Grade: B+

I was not planning on reading Laura Kinsale again. While the one book of hers that I’ve read, Flowers from the Storm was well-written and poignant, it… slayed me. It was so emotionally exhausting that I wasn’t able to read anything with romance in it for weeks. I picked up this book because I was fascinated by the plot: two people fall in love through letters, but when they finally meet, he turns out to be a batshit crazy bastard (take note, online Lotharios!). Kinsale is one of those authors who can give you a truly unlikable hero with little or no redeeming qualities, such as Sheridan Drake from Seize the Fire, but is somehow able to make them sympathetic and sexy. But it was not the hero that had me turning the pages this time. It was the heroine. The hero, while totally hot, was kind of… meh. The heroine, on the other hand, is a hoot! She’s smart, practical, and in the end, ends up saving his butt from the sling. Her sarcastic and clever quips come a mile a minute and she doesn’t let the hero push her around. It’s really too bad that this book loses steam about halfway through. Not that it sucked or anything, but the first half of the book is so tightly plotted and poignant that when the external plots are introduced later on, the whole thing just kind of… meanders and staggers under its own weight. Kinsale introduces so many subplots (some of which were left unresolved) that they totally interrupted the development of the romance between the two leads! Ugh.

Folie Elizabeth Hamilton was a nineteen year old girl who married a man forty years her senior and gained herself a bratty eight year old step-daughter to boot. Since her husband would rather spend time in the greenhouse tending to his precious roses, Folie is often left on her own, looking out of the window and moping around. That is, until she receives a letter from a cousin of her husband, a military officer in India named Robert Cambourne. He is inquiring about some hedges (or something) and since Folie’s husband is too busy to reply, Folie answers the letter on his behalf. The letters start out innocently enough; Robert asks for a copy of Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, which Folie tracks down and sends to him. In return, Robert sends her a beautiful kashmir shawl for her birthday. “Dear Cousin” becomes “My Dear Sweet Folly”. Folie begins to live for Robert’s letters and develops an image of his as a dashing savior in her mind. In his letters, Robert is engaging, charming, intelligent, and though his passion for her scares her at first, Folie soon finds herself deeply in love with Robert. The correspondence continues for seven years and their innocent friendship and mutual admiration becomes a bittersweet romance. It is an impossible love because Folie is already married and Robert lives on the other side of the planet. When Folie’s husband suddenly dies of a stroke, Foley turns to Robert, whose letters are starting to come few and far between… then stops. Folie threatens to go to India if she doesn’t hear from Robert soon and just when she doesn’t think she’ll ever hear from him again, she gets this:

My Dear Sweet Folly:

I am sorry. You received no letter because I have not written. I am married. All along, I have been married. Folie–I am sorry. You must not think of coming here.

Robert

Kids, that’s only on page 17. At this point, I’m thinking of setting the book down and never picking it up again ’cause my heart couldn’t take it. I was crying and blubbering like a fool… LIKE A FOOL!

Anyway, three years has passed since Folie was devastated by Robert breaking up with her. Her step-daughter Melinda is now 18 years old and the two of them get along famously. Folie is now 30 years old and has completely removed any thoughts of remarrying from her mind. Her one concern now is bringing Melinda to London for a Season, so Melinda can find a wealthy, titled husband. Until she receives a completely unexpected letter from Robert, that is. Robert is now Melinda’s guardian and the executor of the money left behind by Folie’s husband. Robert commands that Folie and Melinda go to Solinger Abbey, his home, and live with him. Folie thinks she can talk Robert into letting her stay in his London townhouse (and thus saving them money), but the Robert she finds at the creepy mansion is nothing like the Robert she fell in love with in the letters. He is rough, cold, and… well, kind of nuts, actually. He won’t let them leave the house without an escort nor would he let them venture past the gates. He is paranoid, accusatory, and Folie finds it very hard to talk to him. She is convinced that this Robert is an impostor, but the little notes he leaves for her around the house makes her realize that her Robert is somewhere inside this deranged, unfeeling man. Unfortunately for Folie and Melinda, Robert is convinced someone is out to get them, so he won’t even let them go to London. Folie and Melinda escape to the estate of a kind neighboring couple and Robert immediately follows, looking quite sane and speaking with great lucidity. Folie demands he allow them to go to London and Robert agrees… if Folie were to bring along his trusted butler to watch over them like a HAWK. Everything is going well… until Robert shows up again. Hanging out with the most notorious rakehells of London. And oh, for some reason, he’s a psychic now. Huh?

