Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Allow me to back up a step and explain the plot. Warning! Herein be paranormal action romance cliches, but fear not! They are served up marvelously. Rardin manages something rare and downright awesome: she takes what could be a retread of so many stock characters and plots and does that thing with the frying pan and the huge flaming leap of fire from the burner and behold: awesome sauce.

Jaz Parks is a CIA assassin whose targets are paranormal villains. Some of what she’s after are known paranormal creatures - vampires and the like - and some are creations of Rardin’s imagination that are seriously, seriously creepy. At the start of the novel, Jaz is teamed with a vampire named Vayl, also an assassin, and one of a few vampires who isn’t trying to snack on humanity. Vayl is also one of the most accomplished assassins in their field, and she’s plenty intimidated by him. But Jaz and Vayl’s partnership is brilliantly balanced, despite his being immortal and all super powered and undead. Technically, she is his bodyguard and is meant to protect him as an elite asset of the US government’s paranormal assassin team. But in their interaction, you rarely see her subjugating herself for his sake. His asskicking is neatly met by her asskicking, and never once is there an upset of power that allows the reader to think less of either character.

In the first book, Jaz and Vayl are sent to find a plastic surgeon in Miami with ties to a terrorist, find out what said surgeon knows and then kill him and go get the bad guy. Obviously, that’s not exactly what happens.

The plot is fiery. En fuego, in fact. The action is fast paced and relentless, and it took me more than a few days to read the last 30 pages because this is not a book you can skim. It’s literally nonstop, and because the book is narrated in the first person by Jaz (haters of first person, sorry to burst your bubble) you get her perspective of the action as it unfolds, as well as her own nervousness and slightly bitter, sardonic humor. There are times when her narration is too detailed, and I expect her to say, “And then I put my left foot down, and then my right, and then my left...” but when those same details are applied to a fight sequence, I have a sharp picture of the scene. The detailed narration that drags at some points is likely part of Jaz’s character - because she’s an assassin who spends much of her time under cover, she has to notice the fine points of every moment.

I’ve said elsewhere that series books that feature the same protagonist pair work well for me when each book contains an individual mystery or action plot that is solved at the end, and when there’s a smaller happy ending for the protagonists. Rardin must have heard me ranting because the spicy attraction between Jaz and Vayl is delicious. Both have issues and emotional trauma to overcome, and flaws to work through and grow through. The attraction between Vayl and Jaz is acknowledged equally, but is slow igrowing. He’s terribly into her but she tells him no repeatedly - and stands by her resistance to him because she is aware of what she needs emotionally. She’s recovering from personal loss, and she knows she needs time to repair herself. It’s not often you have a heroine saying, “No” to any increased intimacy and the hero and heroine both respecting that “No.” As a result, the slow build is delicious.

Vayl, aside from being a vampire, and hundreds of years old, and possessing of some ancient badass powers, yadda yadda yadda, is a Guy. He acts like a guy sometimes, despite his antiquated formality. He is boneheaded like a guy, occasionally jealous like a guy, and it’s refreshing to see a vampire with personality flaws. Usually they’re stone perfect and so damn dull with their perfection, like an overpriced armoire for sale with no nicks or scratches that’s allegedly 300 years old. Come on now, someone’s toddler scratched the side with a toy in the last hundred years. No way is something that’s so old supposedly so perfect. And yet so many vampire heroes are so freaking perfect it bugs the crap out of me. It’s almost as if there’s an assumption that after many hundreds of years of living one would have all the answers of how to handle any situation, that is, if the immortal person in question didn’t eschew society in general and go live in a cave like I would. I find it much more fascinating that Vayl, despite his power and age, is flawed and often acts like a petulant butthead. Moreover, Jaz calls him on his behavior.

