strange and random happenstance

Smoke and Lies by Andrea Penrose
Publication Date: May 15th, 2018
Format: Kindle, 355 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

If there's one thing that Lord Saybrook and Arianna have learned, it's that if they won't do Lord Grentham's bidding then he will find leverage to force them to do his bidding. And his favorite leverage is family. This time it's Sandro's cousin, Eduardo de la Vega. Eduardo has been stationed on Elba, Napoleon's palatial prison, and has gone missing. Therefore it serves "everyone's" interest for Sandro and Arianna to travel to Elba. A gentleman scientist and his wife will be welcomed by Napoleon with open arms while really they will be listening for any concrete evidence that Napoleon has his eyes on his old throne and of course trying to find Eduardo. Lord Grentham though isn't taking any risks with Napoleon and therefore has saddled Sandro and Arianna with two rather sketchy associates. The Baroness Plessy-Moritz seems ill-equipped for espionage, but her friendship with Napoleon's sister is a boon, whereas Count von Wolfram isn't who he says he is. Wolffy is an old associate of Arianna's. He had been the proprietor of the Wolff and Lamb Theatrical Company, where Arianna learned her disguise skills back when she was fighting to survive in the West Indies. But how do his skills apply to this situation? As they all board the Basilisk none of them really know what they are in for. Their assignments are illusive and no one is what they seem and they have become becalmed in pirate-infested waters. Which is when things go from bad to worse as yet another person from Arianna's past emerges. What's even more humiliating than finding her in this situation is having him be the one to rescue her. But she can deal with that another day, because they must get to Elba at all costs, and so far it has cost the captain of the Basilisk his life in a back alley in Gibraltar. Reaching their destination is a miracle in and of itself, but how are they going to navigate the world Napoleon has built around himself when he is the greatest tactician ever? Perhaps by appealing to his sweet tooth?

This adventure is balls to the wall bonkers in the best possible way. It's Clue meets And Then There Were None meets Horatio Hornblower where you're constantly uncertain of your footing but enjoying every minute of it. But then, I've always been a sucker for big boats. There's something so classic yet powerfully elemental about old fashioned sailing vessels. They were their own little worlds and taking that concept and making it into a bit of a locked room mystery just made me giddy. Yes, I spent an inordinate amount of time when young dreaming of my perfect pirate ship, so taking that which I've always loved and the Regency addict I've become and making this wonderful confection just made me want to do nothing but read this book until I'd reached the very last page. What's more this is the first book in the series in its new iteration. For those who read the paperbacks like me, the recipes are gone. I'm of slightly two minds as to this development. As I have previously mentioned I found the recipes distracting as they interrupted the flow of the narrative. Stick them in the back was my initial response. But then by the third book almost all the recipes involved coffee or espresso so I changed my mind to get ride of them entirely. Now some of these recipes I actually want to try, but here's a clue about me, NONE OF THEM will have coffee. I don't just dislike coffee, I detest it. And I hate more than anything the adulteration of chocolate with coffee. Just don't do it OK? But seeing as the recipes are gone so are my gripes. My gripes about recipes. Now I have a new gripe. My new gripe is that since this series moved from a publishing house to being published independently you can see the lack of polish. There are some repetitions with turns of phrases that a good editor would have caught, but more irksome were the straight up errors. Wolffy changes how he addresses Arianna all the time. She's either Anna or Annie. If there had been an explanation as to this I wouldn't have minded him constantly calling her one or the other diminutive. There isn't. Therefore I am annoyed. But the bigger annoyance I had was that in the previous volume Arianna is lamenting her lack of knowledge of the Greek Mythology, which she hasn't had time to fix yet, but somehow she magically knows all these myths? Yeah, I'm not buying it. But I would say buy this book because the errors don't take away from the narrative, they just make you a little peeved every once in awhile. Is it Anna or Annie!?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And Then There Were None, Andrea Penrose, Arianna Hadley, Chocolate, Clue, Coffee, Editor, Elba, Gibraltar, Greek Mythology, Horatio Hornblower, Lord Grentham, Napoleon, Recipes, Regency Romp, Sandro, Smoke and Lies

A Tangle of Serpents by Andrea Penrose
Publication Date: April 6th, 2020
Format: Kindle, 358 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