Robert is… a weird cat. He married a girl whose beauty pretty much blinded him. She turns out to be a psycho, possessive bitch who sets his dog on fire (seriously) when she finds the letters Robert and Folie have been writing to each other. She’s always telling him a weak coward he is and in her spare time, sleeps around with the men in Robert’s camp. What a lady! Years later, she’s long dead, but continues to haunt Robert, taunting him about not loving her, for falling in love with a mousy girl like Folie, for being an all-around loser who never made much of himself. To get away from her, Robert sleeps in the closet. He doesn’t eat—-he is convinced the food is poisoned—-doesn’t seem to sleep, and can switch from quiet, solemn man to stark-raving lunatic babbling about conspiracies and people coming after him in a split-second. I SHOULD HAVE LOVED HIM! I love crazy dudes! (Let’s not even talk about my deep, abiding love for the King of All Deep-Seated Neuroses, Bruce Wayne.) It certainly appears as though Robert is suffering from schizophrenia or something… but no, it’s something else. And depending on how many romance novels you’ve read in the past, you may already know what it is. Maybe it’s my own issues and all, but once he became the poster boy for Sanity Monthly, he became… meh to me. Suddenly, he was your average standard-issue historical romance novel hero guy. He’s all sweet and stuff and still kind of creepy, but… not crazy enough. I needed more… angst and agony and brooding from my Laura Kinsale hero, thank you very much.

Folie, on the other hand, is a darling. Her evolution from a naive nineteen year old girl who falls in love with a mysterious stranger living in a land far, far away to a grown woman who is just trying to do the best for her daughter is really convincing. She doesn’t shove Melinda out of the way once Robert is in the picture: her priorities before Robert came along remain her priorities. She is pragmatic, intelligent, and witty. I just really, really liked this heroine. She doesn’t hesitate to tell Robert to stay away from her ’cause he’s batshit crazy, but once she realizes she needs him as much as he needs her, she doesn’t dilly-dally, either. No, Folie wants her man and she’s gonna get her man. In the end, she ends up saving HIS butt. Folie really made the story work for me. Even though I was annoyed by the “twists and turns” of the story and Robert got on my nerves a couple of times, I kept reading because of Folie. She doesn’t take shit from Robert, doesn’t let him intimidate her, and even though she insinuates herself in dangerous situations at times for Robert, she manages to keep a level head. She’s just… man, she’s a pistol.

The story, on the other hand, didn’t quite work for me. The first half of the novel was… brilliant. The letters, I’m sorry to say, really are the best part of the book, Candy! I really liked the idea of these two people falling in love over correspondence and then come to find out the dude is crazy… I was hooked! When Folie and Melinda first go to Robert’s house, it was all gothic and yummy. For sure, I thought the book was going to be about Folie helping Robert out of his crazy shell (I’m a sucker for those stories!). But all of a sudden, there’s political intrigue, Tories and Whigs, conspiracy theories about the Prince Regent being poisoned, and the villain that did this one thing just happened to be the villain who—–oh, forget it! The beginning of the book was tightly plotted, dark, erotic… it was beautiful. I was all over it! I was really disappointed that the story became something else entirely in the middle of the book. All of a sudden, it was like… a Regency mystery with a villain that totally came out of nowhere! What was that all about? Hell, I still don’t know what the “psychic” thing is about! Did I mention Folie and Robert also get shanghai’d by unscrupulous sea merchants? Unbelievable! There were so many “reveals” and surprise subplots that they got in the way of Folie and Robert getting some alone time together. Yeah, I definitely could have used a few more “quiet” moments between the two leads, especially since I really liked the two of them together.

Anyway, I still had a blast reading this book even though it totally short-changed me in the end. Folie is a great heroine—-possibly one of my favorites now—-and Robert is a good hero, though he totally got meh on me. I wish he’d been a little more nuts, but YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT. The story totally fell apart on me with the subplots Ms. Kinsale kept throwing my way like an angry softball pitcher, but she is an awesome writer and I definitely enjoyed reading her work. I’m looking forward to rooting through my HUMONGOUS TBR pile for more Kinsale reads. I think there’s one in there with a ninja (!) for a hero. Awww yeah!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 9th, 2007 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: B, Romance: Historical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.