Review: A trip back to 1980s-style historical romance, but a good trip.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 6, 2014
In spite of the fact that this was written during the time (1970s - 1980s) of those totally alpha, paternalistic, chauvinistic, jaded older heroes at least a decade older than the young, naive, innocent, beautiful heroine, I found myself enjoying it a lot.Written by the writing duo who gave romance readersThe Windflowerin 1984, this 1978 debut work by Tom and Sharon Curtis has a good bit of the charm of that classic of theirs, but you have been warned about that whole late 1970s/early 1980s vibe to it.  (Of course, there are still authors writing now who resort to this trope, so it's not like 21st-century written HRs are that much better.)This is written in 1st person POV.  Some readers don't like that, but I found it worked here and endeared the heroine to me more than if I had been reading about her in the 3rd person.  She's 19, living with her younger twin sisters in a small house on the country estate where their father had worked before his death (mother also deceased).  Although the girls are granddaughters of a duke, they are penniless and treated like all the rest of the commoners of the nearby village.The owner of the estate dies and the new owner (our hero, a very rich marquess) comes to take over, finds the girls there and accepts them as his responsibility.  He's maybe a decade older than the heroine, lives a sophisticated, rather jaded life, is influential in the "ton", sought after by all the upper-class women as a bed partner, and is an intelligence agent for the Crown.  (This is the time of the Napoleonic Wars.)There you go.  Jaded peer and innocent country girl.  However, this country girl holds her own in many ways.  Yes, she does have a few TSTL episodes in the book but she didn't grate on me the way the heroine of this same couple'sMoonlight Mistdid.  The heroine of this book actually seems to have a brain (although she disengages it a few times to get herself into some messes from which she needs rescue).The writing is good, with some clever dialogue, humorous situations and appealing characters who have more depth than the MOONLIGHT characters did.  I was able to believe the attraction of the older, jaded man to the innocent girl, seeing her freshness, vitality and enthusiasm for life through his eyes.And there's a mystery with spies and all.  What can I say?  This story has many of the things I usually dislike in an HR, yet I liked it a lot.  BTW, those readers who like sex and spice in their stories will find the bedroom door closed to them.  No sex, just good chemistry and sexual attraction.