Review: The Dangerous Viscount

The Dangerous Viscount by Miranda Neville

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I read a lot of romance, and it's pretty rare for a romance to grab (and fondle?) me like this one did. I enjoyed Neville's other books but they didn't really worm their way into my mind like _The Dangerous Viscount_, which I re-read and then spent several days thinking about. This book is the second in the Burgundy Club series (her series about the sexiness of Regency book rare book collecting) and some characters in the first book are supporting characters in this book.

When Diana Fanshawe meets Sebastian Iverley, it's because she wants to marry his cousin, Lord Blakeney, who is a marquess. However, she likes Iverley, a book collector and Regency-era nerd--he's intelligent (when he's not grunting inarticulately), he fits in perfectly with her eccentric family, he's kind of good-looking behind the glasses and unfashionable clothes, and he's obviously, despite a lifetime of learned misogyny, attracted to her. So when Blakeney and his friends start to cast aspersions on Iverley's sexuality, Diana makes a bet that she can get him to kiss her. She is not aware that by making this bet, she's stumbling into the hornet's nest of Iverley's longstanding family rivalry with Blakeney, and his betrayal and abandonment issues. So when Iverley discovers the bet, he becomes determined on revenge. And his revenge is really, really awful. So Diana must, and does, in turn avenge herself. When things between them seem hopelessly beyond repair, fate steps in and throws them together again.

I think the most intriguing thing in this book is the psychological portrait of Iverley. He's at once intelligent but incredibly stupid, and a serious late bloomer when it comes to relationships with women. He's also a man divided--when he contemplates his revenge, you can see his better self fighting with the angry and betrayed man, and almost--but not quite--winning. And Diana not only stands up to him and holds her own, she helps him become a better man by the end of the book, one who can trust and love her and who is working to overcome his other issues. His nerdiness is both appealing and funny at times (his reaction to most developments in their relationship is to try to buy a book about what is going on, which turns out to be both hilarious and, at times, sexy).

This book also looks at women's choices, and how they are constrained. Minor characters include a mother who must choose between her marriage and her child; a woman grateful to have the choice between being a servant and not a mine worker; and a woman grateful to have the choice between being a servant and being a prostitute. And Diana's and Iverley's actions--good or bad-- also constrain their future choices in ways that may be unhappy at times but that also make redemption possible.

Last but not least, a number of the minor characters in this book are developed very well. Diana's French maid Chantal, her sister Min the teenage Radical, and Blakeney himself are so interesting as characters you want to read more about them; Blakeney and Min could sustain books of their own. (But not a romance between Blakeney and Min! That would be so wrong).



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Announcement: More reviews!

I'm currently arranging for my capsule reviews of romances from Goodreads to be published here as well. So you'll soon be getting new, more, but much shorter reviews.

Review: Undeniably Yours

Undeniably Yours by Shannon Stacey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Undeniably cute accidental-pregnancy contemporary romance. When bar-owner Kevin Kowalski, who routinely gets propositioned by barflies who write their numbers on napkins with lipstick, has a one-night stand with free spirit commitment-phobe Beth Hanson, they never expect to see each other again--until she turns up pregnant. Kevin is immediately into being a dad, and he's into Beth too--but she's afraid he'll take over her semi-transient life. Meanwhile there's a nice counterpoint sub-plot about the bar-waitress who is fleeing her past, but is forced into confronting it. This might well be subtitled "Women Who Are Afraid of Being Put in a Box and the Men Who Love Them." I will be reading more by this author.



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Title: Rakes and Radishes
Author: Susanna Ives
Genre: Regency
Grade: B (for Barns. and Byronic)
How Hot is it?: three hot chili peppers

Henrietta Watson, a generally kind-hearted mathematical genius who is prone to fantasies influenced by gothic novels, goes to London with her childhood friend, Lord Kesseley. Kesseley, a down-to-earth, agriculture-minded peer, is in love with Henrietta, but she is in love with her cousin, a poet who is himself in pursuit of a society beauty. Once in London, in a social milieu saturated with prostitution, gambling, loveless marriages, hypocrisy, and adultery, things start to unravel and hearts break. Henrietta doesn't understand her feelings and leads Kesseley on to the point where he loses it and decides to shed his bumpkin image and become the mad, bad, and dangerous to know kind of rake that Gothic novels portray and women apparently like. Meanwhile Henrietta, due to her relationship with Kesseley's mother (around whom a thematically linked subplot revolves), becomes involved in a coterie of older, wordly women who enjoy her card-playing skills, and eventually finds herself in the midst of a scandal.

