I wish that Eloisa James had focused more on the development of Imogen’s and Rafe’s relationship–’cause I really liked the two of them–instead of giving insignificant secondary characters more “screen” time. Much like most of Eloisa James’ books, there is just too much shit going on at the same time for me to be able to enjoy the two main characters. As it is, the ending felt rushed. It was like Eloisa James didn’t quite know how to resolve the potentially GIGANTIC misunderstanding between her two leads so she just… I don’t know, pulled something out of her ass. I know that sounds brutal, but such a big deal was made about this thing–hell, it’s the pivotal storyline of the book–that for Eloisa James to resolve it with ONE sentence (I’m serious), it felt like… a betrayal, you know? I think if this book had been edited to get rid of some of the “wackiness” and a little of the shenanigans, it would have… I don’t know, made more sense, especially if the extra space were used to cultivate the relationship of Imogen and Rafe so that Imogen’s declaration of love would have been more believeable. Like I said, I like the two of them, just not the two of them together because I couldn’t buy it. Though this book’s plotting could have used more tightening, I think Eloisa James’ writing has vastly improved from her earlier books, like Enchanting Pleasures (which almost made me want to slit my own throat). Her characters actually sit down together and talk now–maybe a little too much, though–instead of assuming the worst of each other and having REALLY BIG, REALLY STUPID misunderstandings.

The next book on deck is about the baby sister, Josephine (who is supposed to be a fat chick–five bucks says she’s going to lose the weight with no trouble at all by the end of that book), and I’m gonna have to check that one out because like I said, Eloisa James’ books are enjoyable, even if they aren’t true romances in the conventional sense of the word. I thought the the Earl of Mayne, a true libertine who reminds me of Sebastian from Devil in Winter and a secondary character who pops up in four of Eloisa James’ books, was going to be the love interest in that one and that we’re finally going to see his redemption arc, but he gets married in this book OFF SCREEN. Double-u-tee-eff, mate! That is SO NOT COOL! The more I think about it, the more pissed off I get, so I’m just gonna… ah, hell, there better be an explanation for it in the next book, is all I’m sayin’.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 28th, 2006 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: C, Romance: Historical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.