Once Bitten, Twice Shy has a lot of story to build, and does so without collapsing under the weight of its own history. The plot has to follow the duo to Miami while also introducing the characters, explaining the origins of Jaz’s own mysterious abilities, and revealing Vayl’s history in small portions as well. Much to my delight, Rardin forces Vayl and Jaz into positions of increased intimacy under duress, and because it’s narrated by Jaz, she reveals slowly how she feels about Vayl, while she also observes Vayl, leaving the reader room to interpret Vayl’s actions in one way while Jaz explains them in another. Jaz is a master of taking in a potentially emotionally conflicting moment and convincing herself of an alternate meaning or dismissing her initial reaction in favor of a scenario she can handle. Witnessing her realization that she’s deliberately misreading Vayl is also delicious because her reaction is mixed with insecurity, hope, fear, and unwillingness to rock the not-entirely-tranquil boat of their partnership. Seriously, can you tell I really like Jaz? It’s rare that I dig a heroine this much.

As the series progresses, I have to wonder if Rardin has an endpoint in sight, or a goal towards which she’s working with Jaz and Vayl, because their attraction will eventually come to a point where they either act on it or don’t, but either way they face changing their partnership irrevocably. While I have my regular familiar fears about series books that feature the same protagonists building a bonfire of attraction toward one another, based on what I’ve read so far, I trust that Rardin has both hands steering the plot of the story, and if Jaz and Vayl’s relationship does change, it will be satisfying and ultimately for the better of both parties.

And if not, given the skill of her writing, I’ll enjoy it anyway. Because did I mention I like Jaz a LOT? Yeah. Kick ass.

Celia Fussell loses her father, and suffers through a gaudy, rainy funeral and through the venomous behavior of her sister-in-law, who is all too eager to see the spinster sister as marginalized in their household as possible.  But when her father’s will is read, it is revealed that Celia has inherited a castle in the Black Forest of Germany - AND that her brother’s estate is double-entailed so meanie sister in law can’t enjoy herself much. Nanner-nanner, you selfish wench. Of course, Cissy has a catch to deal with as well: she has to marry the son of her father’s friend, the man from whom her father bought the castle.

So off Cissy goes, all the way to Germany to go live in her castle. Because even being alone in a country by herself in a castle facing marriage to a stranger is better than being the spinster sister under the same roof as the new Baroness. When she meets her father’s friend and his wife, they’re lovely people, so there’s some safety and shelter, but the son in question, Fenris.... He’s a tortured gothic hero who wants nothing to do with her and is horrified to learn his family hasn’t owned the castle for years, despite the fact that Fenris has been living there in solitude, nursing a healthy and damn near heaping dose of misanthropy and a horrific war injury that left him without one of his legs. He lost his leg when he ran off to fight Napoleon before the German government thought that was a good idea, and as a result of his “treason,” his family had been stripped of their titles and status. Fenris blames himself for his family’s downfall and is crushed to learn that his father had to sell the castle secretly, and that they no longer own the home he’s been living in for years.

Fenris decides that he needs to get rid of Cissy so she’ll run home to England, and that’s where the best parts of New Skool Remixed Gothic Romance as interpreted by Schwab are shown off. Schwab has a great prose style, and a deft hand at blending humor and horror, mystery and mayhem. There’s a good number of layers to this story as well, which I can’t celebrate enough because nothing makes me happier than seeing an author creatively and innovatively turn an established subgenre upside down, then right side up, after inserting a few new concepts. I never appreciated Old Skool Gothic romance, but I appreciate this book and the new ways it looks at gothic romance.

I loved Cissy, because she was innocent and idealistic, but not at all stupid. Her father, a student of mythology, was her closest friend and mentor, and even in her grief she finds soothing peace in the stories and myths they’d read together. In some novels, the heroine is a student of something, or a devoted follower of a particular philosophy or intellectual movement - but over the course of the story the reader receives nothing in the way of instruction or information about that alleged interest of the heroine’s. It’s all lip service performed solely to make the heroine seem deeper than she is. (The modern corollary, of course, is the heroine who is supposedly excellent at her job yet during the course of the story reveals herself to be a complete and utter idiot at her profession).