With Napoleon's loss at Waterloo and his army in disarray the allied forces are descending on Paris to jockey for position and power. That means Lord Grentham's job behind the scenes is even more important, keeping everyone's ego in check so not one country can let the thought of more power or new territories go to their head. Which makes Grentham being accused of being a traitor rather convenient for someone. Especially when Grentham goes on the run, apparently lending credence to the rumors. But Arianna, despite their fractious past, is unwilling to view Grentham as a traitor. Her husband though, well, he's open to the possibility. If Grentham saw a way for England to succeed by going rogue, he might well do so. While the couple are at loggerheads, there's Sophia Kirtland's feelings to consider. Sophia, whose heart she exposed to Grentham. She CAN NOT believe this of him. She's in even more shock when Grentham threatens their lives. Not shocked that he did so, just shocked from the blast of the bomb. As she so eloquently points out, if Grentham had wanted them dead, they would be dead, if he had just wanted them to back off, this is exactly what he'd do. It's a cry for help. Help that he doesn't want. And Arianna, Sandro, Sophia, and Constantina are going to be there to help him whether he wants it or not. Therefore they are going to Paris. Whomever is framing Grentham has to be at the heart of the intrigue and the heart of all intrigues right now is Paris, and thankfully Sandro can attach himself to the scientific delegation going there. The problem is, they don't know where to start. The trail of evidence that Grentham left was planted by Gretham so it will get them nowhere fast. Therefore they walk the streets, go shopping, attend soirees, go to restaurants, visit attractions, all in the hope that they will overhear some telling bit of gossip that will lead them in the right direction. But there are also distractions, a young engineer, Mr. Richard Fitzroy, has introduced himself to Arianna as her half-brother. She doesn't doubt that they could be related, he's the spitting image of her father, but why introduce himself now? And things are getting to a head with Prince Orlov. He plans this to be his and Arianna's last encounter, and he might be right. With the tangles of intrigue swirling around them, can their friend's name be cleared or is his fate sealed?

Lady Arianna's adventures are very much comfort reads, it all starts with Arianna and Sandro hoping for some downtime, and then someone's friend or relative is threatened, lightning has now struck five times if Sandro's interested, the gaggle hare off somewhere, there are lots of weapons and women wielding weapons, much chocolate is drunk and ate, the elaborate conspiracy is uncovered, and everyone goes off into the sunset, until the next adventure, which might even be starting before this one has fully finished. Reading the adventures back to back they can be a little repetitive. Even turns of phrase start to insist on becoming a drinking game, this time around it was anyone who had a peal rung over their head. But please, I urge caution, if you are a fast reader and take up this drinking game you will get drunk very fast. What makes each individual volume stick out therefore comes down to the history. As anyone who has studied any bit of history will tell you once the war is over the peace negotiations begin. For some reason I had never really thought about this with regard to Napoleon. At least not after his second defeat. My mind had him caught at Waterloo and the monarchy that had been restored while he was on Elba just taking back over. This is not how it went down. Napoleon fled to the coast and was attempting to board a ship for the New World and instead ended up surrendering a full month after the battle of Waterloo! This tale takes place after Paris was liberated, again, and all the political forces were descending on the city to see and be seen while having a cultural exchange of ideas as well as jockey for power. France, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia were all there with their own agendas. And Andrea Penrose posits, what if some of these powers were up to no good in order to get exactly what they wanted in what would end up being the Treaty of Paris, or more accurately, the Second Treaty of Paris. To me, this makes total sense. Of course if you have a seat at the table you want your plate to be piled the highest. But there's legitimate negotiation and then there's what happens here. And honestly, this seems more likely. If only the world had more righteously minded folk like Arianna, Sandro, Sophia, Grentham, and their numerous comrades in order to set things to right...

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Andrea Penrose, Arianna Hadley, Battle of Waterloo, Chocolate, Lord Grentham, Mystery, Napoleon, Paris, Prince Orlov, Regency Romp, Russia, Sandro, Second Treaty of Paris, Sophia Kirtland, Traitor, Treaty of Paris

Smoke and Lies by Andrea Penrose
Publication Date: May 15th, 2018
Format: Kindle, 355 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

