{"id":2555,"date":"2020-04-16T14:19:47","date_gmt":"2020-04-16T14:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/?p=2555"},"modified":"2020-04-16T14:19:47","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T14:19:47","slug":"review-the-wicked-lady-by-mary-lancaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/2020\/04\/16\/review-the-wicked-lady-by-mary-lancaster\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Wicked Lady by Mary Lancaster"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"This was such a lot of fun. There\u2019s nothing more entertaining than watching the most unlikely couple imaginable fight against their inevitable destiny, and these two are incredibly unlikely. She\u2019s a widow with a scandalous reputation and he\u2019s a curate – how can it possibly work? Yet as is the way of these things, naturally they\u2019re instantly drawn to each other.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the premise: Kate Crowmore has just escaped from a horrible marriage, which sounds like good news, right? But the scandal surrounding the circumstances of her husband\u2019s death has destroyed her reputation. Head high, she\u2019s decamped from gossipy London to quieter Blackhaven, where she hopes she won\u2019t be quite so ostracised. A small town in the north is also a good place to evade whoever\u2019s trying to kill her. The last thing she needs is a romantic interest, but Tristram Grant is charming and irresistible. There\u2019s only one problem – he\u2019s a clergyman, and a curate at that – the lowest of the low.<\/p>\n

So the stage is set for the Odd Couple, and their early interchanges are delicious, the spark between them obvious, and the banter scintillating. But this is not just a romance, because of the aforementioned person trying to kill Kate, and while Tristram\u2019s more than willing to do what he can to help out, things are complicated by the arrival of assorted relations, some friendly, some not so much. So, as in the previous book in the series, there\u2019s a lot of running, hiding, fighting off villains and trying to work out who\u2019s on who\u2019s side. And all the time, Kate and Tristram are lusting after each other, and Kate\u2019s refusing to consider the possibility of a second marriage.<\/p>\n

The way the romance unfolds isn\u2019t in the least original, but it\u2019s beautifully done, a mixture of funny and dramatic and sad, with two well-drawn characters that the reader is rooting for right from the start. The author has a very solid grip on Regency mores, so even my over-sensitive pedant-o-meter was only triggered once, by a rather cavalier treatment of a special licence (I\u2019m quite sure that\u2019s not legal!), but it didn\u2019t matter a bit. It would be helpful to have read the first book, since a number of characters pop up here, but it\u2019s not essential. For those looking for a sex-free read, this is one to avoid, since there\u2019s lots of lusting and some graphic details towards the end. But for anyone who doesn\u2019t mind that, this is great fun and highly recommended. Five stars.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was such a lot of fun. There\u2019s nothing more entertaining than watching the most unlikely couple imaginable fight against their inevitable destiny, and these two are incredibly unlikely. She\u2019s a widow with a scandalous reputation and he\u2019s a curate – how can it possibly work? Yet as is the way of these things, naturally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[149],"class_list":["post-2555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-lancaster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2559,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555\/revisions\/2559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}