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This is a bit of a curate\u2019s egg of a book for me \u2014 some parts that were meltingly romantic, some parts that were ho hum, some parts that were out-of-the-blue shocking (OK, to me, anyway) and some parts that were boringly predictable. And a couple of parts where I just wanted to bang heads together and say: just talk to each other, for heaven\u2019s sake. But you know what? After a slow start, I just tore through it, so the author has me right where she wants me, I guess.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the premise: Lucy Vale was betrothed at birth to an earl she\u2019s never met, purely because their mothers were best friends and thought it would be a good idea. Well, okay, I suppose. By the Regency, we\u2019re well into an age when betrothals of that nature aren\u2019t even legal, let alone binding on either party, so why they don\u2019t just laugh at the quaintness of it is beyond me. But that\u2019s the premise of the book, so whatever. The mysterious Earl of Eddleston has requested a meeting with his \u2018betrothed\u2019, but he hasn\u2019t yet appeared. Lucy isn\u2019t minded to give him the time of day, but if he comes, she\u2019ll have to be civil to him, she supposes. Then she can reject him and her life will be her own again.<\/p>\n
While she\u2019s waiting for her supposed betrothed to appear, she attends the Blackhaven ball with the rest of her family, where she meets a mysterious stranger. This is one of the good parts of the book for me \u2014 the description of Tyler, and his interactions with Lucy, were breathtakingly fabulous. He\u2019s not even the sort of character I usually like (that whole almost magically clever and perceptive and creative and acrobat-level agile is all too much; I prefer my heroes a bit more down to earth). But the author was going for just that out-of-the-ordinary vibe, and she succeeded in spades. In fact, all the scenes with just Lucy and Tyler were wonderful. I wasn\u2019t so keen on Tyler the guy who\u2019s planning to change the world for the better, but that\u2019s just me.<\/p>\n
But of course we have to have a subplot, so step forward Miss Hester Poole, heiress, and her fortune-hunting suitor, Mr Harold Irving. It isn\u2019t long before Lucy is getting herself into the middle of a situation that\u2019s really nothing to do with her, because she doesn\u2019t like Mr Irving and wants to protect Hester from him. And Tyler seems to have the same idea (as well as a myriad other projects \u2014 he\u2019s a busy boy).<\/p>\n
One of the ho hum parts arises purely from the premise of the series. Everything is constructed around a single night, when all the various Vale children meets their matches, so as Lucy\u2019s story is unfolding, we\u2019re also getting snippets of the other stories, where they cross and recross Lucy\u2019s. We see little bits of Julius\u2019s story, which was book 1, and there are glimpses of the other Vales, like Cornelius and Delilah, who are also busy about their own lives. And because there was a whole huge series set in Blackhaven previously, there are swathes of characters from those books with walk-on parts. It would be really helpful if readers could have a) a full list of the Vale children, their ages and parentage (because some of them are illegitimate); and b) a list of characters from earlier books still lurking in odd corners of Blackhaven, because I don\u2019t remember them, and frankly I don\u2019t see that they add anything to the story. But maybe I\u2019m being churlish just because I have trouble with this.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not going to talk about the out-of-the-blue shocking thing, because that\u2019s just me. I should have guessed it, but I had such a mental disparity between\u2026 let\u2019s say, two things, that I never would have guessed the truth.[1] There was another revelation that was blindingly obvious to me regarding Hester Poole, so I\u2019m not totally oblivious to clues. Only some of them.<\/p>\n
But this is the point where the book went slightly off the rails for me, because when the revelations happened, both Lucy and Hester made totally stupid decisions, and that was the point where I wanted both of them to just sit down and talk things through, instead of jumping off cliffs (metaphorically speaking). And as if that wasn\u2019t enough, we have to have that hoary old chestnut, the Elopement. Because it\u2019s a Regency romance so there has to be an Elopement or a Kidnapping or a Highwayman, or possibly all three.<\/p>\n
I know all these grumbles sound as if I didn\u2019t enjoy the book at all, but that\u2019s not true. I took a while to get into it, but after that I read it avidly, and yes, I thoroughly enjoyed it. My grumbles are just me saying \u2018It would have been perfect if only\u2026\u2019. Mary Lancaster\u2019s writing is as polished as ever, she does the swoony kisses brilliantly, and if the sex scene felt a bit gratuitous, it was tastefully done. The only historical glitch I noticed concerned the postilions and hired horses, which don\u2019t work quite the way the author thinks they do.[2] But who cares? It all made for a good story. A good four stars.<\/p>\n
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This is a bit of a curate\u2019s egg of a book for me \u2014 some parts that were meltingly romantic, some parts that were ho hum, some parts that were out-of-the-blue shocking (OK, to me, anyway) and some parts that were boringly predictable. And a couple of parts where I just wanted to bang heads […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[149],"class_list":["post-5305","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\/5305","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=5305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5309,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5305\/revisions\/5309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}