If there's one thing that Lord Saybrook and Arianna have learned, it's that if they won't do Lord Grentham's bidding then he will find leverage to force them to do his bidding. And his favorite leverage is family. This time it's Sandro's cousin, Eduardo de la Vega. Eduardo has been stationed on Elba, Napoleon's palatial prison, and has gone missing. Therefore it serves "everyone's" interest for Sandro and Arianna to travel to Elba. A gentleman scientist and his wife will be welcomed by Napoleon with open arms while really they will be listening for any concrete evidence that Napoleon has his eyes on his old throne and of course trying to find Eduardo. Lord Grentham though isn't taking any risks with Napoleon and therefore has saddled Sandro and Arianna with two rather sketchy associates. The Baroness Plessy-Moritz seems ill-equipped for espionage, but her friendship with Napoleon's sister is a boon, whereas Count von Wolfram isn't who he says he is. Wolffy is an old associate of Arianna's. He had been the proprietor of the Wolff and Lamb Theatrical Company, where Arianna learned her disguise skills back when she was fighting to survive in the West Indies. But how do his skills apply to this situation? As they all board the Basilisk none of them really know what they are in for. Their assignments are illusive and no one is what they seem and they have become becalmed in pirate-infested waters. Which is when things go from bad to worse as yet another person from Arianna's past emerges. What's even more humiliating than finding her in this situation is having him be the one to rescue her. But she can deal with that another day, because they must get to Elba at all costs, and so far it has cost the captain of the Basilisk his life in a back alley in Gibraltar. Reaching their destination is a miracle in and of itself, but how are they going to navigate the world Napoleon has built around himself when he is the greatest tactician ever? Perhaps by appealing to his sweet tooth?

This adventure is balls to the wall bonkers in the best possible way. It's Clue meets And Then There Were None meets Horatio Hornblower where you're constantly uncertain of your footing but enjoying every minute of it. But then, I've always been a sucker for big boats. There's something so classic yet powerfully elemental about old fashioned sailing vessels. They were their own little worlds and taking that concept and making it into a bit of a locked room mystery just made me giddy. Yes, I spent an inordinate amount of time when young dreaming of my perfect pirate ship, so taking that which I've always loved and the Regency addict I've become and making this wonderful confection just made me want to do nothing but read this book until I'd reached the very last page. What's more this is the first book in the series in its new iteration. For those who read the paperbacks like me, the recipes are gone. I'm of slightly two minds as to this development. As I have previously mentioned I found the recipes distracting as they interrupted the flow of the narrative. Stick them in the back was my initial response. But then by the third book almost all the recipes involved coffee or espresso so I changed my mind to get ride of them entirely. Now some of these recipes I actually want to try, but here's a clue about me, NONE OF THEM will have coffee. I don't just dislike coffee, I detest it. And I hate more than anything the adulteration of chocolate with coffee. Just don't do it OK? But seeing as the recipes are gone so are my gripes. My gripes about recipes. Now I have a new gripe. My new gripe is that since this series moved from a publishing house to being published independently you can see the lack of polish. There are some repetitions with turns of phrases that a good editor would have caught, but more irksome were the straight up errors. Wolffy changes how he addresses Arianna all the time. She's either Anna or Annie. If there had been an explanation as to this I wouldn't have minded him constantly calling her one or the other diminutive. There isn't. Therefore I am annoyed. But the bigger annoyance I had was that in the previous volume Arianna is lamenting her lack of knowledge of the Greek Mythology, which she hasn't had time to fix yet, but somehow she magically knows all these myths? Yeah, I'm not buying it. But I would say buy this book because the errors don't take away from the narrative, they just make you a little peeved every once in awhile. Is it Anna or Annie!?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And Then There Were None, Andrea Penrose, Arianna Hadley, Chocolate, Clue, Coffee, Editor, Elba, Gibraltar, Greek Mythology, Horatio Hornblower, Lord Grentham, Napoleon, Recipes, Regency Romp, Sandro, Smoke and Lies

