Review: A Bright and Intelligent Romance
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 15, 2012
Clarissa, a young woman whose professor-turned-politician father has passed away leaving her all alone in the world with no other living relatives at all, has come to the end of the small inheritance and finds herself nearly penniless and on the verge of homelessness if she cannot come up with the back due owing on her small rented room.Having been raised in a non-traditional manner, that is taught mathematics, philosophy, history, science but not much by way of needlework, cooking, childminding, or other domestic skills, she is also nearly unemployable... as a woman.Instead, having been her father's secretary for so many years while he served in the House of Commons (though no one knew his daughter was his secretary), she disguises herself as a man, and applies for job as secretary to a politician who has fired yet another secretary on the eve of the new session of parliament. He takes her on out of sheer desperation, and in short order she replaces the chaos of his office and habits with orderliness, efficiency, and dedication to her duties like no other secretary this Lord has ever seen.Everything else become spoiler material but she ends up playing both herself and herself-in-disguise in a pleasantly twisting plot which entails romance threads as well as politics and her own self-preservation. A very enjoyable read!The reader does meet the character who is the lead of The Tutor, also of this same series by same author, and towards the end a peek into the undercurrents that have carried both Clarissa and her friend of Cynthia to their adulthood.But The Secretary is a very different book from The Tutor. The Secretary is more focused on the romance part of the story, and doesn't have the dark tones that The Tutor has. If you didn't like The Tutor, you probably will like The Secretary anyway. If you really liked The Tutor, you probably will still like The Secratary too.