Grade: C-

Although historical romance is my thing, this is the first Mills & Boon historical I’ve read. I’ve not consciously avoided them. It’s just that when I’m in a bookshop or on Amazon, there’s always something else I want. Plus my supermarket only stocks contemporary categories so while I’ll pick up the odd Mills & Boon/Harlequin on impulse along with my bread and eggs, it’s always one from the Presents line.

However, having given poor reviews of a recent Presents and a (relatively) recent Blaze [Bam’s Note: This has not yet happened.], I thought I would give Mills & Boon /Harlequin one more go and try one of their historicals. There was lots of choice but in the end I picked this one because there was a Liz Carlyle quote on the back cover, indicating that this book was ‘…spellbinding and seductive - Deb Marlowe will enthrall you…’

So, did Deb Marlowe enthrall me? In a word, No. However, all in all, this book is a reasonably credible effort. It is liberally peppered with anachronistic language and behaviour but (and this may be unfair) I rather expected that of a Mills & Boon historical. The fact that I was prepared for that meant that I found it less irritating than I might otherwise have done.

The Plot

Charles Alden, Viscount Dayle, is a one-time rakehell who is now trying to forge a serious political career. An unknown enemy keeps feeding information to the Press about his past exploits, stirring up scandal that threatens his prospects of office. Charles decides that to put his image as a rake to rest, he will take a sober and serious bride.

Sophie Westby hasn’t seen Charles since she was a child. When Sophie’s parents died, she was shipped off to an uncaring uncle. Charles - a neighbour - was her only friend and she remembers him with great fondness. She has followed his scandalous exploits over the years with glee.

At twenty-three, Sophie has never had a season. Being of an artistic bent, she has taken to designing interiors and furniture. Personally I found the idea of a 23 year old female in the early 19th century having a career as an interior decorator rather staggeringly unconvincing.

Sophie’s friend Lady Dayle (Charles’ mother) commissions her to redecorate Charles’ house in Kent and at the same time, proposes to give Sophie a season in London. Charles has fixed his suit upon the grim Miss Ashford when he meets Sophie again. High jinks ensue.

In the course of the book, we discover why the naturally ebullient Charles is so doggedly set upon a life of respectable sobriety, who his anonymous enemy is, and we also discover secrets about Sophie’s past. It’s all rather plot-heavy for a (relatively) short book.

The Hero

Charles is perfectly nice but he’s one of those characters who suffers from what I think of as The Gap i.e. the gap between (a) what he is supposed to be and (b) what he actually is. We are told over and over again that Charles is a blisteringly handsome, devil-may-care, charismatic rakehell. But he doesn’t actually behave like that, nor does anyone else in the book appear to perceive him in that way. He came across to me as a rather bland if quite good-looking man with a penchant for silly pranks.

The Heroine

To begin with, I really liked Sophie. She’s independent, feisty (without being all hair-tossing and chin-lifting) and humorous. There’s just one problem - she’s too perfect. She’s beautiful and talented. She helps destitute war veterans. She writes a book on interior decoration (yes, really). She gives the profits to destitute war veterans. She sets up a business making furniture and employs - yes, you guessed it - destitute war veterans. She pluckily welcomes an erstwhile adulteress back into Society thus risking personal censure. She’s positively chummy with the servants. She’s always understanding, always charitable, always courageous. It all gets a bit - much. One little foible would have done much to humanise her a little.

Having said that, I liked that she was assertive in a believable way. And I liked the way she spoke to the hero: frankly and articulately. She was just that little bit too perfect for my taste.

The Sexin’

For me, the sexin’ is always important. I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again: I want to feel the hero and heroine are compatible. I want to feel they have something special. This book, unfortunately, was a classic example of the ‘Cut and Paste’ sex scene; the kind that could appear in absolutely any romance novel provided the correct names are inserted. I won’t subject you all to the whole thing, suffice to say it ends thus:

Harder he thrust, deeper, every fibre of his being focussed on the hot, sweet feel of her, until, with a shout, he shattered. Pieces of his soul scattered, leaving his heart free to soar in the healing darkness of peace.

It’s the classic three part orgasm: shatter, scatter and soar.

Give me a fucking break.

The Verdict

The main problem I had with this book was that I felt the author struggled to maintain any tension between the hero and heroine. We are asked to believe that Charles thinks Sophie is totally unsuitable for him because she is unconventional and outspoken. If he truly felt that way, I would have expected sparks to fly between these two. I would have expected Charles to be feeling infuriated and frustrated and impotent whenever Sophie behaved in a way he considered inappropriate. I would have expected him to gradually come to a realisation about Sophie’s true worth. Instead, Charles seems to understand Sophie’s true worth from the beginning and to regard everything she does with admiring awe. This meant that there was a basic lack of conflict between Charles and Sophie which disappointed me after the sparky beginning.

To be nitpicky, there was a lot of anachronistic language:-

E.g. 1: (hero’s brother to hero) ‘Throw me a [frickin’] bone here, would you? I’m trying to play the supportive brother here’

E.g. 2: (hero on himself) ‘It was my boorish moods and general crankiness’

E.g. 3: (mother to hero) ‘You can appreciate what such validation means to her’

E.g. 4 (hero thinking to himself) ‘He was doing it again. Obsessing.’

Is this a nineteenth century English rake or a nineteen year old Valley girl? ‘Like, throw me a bone! I hate to be so cranky but if you were more supportive and gave me the validation I need, I would be able to stop obsessing about this!’

When I read stuff like this, I stop seeing nineteenth century characters in my head, and start seeing ‘Deb Marlowe’ who, according to the bio-blurb ‘grew up in Pennsylvania’ and who occasionally ‘abandon[s] her inner world for the domestic adventure of laundry, dinner and carpool’. Which - no offence to Deb who sounds like a perfectly nice woman - is not what I want when I pick up a historical romance.

To be even more nitpicky, I found the endless references to interior decoration incredibly irritating.

… she stood in the drawing room, staring with a frown at the continued chimneypiece. She’d had the wood painted white to match all the painting in the room and to complement the elegant plasterwork.

You don’t say?

Charles sat, admiring the bench as he did. It was a clever piece. The scrollwork was a mirror image of the moulding on the wall behind it.

This sentence should read “Charles sat.” Everything else is redundant.

However, all of that said, overall this book was reasonably readable and mildly entertaining. Apart from the anachronisms, the prose was decent and the characters were engaging enough that I wanted them to get together by the end. I liked the way the author let the hero’s back story emerge gradually and there were some nice scenes between the hero and heroine. So overall, grade C-.

You can find more Tumperkin shenanigans over here.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 10:11 am and is filed under Books, Grade: C, Romance: Historical, Tumperkin's Reviews, Romance: Category. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.