The Cocoa Conspiracy by Andrea Penrose
Published by: NAL
Publication Date: December 6th, 2011
Format: Paperback, 324 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Arianna still hasn't come quite to grips with the fact that she is the new Countess of Saybrook. Her marriage to Sandro seemed kind of expedient to get out of trouble. Sure, they rub along nicely, but what if he wakes up one day and realizes that an uneducated woman with a dodgy past from the West Indies isn't who he wanted to marry despite their shared love of chocolate? Therefore she will be the best wife she can be, and that means getting him a really spectacular birthday present. She ventures into the rarified air of Messrs. Harvey and Watkins Rare Book Emporium where she finds a book with the most exquisite engravings of Theocroma cacao. And the binding, the binding is like chocolate. Therefore she is more than shocked when a foreigner tries to wrest the book from her causing a scuffle in the store. She is victorious, but she wonders if the encounter was something more than a fanatical book collector not getting the prize he desired. When Sandro's uncle convinces the newlyweds to attend a county house party Arianna is shocked to find the man who attempted to steal her book in attendance. What's more, she thinks she's discovered why he wanted the book. As she prepares to wrap it she finds three sheets of papers slipped into the back binding. Two are encoded but one, a sensitive government document, points to Sandro's uncle as having possible links to the dangerous leak within the government, the spy known as Renard. There also happens to be an attempt on Sandro's life and a stranger is murdered at the house party. In other words, if they thought that the chaos that embodied their courtship was an aberration they are soon to find out they are sadly mistaken. To save his uncle's reputation Sandro agrees to a scheme devised by Grentham, Sandro and Arianna are to go to the Congress of Vienna. There Sandro will play the academic while Arianna will seduce the secrets out of the chief suspects. But what happens if Sandro realizes that he doesn't like risking his wife's life and reputation because he has come to hold her rather dear? Will it help or hinder their investigation?

For the longest time I felt utterly at sea with this volume of Arianna and Sandro's adventures. I had read the first volume, Sweet Revenge, only two weeks prior, and yet I couldn't figure out who the hell Renard was. Yes, I knew about the mole within the government aside from Grentham's aide who had an unfortunate encounter with Arianna's kitchen knives, so abstractly I wondered, could this be Renard? But my all consuming thought that kept repeating on a loop in my head was who the heck was Renard? I felt like I was going insane. Was I missing something like the recipe for Chocolate Coconut Cake that is at the beginning of the twelfth chapter? Because a cake isn't done when it's still just batter on the third step, where Renard just seemed to appear fully formed from nothing. Is Renard the equivalent of this cake? Skip a whole bunch of steps and voila, spy! I even went back and skimmed the previous volume for any reference to Renard and couldn't find one. So, if you know where the first mention of the name is I'd be very grateful to be told where it is, because I'm assuming it was omitted somehow.... So once I moved beyond Renard, just accepting their existence as a fait accompli, I was shocked that I found the house party kind of meh. I just love house parties. They are my catnip. When I read the blurb I was blah about the politics and Vienna and wild about the house party. But Andrea Penrose surprised me by taking the political machinations of the Congress and making it so much more. This was like a country house party on crack. The party was just bigger, grander, and with castles! There was intrigue, romance, dalliances, partner swapping, everything that was missing from the house party here, but oh so much better. What's more, there was an urgency to the whole situation. There was a force pushing the narrative that made me not want to put the book down. And as for that ending? I will warn you now, you have to have the next book, Recipe for Treason, ready to go. Because while their continental adventure might be over, there's still a fox in the hen house.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Andrea Penrose, Arianna Hadley, British Country House, Chocolate, Congress of Vienna, Earl of Saybrook, Murder, Mystery, Recipe for Treason, Regency Romp, Renard, Sandro, Spy, Sweet Revenge, The Cocoa Conspiracy

Sweet Revenge by Andrea Penrose
Published by: Obsidian
Publication Date: April 6th, 2011
Format: Paperback, 304 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Lady Arianna Hadley has returned to England from a life of poverty and strife in the West Indies where she has been fending for herself ever since her father was murdered years earlier. Yet she returns to England, not to reclaim her place in the ton, but to seek revenge on those who are responsible for her father's death. Sadly one of the men has already succumbed to an accident, but that still leaves her one target, Lord Concord. Posing as a male French Chef in a dubious yet well healed household she is able to spy on those she plans to take down. Lady Spencer is very chatty with her cook and Arianna learns much from the Prince Regent's current mistress. But Arianna's plans go horribly awry when, upon eating one of her chocolaty confections, some of the first edible chocolate, the Prince Regent ends up ill. He has been poisoned. Suspected of attempted regicide, she is soon under scrutiny by the Earl of Saybrook, Alessandro De Quincy, who has been assigned the case of the poisoning due to his knowledge of chocolate. Sandro quickly notices that "he" is a she, but an attempt on their lives resulting in the death of their assailant soon throws them together. Trying to work with each other, while not quite understanding or trusting the other, and therefore not believing in full disclosure, at least on Arianna's part, they slowly start to ferret out the truth. The lovely smells of cacao seem to be hiding a labyrinthine financial swindle, the likes of which have not been seen in generations, the likes of which Arianna's father was known to be involved in. Constructing an elaborate undercover operation, Arianna enters society as a wealthy merry widow and soon starts to put the puzzle together by courting Lord Concord whose new Hellfire Club is all the rage with his set. But rakes and rogues are everywhere, and soon there are even more dead bodies. Will Arianna be able to sink to the depths she needs to in order to get her revenge? Or will she succumb to the lures offered to her in the pantomime she is living out?