Cissy is a student of mythology, myth, and folklore, and that fact is woven throughout her character, and throughout the story itself. Her knowledge of fairy tales is a consistent subtext to the plotline, and Cissy’s knowledge of languages both dead and living reveal that she’s no ninny. She’s freaking brilliant. And yet, because her passion is fairy tales and myths of love and happily-ever-after, Cissy is very innocent, and exceptionally fanciful. That unending optimism and pursuit of happiness for herself fits brilliantly into the darkness of the setting and of the mystery and horror of the plot, and it’s no mystery at all why Fenris is ultimately drawn to her. 

Moreover, the book takes place in an entirely new setting for me - in a forest in Germany, which is both fanciful, creepy, and a refreshing change from merry old England.

Schwab’s storytelling also has tight turns that drop the reader like a rollercoaster from merry heights of whimsical happiness for Cissy into plunges of holy shit terror and uncertain fear - which make it bloody hard to put the damn book down. The mix of nefarious characters, mystery, intrigue, and deep, churning sexual attraction don’t help either when you might be trying to get something else done.

My disappointment was slim - but to my mind there was not enough retribution for all evil betrayals, though the revenge taken on the primary villain is freaking creepy. Moreover, the plunges from prose to melodrama, particularly in the interludes between the chapters at times left me feeling as if the paranormal element to the story were being wedged in, almost as if it were an afterthought to the story.

However, when I picked this book up to flip through it again for this review, I found myself putting it BACK in my bag to read portions again, something that rarely, if ever, happens. Schwab’s use of multiple legends and fairy tales to parallel the protagonists’ story is particularly brilliant, and this is a book that I will certainly revisit again, as the innocence of the heroine and the dark brooding woundedness of the hero are enticing and inviting. Well played, Ms. Schwab, well played.

Candy: Working for the Devil is much more polished than Dark Watchers, which was the first book of Saintcrow’s that I read and reviewed--and funnily enough, the hero of that book was named Dante, too. Ultimately, Working for the Devil was too flawed a read for me to give it anything more than a B-. Why? Mostly because Dante got on my tits too much. It’s not that I didn’t like her, because I don’t have to like somebody in order to read about them--or even root for them (witness my love of the Flashman novels). Mostly, it was because I didn’t find her convincing as a bad-ass warrior and martial artist, and here’s why:

She’s too angry.

No, more than that, she’s utterly lacking in any sort of calm. She keeps making assumptions and turning into Berserker Woman Who Will CUT CHOO LIKE A PIG, BITCH. Now, that could work to keep her alive for a while--a good long while, even, especially if you have the psi advantages Dante does--but I don’t buy that she can be THAT GOOD. The best martial artists learn to work with their surroundings and to go with the flow. One of the cornerstones is striving for clearheadedness--and Dante is anything but. She’s a royal mess, and she spends all the book literally in knots from stress and fucked-up headspace issues.

I mean, I can see why she’s a ball of neuroses, based on the glimpses of the past we’re provided, but her consistent inability to communicate clearly and her refusal to listen reminded me of those feisty old-skool heroines. She’s not stupid, she’s just impatient in a really irritating way, and I felt that her frustrating refusal to just slow down and listen was sometimes a way to artificially prolong the conflict.

Another problem I had with the story was how I felt strangely distant from Dante. I had ready access to her mental and physical space, but not really her emotional space. I find this difficult to explain, because on looking back, it’s difficult for me to pinpoint what exactly is keeping me from how she feels, because this is a first-person narrative, and it’s not as if Dante held back on what she really thought about things, even when she was obviously being an unreliable narrator.

It’s one thing for me to not like a character. It’s another for me to not be convinced by her. And for large portions of the book, Dante just didn’t strike me as being true, and having her be the sole voice of the book started to grate on me after a while.

