strange and random happenstance: Compromised

Showing posts with label Compromised. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Book Review - Stephanie Burgis's Frostgilded

Frostgilded by Stephanie Burgis
Published by: Five Fathoms Press
Publication Date: September 18th, 2020
Format: Kindle, 28 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Perhaps it was folly to think that she could juggle her in-laws, her students, and her anniversary all during the holidays, but no one could say that Cassandra Harwood wasn't ambitious. Of course they might call her foolish as well. But she is determined that after two years of helping her with the school and putting her first over his own job that her husband, Rajaram Wrexham, will have the best anniversary possible. Of course it's not like their wedding anniversary which is public knowledge. No one's supposed to know she compromised her future husband at Cosgrave Manor two years ago. So it's a "secret" anniversary. Yet it seems as if every single person within the walls of Thornfell has something Cassandra has to help them with. It's almost as if they're purposefully trying to delay her. And the the ancient fey in the woods has to get in on it too. Is it just the holidays that have gotten everyone worked up? Because the stress of her in-laws alone, whom she is convinced hate her and blame her for Wrexham not living up to his potential, is enough to break her. Every single obstacle is just one more thing to make her question if it's all worth it. But by the end of the night she will learn how much it truly is worth.

Frostgilded is just a wonderful little coda to the Harwood Spellbook. Nothing big, nothing groundbreaking or earth-shattering happens, we just get to see a day in the life of Cassandra running the Thronfell College of Magic, but turned up to eleven because it's the holidays. It's a final goodbye. All these characters we've come to love over the previous five volumes all make an appearance. But it's not maudlin or mawkish. This isn't like some prime time TV stunt, this is just a slice of life where you get to see this amazing life these people have built together. The school is chaotic but thriving, the students are happy and value their headmistress, and they all love and care for each other. This is so evident in the end when it proves that everyone was purposefully waylaying Cassandra so that Wrexham could surprise her with the perfect anniversary. She was just too harried until the very end to see that all these people she had brought together had come together to give her something back. It's just a big hug and an aw of an ending. More series should end like this.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Anniversary, Cassandra Harwood, Chosen Family, Compromised, Cosgrave Manor, Frostgilded, Harwood Spellbook, In-Laws, Magic, Rajaram Wrexham, Regency Magic, School, Stephanie Burgis, Thornfell College of Magic

Wednesday, June 1, 2022

Book Review - Julia Quinn's To Sir Phillip, With Love

To Sir Phillip, With Love by Julia Quinn
Published by: Avon
Publication Date: July 1st, 2003
Format: Paperback, 400 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Eloise loves to receive letters. She is smart enough to know that in order to receive one must give. So she's always jotting off notes to friends and family. Her hands are perpetually covered in ink as the words flow unimpeded from her hand much as they do from her mouth. Conversation and discussion are her very lifeblood. Therefore taking up a correspondence with her distant cousin Marina's widower after Marina's passing isn't that untoward. The importance Sir Phillip Crane's letters become in her life is surprising. And then he offers to marry her. He doesn't say it's because he just wants to have a happy wife and someone to look after his kids while he putters about in his greenhouse. He just assumes that Eloise still being unwed she would naturally want to avoid being a spinster and offers for her. With conditions, because he doesn't expect a woman from London to come to the wilds of Gloucestershire and marry him sight unseen. He suggests he has a chaperone come to Romney Hall and accompany her for a few weeks to see if they will suit. But then Eloise's brother marries her best friend and her world is turned upside down. So instead of writing to Sir Phillip that she is coming she just arrives on his doorstep. And neither is what the other expected. Sir Phillip thought he'd meet a demure spinster, instead he meets the woman of his dreams, until she opens her mouth and starts talking a mile a minute. This is definitely a woman who hasn't lacked suitors, in fact she's turned down more than a handful of them. Eloise knew nothing of his children, the terrors of the county, but thankfully she has so many nieces and nephews she knows how to handle children. Even if they decide to wage war on her the second they see her. But the main problem is her showing up unannounced means there's no chaperone. Every minute she stays Eloise is risking her and Sir Phillip being wed whether they wish it or not. And there is hope they will suit. Eloise is good with the kids, he is good with the kissing. But once her family descends on them... Well, things rapidly get out of hand. Especially as they assumed she had been kidnapped. Eloise did leave a note. She always does! She just didn't think it would be misplaced and the chaos that was enveloping her life would spread. But maybe things will all work out. Maybe.