This Regency romp by Andrea Penrose is sweet and frothy with a little bit o'spice, just like delicious hot cocoa done right. The outward appearance of this book might lead you to think it's on the cozy spectrum, but it is decidedly not. What with the Hellfire Club and the coarse language, these cajones aren't for everyone but they add that little bit of spice that sets Sweet Revenge apart from the stacked Regency crowd. Yes, we have somewhat typical protagonists, with Sandro and Arianna, him being a grizzled war veteran addicted to opiates and her being the orphan girl trying to reclaim a semblance of her old life while also helping him heal. Yet together they make each other better people, aw, Regency Romance indeed. The tropes aren't stale though because of the added lure of chocolaty confections and the two leads fierce intelligence. You don't get many mathematical geniuses who are female in Jane Austen now do you? Though, I think this book also demonstrates why you don't get mathematical geniuses in books too often, the jargon and the financial swindle where so confusing and detailed that it leaves you a little confused and feeling more than a little stupid, or perhaps that's just me and my inability to understand the South Sea Bubble of 1720. I want to understand, I just apparently can't. I do know that it's very bad and people lost money, so I got the gist. While the book is a fun quick read, it did have one major flaw; the gimmick of the recipes. An all too common gimmick in mysteries at the time Sweet Revenge was released. At the beginning of each chapter there is a little journal entry from Sandro's grandmother and a recipe. Now, the journal entry is fun and reflects the tone of the story, the recipe, not so much. This isn't because I don't want chocolate recipes, good God, I want as many as I can get, and many of these looked really tasty. The fact is, that they take you out of the story because of modern terminology. Having to read about setting an oven to 350 degrees makes the Regency feel a long time ago. While I think it would be cool if the recipes could be written more Mrs. Beeton like, I think the olde tyme would drive people around the bend trying to update to modern cooking terms. So how about just a nice selection of recipes at the back? They wouldn't pull you out of the story or distract you, and you'd still get all that chocolaty goodness. Mmm... chocolate.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Andrea Penrose, Arianna Hadley, Chocolate, Cozy, Earl of Saybrook, French Cuisine, Hellfire Club, Lady Hadley, Recipes, Regency Mystery, Regency Romp, Sandro, South Sea Bubble, Sweet Revenge, The Prince Regent

When planning out theme months I rarely decide to celebrate what a month is known for. December is more likely about Daphne Du Maurier than it is about Christmas. March is more for Magic or shades of the Gothic than Saint Patrick. But for some reason this year I've decided to embrace what February is known for, Valentine's Day. I am almost questioning my sanity in celebrating a holiday that has been more about watching Chick Flicks in my own personal experience than candlelit dinners. But there are so many great romances in literature, from Darcy and Elizabeth to Rochester and Jane, Westley and Buttercup to Anne and Gilbert, everyone has their favorite couples. Therefore this February, let's raise a glass, or devour a couple boxes of chocolate we bought on discount on the fifteenth of the month to these classic couples!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anne of Green Gables, Buttercup, Chick Flick, Chocolate, Classic Couples, Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, February, Gilbert, Jane Eyre, Rochester, Romance, Sweet Reads, Theme Month, Valentine's Day, Westley

Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
Published by: HMH Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: April 15th, 1988
Format: Hardcover, 316 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Kate and her younger and far more eligible sister Georgiana are debuting in London this season under the watchful eye of their Aunt Charlotte. While back in Essex Kate's best friend and cousin Cecelia is stuck rusticating with her father, her brother Oliver, and her Aunt Elizabeth. Cecelia would give anything to be in London with Kate, while after a few days in London Kate would give anything to be back in the country. The only thing keeping each other sane is their voluminous correspondence with each other. Luckily both their lives soon become far more interesting, as do their letters. Their neighbor in Essex, Sir Hilary Bedrick, is invested into the College of Wizards in London and at the ceremony Kate stumbles on something and someone very magical and dangerous, a wizard named Miranda. Miranda soon appears in Essex where her stepdaughter Dorothea is making a splash as well as fast friends with Cecelia. There appears to be a plot afoot to marry Dorothea off to Thomas Schofield, the Mysterious Marquess of Essex, who also happens to be a wizard. Soon their are missing brothers, fake fiances, undiscovered magical abilities, gambling, dancing, horses, borrowed books, and one very interesting chocolate pot. Working in two different locations can the two cousins save the day and perhaps get a little happily ever after?