Oh, and Japhrimel’s reason for falling in lurrrrve with Dante? Didn’t totally buy it. What he did was wildly romantic, but there was too much telling ("You treated me like an equal!") and not enough showing, especially given the incredibly short time span of the book--the bulk of the action takes place in, what, a week? Dante was a dick to Japhrimel for a good proportion of that time, and when she finally softened up--well, I just didn’t buy that a demon, and not just any demon, but SATAN’S RIGHT HAND AND GODDAMN ASSASSIN, would soften up after such a short time, and for so little. If we’d had Jaf’s perspective, I might’ve bought into the scenario, but on the other hand, the emotional punch of what he did wouldn’t have been as great.

So really, if we’d had more time with Dante and Jaf to see their relationship develop, and if Dante hadn’t been such a stressed-out freakball, this book could’ve easily been in the A territory. Because it was a pretty good adventure yarn, and it says quite a bit that I was able to finish it in only a few days despite not being convinced by Dante as a character.

Sarah: I concur about the book’s readability. It definitely kept me interested, even as it kept me irritated.

YES and insert used of “Pwned” here re: Japhrimel’s sudden fall into the liquid hot magma of luuuurve™. I would understand a lot of dark fearsome lurkery from him, as Satan’s hot dude, with some inexplicable kindness out of nowhere that seemed to physically pain him because dude he’s a DEMON and he cannot be NICE, but the sudden, “You treat me like an equal!” was way too pat and said too much about Dante too easily. She treats him as an equal! Ergo he loves her! Ergo ergo - she is just too amazing for words and look at the generous river of honey-flavored love that flows through her soul that she treats a Demon who is, again THE RIGHT HAND OF SATAN, as an equal!

My problem was how the book dealt with the Obvious Comparisons. This book will Obviously be Compared to the series about Her Royal Humptyness, Anita Blake, and it marks an opportunity for a talented author - and this is not a throwaway compliment because Saintcrow is damn hell talented like damn hell whoa - to do a necromancer heroine Differently without so much damn sex. A wise friend of mine, and I’ve quoted her before, said that one of her chief complains about Blake was that she “collects magic powers like charms on a charm bracelet,” and that the acquisition of greater talents comes far, far too easy.

For Dante, she doesn’t easily walk through the book and pick up additional talents without consequence or effort, but there’s a similar sense of “it comes damn easy, don’t it, honey?” when it comes to her psi powers. She can animate a very dusty dead dude for an unheard-of amount of time and there’s no explanation as to why - where that surge of ability is coming from, whether it’s attributable to the presence of a Demon augmenting her already-strong ability, or whether it’s a sign that she has untapped depths of talent. When someone has powers that extraordinary, and then even among those with that set of strengths she’s even MORE extraordinary, I want to know WHY. I’m tired of psychic and psi-talented heroines just being extra more gooder just to set them apart as admirable. It’s like Harry Potter Syndrome: identify the hero by his/her extra more gooder specialness, even in a world where s/he is already special!

And here, a lesson for the copyeditor of this book on motherfarking comma splices because deeeeYAM was that distracting.

Note: I don’t actually blame the author. I blame the multitude of people whose freaking JOB IT IS TO KNOW THE RULES OF GRAMMAR WHEN PUBLISHING A BOOK THAT PEOPLE PAY FOR. If I can teach the concept of comma splices to remedial college composition students, surely someone whose JOB IT IS should not need a refresher. But alas, it seems it is true.

The official definition on Wiki:

A comma splice is when two independent clauses are joined by a comma.

This means two complete sentences that are strong enough to stand on their own are joined by a comma. A COMMA is NOT STRONG ENOUGH to JOIN THEM.

Here is a test as to whether your clause is independent:
1. It has own car, or job.
2. If you walk up to a stranger and say the clause aloud, it is a complete thought on its own.
3. If you walk up to a stranger and say the clause aloud, you still look like a treebat crazy person, AND the stranger waits for you to complete your crazy thought.

