strange and random happenstance: Devil in Winter

Showing posts with label Devil in Winter. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Book Review 2022 #2 - Lisa Kleypas's Devil in Winter

Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas
Published by: Avon
Publication Date: February 28th, 2006
Format: Paperback, 368 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Evie Jenner keeps the true horrors of her life hidden from her friends. She can not hide the stutter she has developed from being broken by her mother's family, but she would never tell her friends about the abuse, both physical and mental, because she knows there's nothing they could do about it. All she wants to do is get away from her family and see her father before he dies. But Ivo Jenner runs a gaming hell and it wouldn't be "proper" for Evie to visit him. What's more, her family have their eyes on Ivo's fortune. Evie will be married to her cousin Eustace and then, well, she has a feeling they might do away with her. When the Viscount St. Vincent attempted to marry her friend Lillian Bowman by kidnapping her and running off to Gretna Green Evie realized how desperate the rake was. Desperate enough to swap one heiress for another? Showing up on his doorstep one night Evie tells him of her plan. They are to immediately set out for Gretna Green where they will be married. They will consummate their marriage to make sure it is legally binding in case her relatives have any ideas. They will return to London where Evie will take care of her father until he passes. At which time St. Vincent will get his money and they will live a marriage in name only. He will have his money and she will have her freedom, both getting exactly what they want. The only problem with this plan is that on their long trip to Scotland St. Vincent starts to be intrigued by his future wife. After they consummate their marriage he is shocked to realize how much he still wants Evie. This has never happened to him. Women chase him he will be damned if he will chase after his own wife! But his protective nature that he never knew he had is brought to the fore by Evie. He worries about the long hours she spends at her father's bedside. He has started to worry about the club. In fact he's rather taken with Jenner's and is taking over the business. For someone who has spent their entire life broke, idle, and a womanizer, the arrival of Evie Jenner in his life has changed everything. The question is, will he be able to hold onto it?

Going into Devil in Winter I had two questions that needed to be answered. One was how were they going to make Viscount St. Vincent palatable after he kidnapped and threatened to rape his best friend's fiance? The other was how would the book be structured after the first two books were basically the exact same premise with different wrapping paper? Both were rather quickly answered. The book has a structure all it's own and St. Vincent was desperate but would have never really raped Lillian and would have not even kidnapped her had he realized the depth of his friend's feelings. Yes, this is a bit of backtracking to make St. Vincent that most common of tropes in romance, the domesticated rake, but given as he's the hero it was to be expected. But what's interesting is that Lisa Kleypas doesn't fully reign him in. His reputation with women stands and it's by making Evie's life the worst nightmare that Charles Dickens could ever have dreamed up that St. Vincent is the only option for her. I actually really liked the darkness of Evie's life. With fellow Wallflower Annabelle's story we got a hint of the seedy underbelly that existed in this time period, but it was at a remove. The degradation was happening offstage in another room to her mother. Here Evie is being tormented and tortured by her own family. She literally would probably be better off dead than stay in her current situation so sure, a possible rapist really isn't that bad when she'd be holding the purse strings. By moving beyond St. Vincent and into the gambling den that is Jenner's we stay within this lower echelon while being shown that just because you live in the demimonde you don't need to be the evil that is embodied by Evie's family. You can be good and prosperous, just not of the higher ranks. Though once St. Vincent is done with Jenner's anything is possible. I just loved this story because it had more depth, more of a Deadwood vibe, and just wasn't at all what I expected. Now the question is, can Scandal in Spring surprise me as well?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Abuse, Charles Dickens, Deadwood, Demimonde, Devil in Winter, Evie Jenner, Gambling Hell, Gretna Green, Lisa Kleypas, Rake, Rape, Regency Romp, Romance, Scandal in Spring, The Wallflowers, Viscount St. Vincent

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Book Review - Lisa Kleypas's Scandal in Spring

Scandal in Spring by Lisa Kleypas
Published by: Avon
Publication Date: July 25th, 2006
Format: Paperback, 374 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

Daisy Bowman has been told a harsh truth. Her father has said that she is no better than a parasite. She sponges off her family and after three seasons she has yet to secure the desired match her mother so wants. Therefore if she doesn't find a match by the end of the season she is to marry Matthew Swift. Matthew is her father's right hand man and his "true" son. Matthew is everything her father ever wanted her brothers to be. Matthew will inherit the company if he marries Daisy. Therefore Daisy is sure Matthew is behind this scheme. That scrawny little scarecrow who was always at the table when they were having family dinners has found a way to worm his way permanently into the Bowman family. He is the worst attributes of Daisy's father and the last person she would ever marry. Therefore when the family decamps to Stony Cross Park for Lillian's confinement, both Daisy and her sister are outraged that their father has invited Matthew Swift along. He's come over from America to help set up the new Bowman soap factory in Bristol. At least Lillian's husband Marcus knows his wife's feelings on Daisy's enforced marriage and has therefore stocked the house with lots of eligible young men so that Daisy can make a match to anyone she wishes. Though Daisy isn't leaving everything up to fate and goes out to the wishing well which has served her fellow wallflowers so well and makes a wish. At that moment a man appears. He's gorgeous, tall, and broad like Annabelle's husband. Daisy is shocked to find out that this is scrawny Matthew Swift. He sure has changed over the years. But the fact that he is physically attractive doesn't change the fact that he is the last person she'd marry, despite what her body is saying. Rather loudly. But as the wallflowers and Marcus get to know Matthew it becomes apparent that he is not who the Bowman sisters think he is and he had no knowledge of Mr. Bowman's plans for him and Daisy. Luckily for Matthew, who has been pining for Daisy since the first time he saw her, she is starting to realize she might have been wrong. But Matthew has a secret in his past that could ruin all their chances of happiness. He will not marry Daisy. He will not be the one to destroy her life. But what if not marrying her destroys her life?

Any true reader knows of the phenomena of "last great book I read." You read a book that's so amazing that any other book you pick up next will just be subpar because you've just had a magical experience and there's no way any other book could possibly be that good ever again. This is what happened to me with Scandal in Spring. It was coupled with another problem, which was that Devil in Winter, the previous volume in this series, was the "last great book I read" a few weeks earlier. It's almost like I set myself up to dislike Scandal in Spring without meaning to. But I do think this book has issues in regard to the series as a whole. The reason Devil in Winter was so good was because it had broken the mold established in the previous two volumes of getting all the characters to Stony Cross Park and then watching the reluctant matchmaking begin. Here we return to the previous pattern and not for the better. It just felt like the same story happening to a different character. And characters that were so bland as to be forgettable. Daisy and Lillian Bowman were always said to be a little wild, but here Daisy is one dimensional and Lillian was a bitch. Before Lillian was just stubborn and sweary, which I could relate to, here she's actually hostile. You'd think in a book seen from her sister's POV that she would be nice, as Daisy loves her more than anyone else in the world baring Marcus, but no. I could blame it on the pregnancy, but that would be cruel to any pregnant women. Therefore she was just a bitch. As for Matthew Swift? He felt like a stock character. He's been pining over Daisy for years but she sees him anew because he's now hot. And that is basically his personality, hot with a penknife in his pocket. Oh, and occasionally he does something that Colin Firth did in Pride and Prejudice, but that just makes you want Colin Firth more and Matthew Swift less. This led to a lackluster romance and even the sex scenes were uninspired, feeling almost elliptical in their telling. Plus, could Daisy do anything other than pant and squirm under him? Ugh. This "final" volume in the Wallflowers series felt like Lisa Kleypas had run out of ideas and was just phoning it in. If it wasn't for my enjoyment of the previous volumes I'd never read another book by her ever again.