There's a lot to like about this book. Ives turns the lovable/reformed rake trope on its head and looks at the process of a nice guy turning into a rake and nearly losing everything he loves. I adore books about people who have a savant-like skill at math and science, and this heroine is a mathematical genius who works with her astronomer father (and assists in an important scientific discovery). I even kind of like the idea that in this romance you're watching a relationship unravel and nearly be destroyed, rather than building it, for most of the book--probably because the idea of redemption really appeals to me. The theme that we don't have to be caught in a cycle of dysfunction because of our families, and that even if we do we can break out of it, is well-illustrated here.

I did have some problems with this book. It was poorly copyedited ("shined", "Gretna Greene", etc.), which unfortunately seems to be legion in e-books. (I don't blame the author for things like that. Things like that are Why We Need Good Copyeditors, says this former editor, plaintively). There were some loose ends left dangling--at several points Kesseley does something that causes someone else real harm and the reader never does find out if he went and made it right (an important aspect of redemption). Also, Henrietta and Kesseley's reconciliation and declaration of love is very near the end of the book and I would have liked to see more of their renewed relationship. But overall I found this a satisfying read from a promising new author.

This books is currently only available as an e-book.

I Like a Good Scoundrel, But...

Title: Seize the Fire
Author: Laura Kinsale
Genre: Regency (sort of).
Grade: C (for c-sick after reading about so many ships)
How Hot is it?: three hot chili peppers

...A good scoundrel should get what he deserves.

This book is...panoramic. The heroine is a princess of some little Alpine country and has been educated in England to be a revolutionary idealist. The "hero" (I use this word loosely) is basically a sea-captain version of Flashman, that is, if Flashman were conscience-driven enough to--barely--NOT throw the girl out of the troika to the wolves as he saves his own ass, but to even fixate (sometimes) on protecting her (as long as it doesn't threaten him, of course). Throughout this book, which is set variously in England, Portugal, the Falkland Islands, and the Ottoman Empire (!), the heroine is stupid and idealistic, and the hero periodically betrays her and then comes crawling back with his tail between his legs. Pathetic. By the end they have figured out to be a LITTLE smarter and a LITTLE more reliable, but I wouldn't bet on it lasting. Again, the conflict in this romance seems to be built on a self-reinforcing cycle of negative behavior that isn't convincingly resolved into something that promises a generally happy ending.

Kinsale is considered one of the greats of historical romance and she's written some well-above-average stuff (Flowers from the Storm and Midsummer Moon are two of my favorite romances, after all) and I can't fault her here as a prose stylist. But it's pretty hard for a romance to overcome characters this flawed (in the case of the hero) and annoying (in the case of the heroine). The sympathy is lacking. On the other hand, it's a difficult book to put down because Kinsale write so well you almost miss the dysfunctional dynamics.

I think I'll write more reviews in verse

or filk them.

Title: His Wicked Kiss
Author: Gaelen Foley
Genre: Regency.
Grade: B-
How Hot is it?: four hot chili peppers

*generic folk riff*

They say don't go down the Orinoco River,
if you're looking for a wife.
'Cause Naturalist Farraday has a pretty young daughter,
she's mighty handy with a gun and a knife.

Her tender lips are sweeter than honey
And she has long flaming red hair.
The snakes and tree frogs tell Eden Farraday
If a stranger should wander there.

Jack Knight sailed down the Orinoco River.
Part of a plot to help Bolivar.
But after he kissed Eden Farraday
She hid on his ship to escape her stalker.

Her tender lips are sweeter than honey
And she kills hissing fer-de-lance.
but on that trip across the ocean
Jack Knight will get in her pants.

Jack don't care about Eden's feelings
He's gonna lock her in his castle
And even when he frees her
He's not getting any anymore.

*repeat to fade*

So. Not. Hideous.

Title: One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies
Author: Sonya Sones
Genre: Young Adult (not romance, but has some romantic elements)
Grade: A
How Hot is it?: one green bell pepper

When I was a teen
I would make up stories in my head
and fantasize about writing them down
and one of those stories
was about a girl
whose parent died
and she had to go and live
with the other parent
who was some kind of famous person,
but,
as you see,
Sonya Sones wrote this story first.
And it's very good,
except,
for some reason unfathomable to me,
it is written nearly entirely in verse.

And why, yes.
I did read that book
after I read about
the morons
who tried to ban it.
People who are afraid
that teens have love lives
and that maybe
their kids will catch teh ghey
by reading about it
are delivering more royalties
to Sonya Sones
because I bought her book,
a book which seems
to have pummeled its style
into my subconscious
and will not let go.