Eloise's story is part The Parent Trap part Jane Eyre. It's occasionally cringeworthy, funny, horrifying, boring, and sexy with everyone getting their happily ever after except Marina. And that is my problem with To Sir Phillip, With Love, Marina, AKA Bertha by another name. She was a very sad and depressed woman who took her life. Yet she is little more than just a plot device to bring Eloise and Phillip together and because of that she lacks a voice. She isn't understood. She is handled almost callously. She was depressed and now she's gone so let's move on. There was a part of me that was crying out for her to have her own Wide Sargasso Sea moment. I wanted to see what happened to her through her eyes, not those of a detached male. The problem for me then becomes rooted in a conundrum; do I want the characters to handle mental illness as it was viewed then or as it was viewed when this book first came out. And added to that is how much mental health has even changed in the almost twenty years since this book was released. Mental illness historically wasn't well treated, just look what England did to their own King. So at least Marina wasn't in an asylum. Which means the real problem I have is with Phillip, who just seemed to give up. Fans of his, and I don't know who you are, would say, oh, but he jumped into the lake to save her, and what about when he vents to Eloise in front of Marina's portrait of all he claims to have done. I say too little too late. Julia Quinn was trying to walk back the insensitivity of a man who is all about himself. Yes, maybe Marina was so depressed nothing Phillip could have done would have helped her. But I see a man who locked himself in a greenhouse and shut out the world instead of trying to face what he didn't want to face. Personally I think my husband just leaving me in a room with the curtains drawn while he's more concerned about his plants would make me depressed too! What's more he ignores his children, not even knowing they are being abused, because again, he doesn't want to deal with that. And then he's so self-centered he plans to marry to have a happy wife who will take care of everything he doesn't want to deal with. And as for the criteria of a "happy" wife? That is horrible and putting a heck of a lot of pressure on your spouse. They MUST be happy! But all's well, because Eloise is happy and Marina is written off as someone who was sad her whole life so Phillip gets what Phillip wants. Phillip is an ass. And yet still not nearly as annoying as Benedict.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Bertha Mason, Compromised, Correspondence, Depression, Eloise Bridgerton, Jane Eyre, Julia Quinn, Marina Crane, Mental Illness, Regency Romp, Sir Phillip Crane, Suicide, The Parent Trap, To Sir Phillip With Love

Friday, March 11, 2022

Book Review - Sarah MacLean's Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake

Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake by Sarah MacLean
Published by: Avon
Publication Date: March 30th, 2010
Format: Paperback, 397 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Lady Calpurnia Hartwell was bound for spinster seating from her very first season. Sure she had the dowry. But that only attracted a certain type of gentlemen. And besides saddling her with an absurdly Shakespearean name her parents also made her believe in love matches. Oh, to be loved. Like her sister is. It's been a decade since Callie's first season an her sister has made a love match before the season is even underway. Callie should be happy. Instead she is sad and soon to be drunk. She's been on the shelf for so long even her brother is encouraging her to not be such a stickler for the rules of society. Therefore Callie does what comes naturally to her, she makes a list. Lists are sensible. Lists are good. Lists are what women on the shelf make when they've reached the end of their rope. She lists nine things that would shock polite society. Sure, some of them might easily ruin her, but isn't it time to live a little? Isn't it time to shoot a gun, attend a duel, dance every dance, and be passionately kissed. She decides that she will tackle the kiss first. Only her inebriated mind could make her believe this is a good idea. At a ball during her first season she fell irrevocably in love with the Marquess of Ralston, Gabriel St. John. He spent a few minutes talking to her before moving on to an assignation in a hedge maze. Those few minutes were enough for her to fall in love with a man who was already making a name for himself as a rake. Seeing him and his paramour for the first time in life Callie was jealous of another person. Therefore if she's to experience her first kiss she wants it to be him. It doesn't matter if it will ruin her for all others because she is sure there will never be any others. She is rather scandalized when she is taken to his bedroom. But she has come this far, she will not turn back. When Ralston realizes that it is not his current mistress but Lady Calpurnia Hartwell who has entered his room he decides to take the upper hand. He will give her the kiss she desires but she in turn must help his sister, an illegitimate Italian, come out in society. Callie's approval will give Juliana legitimacy. Callie agrees. But that kiss changes everything. For both of them.

Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake is based on the clever conceit that Callie has written a list of nine things that she wishes to do were propriety not an issue. The conceit is clever because the list acts as an outline. Callie's HEA cannot happen until everything is completed, including a duel. So it's a nice way to pace out the narrative. Plus they don't happen in a specific order so it's a little like roulette, which rule will she break next? Though the problem with Callie's list is that literally every time she draws a line through an item she's drugged by Ralston's kisses. I mean, this is a romance so you expect the sexy time, but does the sexy time have to be so repetitive? Each item means that the sexy time has arrived, and each time it's basically the same with them going a little further until Callie is well and thoroughly compromised. The drugging kisses, the laving of some part of her anatomy with word usage that reminds me more of a cat, the nipple play, all of which seems meant to prove that Ralston is really into satisfying his partner, which means he can't be entirely a reprobate right? I'm just saying that they needed a little variety in their sex life... At least they were both very enthusiastic I guess. But the sexy time for me isn't what this book is about, it's about Callie coming into her own. Like Callie I feel like I have spent so much of my life being "their" version of me that I sometimes don't know who I really am. And by "their" I mean the whole world at large, for Callie it's the ton, for me it's largely family. And don't get me started on when people talk to you with "why are you so..." Maybe I wasn't that way until you thrust your expectations onto me? Maybe I should make a list? What also hit unexpectedly hard was Callie talking about being put on the shelf. How she was so high up there and so alone. It wasn't just the fact lack of coupledom that made this hit the mark but Covid. We have all collectively been on the shelf for two years. We aren't going to public houses or fencing clubs of heaths for duels, we're home on a high shelf hiding out from the rest of the world. I think when this pandemic is over we all need to take a leaf out of Callie's book and make ourselves a list and find out who we really are. Rake an added bonus.