Epistolary novels were once all the rage. There's something voyeuristic to reading a book of correspondences that just makes you not want to put the book down. There's the immediacy of wanting to know what happens next that sometimes isn't their in more traditional books. Plus, because you are reading diaries, letters, innermost thoughts, you have this feeling that it's not just voyeuristic but wrong and the owner of these letters could arrive at any moment and take them away, giving a frisson of excitement to your reading. Jane Austen was raised on these books and it's no wonder then that she experimented with this format. Sense and Sensibility, when it was still Elinor and Marianne, was an epistolary novel. But Jane abandoned this approach because she didn't like having to keep her characters apart for the whole narrative, which is an aspect to this style that must be adhered to. The fact that Sorcery and Cecelia is able to convincingly keep to this style when Jane Austen herself wasn't I think deserves a tip of the hat for being that little bit magical and all the more Regency.

Wrede and Stevermer created this epistolary book by playing the letter game. The game is played when two (or more) participates exchange letters back and forth that are telling a story. The first writer sets up the characters and the basic story and why the characters corresponding need to be apart and then the next writer builds on it. The letters fly back and forth, with the authors trying to one-up each other all while never discussing plot or character outside of the letters. It's a fun game that can be used as a writing exercise, a way to do collaborative writing, or a way to just have fun. I think of it as that drawing exercise I remember doing in first grade where a sheet of paper would be divided into three sections and someone would draw the first section of an animal and then it was hidden, then the next child would draw the middle of the animal, while the final child finished off the animal having no idea what came before. Personally I was always annoyed because I wanted to do the drawing all by myself. When I was younger I hated working collaboratively, so the letter game sounds a bit of a nightmare to me; like doing those improve stories where you just go all out back and forth, sometimes through the alphabet. The key I think is to do this with someone you trust, and the end result of Sorcery and Cecelia is that you can tell Wrede and Stevermer trusted each other and had fun in the process.

One of the by products of having coauthors on a book that goes back and forth between two narrators is that you have two very distinct voices. If you were writing any book with more then one narrator, if the voices of these characters don't come across as two different people it does nothing but annoy and alienate your readers and makes me really pissed. You either go all out or go home. But one of the problems that arises is that perhaps you start to favor one voice, or in this case, one author over the other. You can't help but compare and contrast and even re-reading this book all these years later I couldn't help but want to smack Cecelia. Of the two authors I feel as if Wrede is trying to not only one-up Stevermer but to wrest complete control of the story while making everything a little too much a pantomime. I couldn't help but think of Heads You Lose once or twice and how the combative natures of the writers amusingly fueled the plot. But Wrede isn't trying to be combative, but she is too forceful in her sections and it makes me long for the Kate sections. Stevermer writing Kate has the right level of collaboration while also having a better written heroine. As for the writers kind of mirroring these characters when I met them... let's just say that also reinforced my opinions.

But going back to talking about the aspect of an epistolary novel adding an immediacy to the story I think that the letter game ups this. Because the two authors aren't collaborating outside the letters they are sending back and forth there is no plotting in advance. It's all cause and effect, with breathtaking fluidity. Wrede and Stevermer might each have an idea or where they want the story to go and how they want it to end, but they can easily throw a wrench in each others ideas knowingly or unknowingly. This makes you, as the reader, want to just keep reading in a headlong rush because you and the authors don't know what will happen next! The suspense is palpable. The suspense is real. It's like watching a game, you don't know how it's going to turn out so you can't look away. Usually it's only tightly plotted books that have the ah ha moments perfectly placed for revelations that make suspense last, but here it's just the letters of two girls living in a magical England, and that makes me smile. Anyone who thought Regency England was all staid conversation and glacial plots should be handed this book to knock their prejudices aside.