E.g.: Comma splices are the devil, I can’t stand to see them repeatedly in a novel.

EITHER you need an “and” or some other conjunction to join those two clauses, or you hook yourself up with another punctuation mark. As I told my students: the comma, it is not strong enough. Your comma needs to lift weights. Consider the semicolon: ; A comma that is lifting a barbell to PUMP IT UP. *clap*

I did not ever say I was not a completely dorky professor.

/ end rant

Candy: Yeah, the comma splices were pretty distracting. Thanks for the lesson, perfessor. Hee.

And good point about Dante getting superpowers and hot demon mens with amazing ease (and hot human mob boss mens of unspeakable wealth and power, for that matter). And actually, the ease with which Dante seemed to attract people, given she was about as cuddly as a titanium cactus, kind of puzzled me--until it occured to me that Dante is a sub-species of Mary Sue. Instead of being perfect and saving the world and having everybody in the world lurrrrve her, Dante is imperfect and angry and often downright awful to the people who care about her, but everybody in the world still lurrrrves her and she still saves the day. An Angry Sue, if you will. But the very fact that she’s so difficult to be around makes me wonder why she’s so compelling. She’s apparently a charismatic bitch, but I didn’t feel the pull of her personality the way I have other charismatic bitches in romance who did things that made me uncomfortable, like, say, Melanthe of For My Lady’s Heart.

Speaking of Mary Sue: Jace Monroe. I liked the fantasy of having this extremely hot and hugely wealthy bad-ass dude in the wings--and motherfucker had unlimited resources in the book--but I did wonder how in the hell he got this far. And the Big Misunderstanding between him and Dante was rather laughable but, given what an incendiary asshole Dante is, actually kind of believable.

OK, so we’ve bitched on and on about the book, we should probably talk about something it did right, yeah?

I really, really liked the action scenes. They’re some of the best I’ve read, and I’m in awe at how Saintcrow conveyed the chaos of being in a huge balls-out all-or-nothing fight while still keeping the action coherent. Fight scenes are freakin’ hard to write, and much respect to Saintcrow for pulling so many of them off without losing or confusing me.

The plotting was tight, and the twist was quite excellently twisty. And extra special bonus points: Saintcrow even had a decent excuse for Villain Exposition. None of that “And now, Mr. Bond, before I kill you in this unnecessarily elaborate way, let me explain to you in excruciating detail why I’m doing this; I do this not because it’s essential for my plan, but for no discernible reason other than I adore giving my enemies time to collect their senses and attempt an escape” nonsense.

I mean, I still rolled my eyes a little when the Big Reveal came, but it actually made sense for Santino to reveal what he did to Dante, so all was forgiven.

And speaking of Santino: I liked that he was a thoroughly despicable villain with very little to recommend him, but he had utterly convincing motivation. Very few people get villains right, especially romance authors, and Saintcrow did a great job.

And this one’s sort of spoilerish: I also really liked and was intrigued by the glimpses of the love story between Dante and Doreen that we sort of got to see via flashback. OMG HOT LESBIAN PSION SEX? One can only hope so, but we’ll see.

The world-building was really interesting, despite a tendency to infodump and an over-fondness for tacking the word “synth” in front of a buncha crap to indicate it’s something from the FUTAR. I like the concept of an Awakening for humankind; I’m curious to see what triggered it, and I hope the future books will elaborate on this.

Sarah: While I wish that the individual members of her posse were more developed, I like that Dante surrounded herself with people who in small ways took care of her, but also had a substantial amount of their own backstory to be revealed. They weren’t pawns for the present story but seem to have large story arcs of their own, which is always enticing.

