Well, here’s a thing – a Christina Dudley book that didn’t set me on fire. Was it well written? Yes, of course. Did I enjoy the read? Yes, absolutely. But I felt a little like Hetty, who writes impatiently of Edith’s letters that they were 3/4 art and only 1/4 interesting stuff.
Here’s the premise: Lionel Hapgood has loved his cousin Edith from the moment he set eyes on her, and he’s waited for years for them both to grow up so that he can marry her. But when he finally can’t wait any longer and blurts out his feelings for her, he takes her by surprise. She’s devoted so much thought and energy to her art, that she’s never given a thought to her own feelings, or even begun to think about marriage. She rebuffs him, leaving him in despair. But when she falls victim to an unscrupulous artist, the two are thrown together again in the most dramatic fashion.
This is book 5 of the series, and the pacing is very different form the others. For one thing, it unwinds back to the earliest days of Lionel’s dealings with Edith and her burgeoning artistic talent, so apart from an opening chapter to set up the later story, the pace is slow and the style is more narrative than action. Of course, it’s written with Dudley’s characteristic flair, but I missed the humour of the earlier books and the development of the story felt rather flat. There was a vast amount about Edith’s art, and I felt I could easily have dispensed with quite large chunks of that. It’s not until we get to Lionel’s first, botched, proposal that the pace picks up a little, and towards the end the action becomes almost too breathlessly fast.
Lionel and Edith are both lovely, sweet characters, and all their actions are completely understandable. Edith’s absorption in her art is very believable. Lionel’s devotion to her from such a young age (he was maybe thirteen when they first met?) seems to stretch credibility slightly, but I can easily go along with that. And then we have the vast array of the extended Hapgood family in the background. I don’t recommend reading this as a stand-alone book – it works much better if the whole series is read in sequence.
Now, to the villain(s) of the piece, and this is where things get a bit spoilerish, so skip to the last paragraph if you don’t want to know more. When Edith’s paintings are stolen, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that the villain might be responsible for staging the whole thing. Yet when Edith gets to London and hears that her own painting has been exhibited at the Royal Academy, she immediately assumes that the artist submitting it is the villain. Yet it would have been more logical to assume it’s the (supposed) unknown thief. It would have been more realistic (and dramatic!) for her not to guess he’s known to her until she is brought face to face with him again. And since he clearly stole (or copied) her painting and then falsely submitted it to the RA, surely there would have been legal pressure that could have been brought to bear against him? I found it incredibly frustrating that nothing terrible ever happened to him. And even more so that the painting itself was never recovered. I know that’s more realistic, but as a reader it felt like a very unsatisfactory outcome. It would have been nice to have some acknowledgement of it, perhaps for Edith to say that she doesn’t need the painting any more because she has the real thing instead.
But the romance is glorious, I loved the ingenious Hetty’s efforts to help and although I would have preferred the two to marry at once, I can (again) recognise that the way events actually played out was more realistic. This was a slightly frustrating read for me, but even a slightly flat Dudley book, with too much art and not enough actual romance, is way, way better than 99% of everything else on the market at the moment. Four stars and on to the irrepressible Hetty and the final book of the series.
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