Though for me the most important aspect of this book is that it kick-started a whole new generation of writers. It's amazing how many authors works who I love that list Sorcery and Cecelia as one of, if not the most favorite book of theirs. I kind of wish that I had found this book when it came out back in the eighties. At that age reading such a fun, madcap romp, with a little magic and romance, I can see why Gail Carriger and Stephanie Burgis point to this book and go yes, this book is inspirational. Who knows what might have happened with my reading habits if I had stumbled on this book earlier? Perhaps I would have found Jane Austen prior to senior year in high school. Maybe my book nerdiness would have onset earlier. But overall, I am grateful for the publishers that saw two writers having fun and realized that that joy was infectious and should be put out into the world, because it's magical.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Caroline Stevermer, Chocolate, Epistolary, Gail Carriger, Heads You Lose, Jane Austen, Letter Game, Patricia C. Wrede, Regency Magic, Sense and Sensibility, Sorcery and Cecelia, Stephanie Burgis

Sweet Revenge (A Lady Arianna Regency Mystery Book 1) by Andrea Penrose
Published by: Obsidian
Publication Date: April 6th, 2011
Format: Paperback, 304 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy
Lady Arianna Hadley has returned to England from a life of poverty and strife in the West Indies where she has been fending for herself ever since her father was murdered years earlier. Yet she returns to England, not to reclaim her place in the ton, but to seek revenge on those who are responsible for her father's death. Posing as a male French Chef in a dubious yet aristocratic household, she is able to spy on those she plans to take down. Her plans go wildly awry when, upon eating one of her chocolaty confections, the Prince Regent ends up poisoned. Suspected of attempted regicide, she is soon under scrutiny by the Earl of Saybrook, Alessandro De Quincy, who has been assigned the case of the poisoning due to his knowledge of chocolate. Sandro quickly notices that "he" is a she, but an attempt on their lives and a murder soon throws them together.

Trying to work with each other, while not quite understanding or trusting the other, and therefore not believing in full disclosure, they slowly start to ferret out the truth. The lovely smells of cacao seem to be hiding a labyrinthine financial swindle, the likes of which have not been seen in years, the likes of which Arianna's father was involved in. Constructing an elaborate undercover operation, Arianna enters society as a wealthy widow and soon starts to put the puzzle together. But rakes and rogues are everywhere, and soon there are even more dead bodies. Will Arianna be able to sink to the depths she needs to in order to get her revenge? Or will she succumb to the lures offered to her in the pantomime she is living out?

This Regency romp by Andrea Penrose is sweet and frothy with a little bit o'spice, just like delicious hot cocoa done right. We have somewhat typical protagonists, with Sandro and Arianna, him being a grizzled war veteran addicted to opiates and her being the orphan girl trying to reclaim a semblance of life. Yet together they make each other better people, aw, Regency Romance indeed. The tropes aren't stale though because of the added lure of chocolaty confections and the two leads fierce intelligences. You don't get many mathematical geniuses who are female in Jane Austen now do you? Though, I think this book also demonstrates why you don't get mathematical geniuses in books too often, the jargon and the financial swindle where so confusing and detailed that it leaves you a little confused and feeling more than a little stupid, but that's just an aside. The spice here is the overused Hell Fire Club... ah, what I wouldn't give for Dashwood's Medmenham Abbey and their depravities, or offshoots thereof, to just take a break from literature. Why does it always go to Medmenham? It has become on of the most stale tropes. Luckily it was in the first book in this new series, so hopefully it won't return. Got that Andrea? No more Hell Fire. This goes for anyone else planing on writing about the Monks of Medmenham. Don't.

While the book is a quick fun read, it did have one major flaw, which is a cute gimmick, but at the beginning was a real hindrance and led to me struggling to get into the book. At the beginning of each chapter there is a little journal entry from Sandro's grandmother and a recipe. Now, the journal entry is fun and reflects the tone of the story, the recipe, not so much. This isn't because I don't want chocolate recipes, good God, I want as many as I can get, and many of these looked really tasty. The fact is, that they take you out of the story because of modern terminology. Having to read about setting an oven to 350 degrees makes the Regency feel a little less real. While I think it would be cool if the recipes could be written more Mrs. Beeton like, I think the olde tyme would drive people around the bend trying to update to modern cooking terms. SO how about just a nice selection of recipes at the back? They wouldn't pull you out of the story or distract you, and you'd still get all that chocolaty goodness. Mmm... chocolate.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Andrea Penrose, Arianna Hadley, Chocolate, Hellfire Club, Jane Austen, Medmenham, Mrs. Beeton, Prince Regent, Regency Mystery, Sweet Revenge