And like you, I really dug the blocking and the pace of the fight scenes. Writing action is probably as hard, if not harder, than shooting it for film, and being able to see the action in my mind while ALSO getting a sense of the quick emotions going on at the time - well, Saintcrow did a damn fine job mixing tension and terror and her fight scenes kick ass.

Yes on the reveal, yes on the twisty twist, and yes yes on the larger story of Awakening that hasn’t been fully explained yet. But equally intriguing to me were the current-day themes of evil/good and the status thereof as very mixed up in wealth, privacy, and talent - such that this Awakening created a new hierarchy but enough of the “old” one remains to confuse things. So the reader doesn’t really know where anyone stands, and that fluidity in society is both chaotic and scary but intriguing and addictive to read about.

My grade on this book: C+. It was eminently readable, and certainly there is room for the series to pick up as a whole, but it was entirely too easy for me to identify what I perceived as flaws even after some time past my reading it.

Candy: I found the writing too compelling to drop it to a C. Most of the time, I take forever to finish B- and C+ books; they’re not bad enough to fascinate me with their trainwreckiness, but they’re not usually good enough to suck me in and keep me engaged. This was an exception, because once I got past the first 50 pages or so (which took me a couple of weeks to read), I finished the rest of the book in two big sittings, which is a rarity for me nowadays. I’m-a stick with the B-.

Seems I have to face a sad fact about myself and my romance reading: I might have grown accustomed to being spoon-fed the antagonists and the forces acting against the protagonists. Maybe I’ve been reading too many paranormal evil-as-villain stories, or maybe I’ve been missing out, but clearly, I’m much better a romance reader for having read this story.

Lucien’s Fall, as evidenced by the title, is a romance that focuses mainly on the transformation of the hero, Lucien Harrow, Lord Esher. A terrible rake, a Lord Slut, even, Lucien is invited to a house party thrown by the incomparably beautiful Juliette, more appropriately known as Countess Whitethorn. Juliette’s stepdaughter, Madeline, is making a late entrance into society, and her stepmother is attempting to create an engagement between Madeline and Charles Devon, Marquess of Beauchamp, a man of considerable fortune. The Whitethorn estate, and the family living on it, are deeply in debt, and the house itself is falling down bit by bit. Juliette sacrificed jewelry to host the house party and clothe Madeline attractively, and scored quite a social coup by securing Lucien’s attendance. Lucien’s friend Jonathan is also Juliette’s current lover.

Lucien is a tortured hero like few others in romance. He’s tortured by his own actions, or inaction, his history, his past affairs, and by his own mind and body. As a result he’s barely functional in social situations half the time, and his reputation for outrageous behavior makes ample room for more of the same.

Madeline, however, is unimpressed - well, better to say she’s impressed but smart enough not to show any hint of interest. She knows that her bread is best buttered by an alliance with Beauchamp, and an affair with Lucien would lead only to ruin. Madeline is set on saving her home, Whitethorn, most specifically the gardens, which are her passion. She delayed her debut into society so she could travel the Continent and learn more about gardens and botany, and her goal is to restore the home and grounds with a marriage to a rich man. She’s not mercenary about it by any means, but she is honest with herself and her stepmother: there is no marriage for love in her future. And while Lucien attracts her, and he certainly has a fortune to spare, she knows he is not the sort to marry.

One of the most innovative and charming features of the story is the depth to which both Lucien and Madeline recognize their own roles as Rake Hero and Perfect Heroine. Well-schooled by a socially-aware stepmother, Madeline is more than conscious of her need to keep Lucien away from herself, as he would think nothing of ruining a virgin and walking away. But the almost meta-conversations they have on the topic are fascinating:

Behind her came footsteps.... Madeline smiled, unsurprised. “Join me, Lord Esher,” she said without turning.

“How did you know it was I without looking around?”

Madeline looked up at him. “I think there must be a book of rake’s etiquette,” she said lightly. “First rule is one must always follow one’s prey into a moonswept night.”

