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Title: The Temptation of the Night Jasmine
Author: Lauren Willig
Genre: Pre-Regency spy romance (fifth in on-going series)
Thingummies: 4
Synopsis: Charlotte is delighted when her worshipped cousin Robert comes home from India for the first time in twelve years to take up his mantle as the Duke of Dovedale. The bookish Charlotte immediately recognizes him as her knight in shining armor. Robert is not so pleased to find himself on a pedestal--he knows the only reason he came home was to infiltrate the notorious Hellfire Club on a mission of vengeance against the man who murdered his mentor. Both Charlotte and Robert discover that the world is more complicated than they had realized as they find themselves drawn more and more deeply into a world of flower-named spies who might threaten the royal family itself.
Thoughts: Lauren Willig's flowery spies are part of a continuing series set right before the beginning of the Regency. Each book is actually two intertwined stories. The main story (conclusively wrapped up by the end of each book) features a romance among British nobility engaged in espionage against the French in a world where the Scarlet Pimpernel inspired an entire generation of spies named after flowers. The series also includes an overarching story about a modern day grad student researching the lives of these spies, and her own romance with the owner of the papers she needs access to. Eloise, the student, gets her story told in slow motion--there's usually four or five spy chapters to an Eloise chapter, and so each book only features one major obstacle/minor resolution in Eloise's own arc.
There's a couple different "British spies against the French" romance series out there, actually. I actually prefer The Spymaster's Lady to this series, although I'm told the second book in that one is rather terrible. And I'll admit that I'm not quite enamoured of poor Eloise's slow-burning romance--it tends to be rather overshadowed by the espionage. But Night Jasmine is still pretty everything I'm looking for in a romance.
Charlotte is likeable, sensible, but still prone to flights of fancy. She has her own little foolishnesses to outgrow. She gets plenty of agency but not in a way that's unrealistic for the time period. Also pleasant--she has a strong network of female friends (which provides plenty of heroines for previous and subsequent books). Robert makes some typically bone-headed mistakes, but for understandable reasons. And he figures out that he screwed up relatively quickly, but can't figure out how to get out of it. No one wastes too much time playing with the idiot ball, thank god. Meanwhile, some of the villain's moustache-twirling is actually explained in a logical fashion later.
It's quite chaste for a romance (which is not always the case in this series). You're not going to get all hot and bothered on the subway, but you might get a little mushy. As things go, it's light on the angst-o-meter as well. Charlotte may be bookish and imaginative, but she's fundamentally a little too sensible to get a really good pine going. So you don't want to smack her.
This is fluff. Light, bouncy, occasionally funny fluff. Have fun!
Author: Lauren Willig
Genre: Pre-Regency spy romance (fifth in on-going series)
Thingummies: 4
Synopsis: Charlotte is delighted when her worshipped cousin Robert comes home from India for the first time in twelve years to take up his mantle as the Duke of Dovedale. The bookish Charlotte immediately recognizes him as her knight in shining armor. Robert is not so pleased to find himself on a pedestal--he knows the only reason he came home was to infiltrate the notorious Hellfire Club on a mission of vengeance against the man who murdered his mentor. Both Charlotte and Robert discover that the world is more complicated than they had realized as they find themselves drawn more and more deeply into a world of flower-named spies who might threaten the royal family itself.
Thoughts: Lauren Willig's flowery spies are part of a continuing series set right before the beginning of the Regency. Each book is actually two intertwined stories. The main story (conclusively wrapped up by the end of each book) features a romance among British nobility engaged in espionage against the French in a world where the Scarlet Pimpernel inspired an entire generation of spies named after flowers. The series also includes an overarching story about a modern day grad student researching the lives of these spies, and her own romance with the owner of the papers she needs access to. Eloise, the student, gets her story told in slow motion--there's usually four or five spy chapters to an Eloise chapter, and so each book only features one major obstacle/minor resolution in Eloise's own arc.
There's a couple different "British spies against the French" romance series out there, actually. I actually prefer The Spymaster's Lady to this series, although I'm told the second book in that one is rather terrible. And I'll admit that I'm not quite enamoured of poor Eloise's slow-burning romance--it tends to be rather overshadowed by the espionage. But Night Jasmine is still pretty everything I'm looking for in a romance.
Charlotte is likeable, sensible, but still prone to flights of fancy. She has her own little foolishnesses to outgrow. She gets plenty of agency but not in a way that's unrealistic for the time period. Also pleasant--she has a strong network of female friends (which provides plenty of heroines for previous and subsequent books). Robert makes some typically bone-headed mistakes, but for understandable reasons. And he figures out that he screwed up relatively quickly, but can't figure out how to get out of it. No one wastes too much time playing with the idiot ball, thank god. Meanwhile, some of the villain's moustache-twirling is actually explained in a logical fashion later.
It's quite chaste for a romance (which is not always the case in this series). You're not going to get all hot and bothered on the subway, but you might get a little mushy. As things go, it's light on the angst-o-meter as well. Charlotte may be bookish and imaginative, but she's fundamentally a little too sensible to get a really good pine going. So you don't want to smack her.
This is fluff. Light, bouncy, occasionally funny fluff. Have fun!
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Date: 2011-05-05 08:19 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-05-05 08:47 pm (UTC)From:In this one, she convinces herself that her beau is also a spy.