To her surprise, he laughed. “Well done.... What then would be my next step?”

Madeline straightened, knowing she must not show any hint of shyness or of blushing sensibility. If she were to put him off properly, he had to understand she knew well any technique he might attempt. “That would depend on the woman, of course, and the rake.... Pray tell, then, what tack you’ve chosen for your foray into my seduction.”

“Are you absolutely certain I’ve chosen to seduce you?”

“Yes, though you didn’t make up your mind until supper” (Samuel 27).

How completely refreshing to have two characters acknowledge their roles, and their awareness of the other’s motivations. This meta-conversation happens a few other times in the course of the story, and it’s wonderful. Madeline makes it clear that she’s on to whatever plans Lucien comes up with, and she calls him on his behavior each and every time he is less than genuine with her and falls back on his libido-driven actions aimed solely at the flower that is not in her gardens. He gets very little leeway with her and she won’t tolerate any of his rake-ful behavior, not matter how affected she is by her own very real attraction to him.

Lucien himself is delicious, and I say that as an admitted sucker for the tortured, artistic hero. Lucien is a gifted individual with a talent for musical composition, a talent he was forced to squelch due to abuse and pressure after a personal humiliation and tragedy. He pays for his attempts to ignore his gift with blinding headaches, but when he meets Madeline, he sees a parallel to his own gift in her love and talent for gardening, and the health that comes with embracing one’s passions. Madeline begins to see what Lucien tries very deliberately to hide: the heartless rake he appears to be hides an enormously sensitive synesthete who can experience colors as sound, specifically classical music.

His efforts to deny his gifts and hide his emotional and musical sensitivity are reflections of his ability to hide or squander any good intentions he might have of behaving with honor. Thus his music and his morals are tied to one another as Lucien faces his own demons and acknowledges that he must change himself and modify his own behavior if he wants to become worthy of Madeline.

Therein lies my one problem with the book: Madeline herself. Lucien has to endure a great deal of effort to turn his actions and intentions in an honorable direction, and his template for honorable is Madeline, who refuses to accept his habitual rake routine. But Madeline in my estimation does not grow or change as much, and her goodness brings forgiveness much too easily when her own actions hurt, humiliate, and mistreat those who have been kind and honest with her. She is self-aware enough to recognize that the marquess to whom she could be engaged is subject to the same forced treatment from her that she suffers from Lucien: interest solely for the purpose of attracting a person for selfish ends. Lucien wants to bed her; she wants the security of the marquess’ fortune to save her home. Her goals might be slightly more altruistic but they are selfish in origin, and she knows it. Even with that self awareness, Madeline seems to get away with minimal consequences for some very selfish behavior throughout the story.

The ending itself also gave me trouble, and far be it from me to spoil it. But to sum up: she didn’t choose him. She allowed herself to be chosen or even taken over and over again, even as her own selfishness made her less and less worthy of him while he became more worthy of her.

By far the best part of the book for me was the writing, specifically the characters. Samuel does not take the easy way out with any of the emotional entanglements working against Madeline and Lucien. Her mother is not in favor of any interaction between them, and will risk her own happiness to ensure that her daughter does not end up a rake’s victim. But even as she interferes, the reader is privy to enough of her character and motivation that even though I hated what she tries to do, I understood and empathized with her position. Equally, Samuel could have easily made Charles, Marquess Beauchamp, a villain, a shallow fool, or even a non-character. But as Madeline’s intended fiance, he’s not as attractive as Lucien, but he’s a good, kind, honorable man, and the complete and deliberate opposite of Lucien. He pays attention to his responsibilities and those whose lives depend on his estate management skills, and he chooses those responsibilities over frivolity and vice. To witness Madeline caught in the choice of peaceful marriage without love, and passionate love without the defined promise of marriage isn’t any easier for the reader than it is for Madeline herself, because again Samuel’s ability to create completely defined secondary characters makes the story that much more lush and moving.