An entertaining premise, growing heat, and skillful writing elevate this historical love story.
In this New Orleans-set, Victorian romance, a bluestocking and a rake uneasily join forces to write an advice column.
Readers first met Vespasian Colville, 21, in 2014’s The Willing Widow. Well-known throughout New Orleans as a reprobate who drinks, gambles, and dallies with married ladies (plus women who aren’t ladies), he’s a childhood friend of Carine Bouchard, 20. But that bond ended two years ago when Vespasian broke her best friend’s heart. As the story opens in May 1887, Carine’s editor at the Daily Picayune has unpleasant news for her: He wants Vespasian to be her writing partner for her advice column. “Men against women and so forth; it’ll sell newspapers,” he predicts. Carine, a serious writer trying to get a novel published, doesn’t appreciate Vespasian’s easy assumption of the role she’s worked hard to get. Nevertheless, she does her best, even appreciating his viewpoint at times. Vespasian finds the whole thing amusing, but his attention is chiefly focused on Suzette St. Aubin, now widowed. He’s been obsessed with and devoted to her, but she remains coldly indifferent. Desperate, Vespasian obtains a voodoo potion so powerful, it’ll affect him too: “The lady who drinks this will captivate your heart, your mind, your very soul.” Carine visits Vespasian to discuss an alarming letter from a young woman who believes she’s being poisoned for her inheritance—and while waiting, mistakenly drinks the potion, which is as potent as advertised. Though Carine doesn’t remember later the immediate aftereffects, she feels a growing attraction and gets a great idea: Vespasian can give her the erotic instruction she needs to give her novel more “dynamism,” as one publisher puts it after rejecting her manuscript. It won’t mean anything to him, and it’s just research…isn’t it? The couple’s mutual passion grows, in effective scenes of erotic exploration, but at the same time, their letter writer’s situation becomes more dire. Carine tracks down her poisoning victim, Giselle Levert, to a mountain resort where she’s been secreted. Though at first skeptical, Vespasian follows to help, ludicrously disguised in a wig and eye patch. As the two face danger and fight to save Giselle, they also realize they can no longer fight their feelings for each other. Every romance needs an obstacle, and LeCoeur (The Devious Debutante, 2015, etc.) uses the restrictions of Victorian society, manners, and dress to create a hot-then-hotter slow burn, while the voodoo potion provides a handy excuse for Carine’s boldness. A little too handy—it would be more satisfying to see the couple’s love arise without supernatural intervention. (And the idea that a realistic romance needs erotic experiences would be news to Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters.) In this fourth installment of her Love in New Orleans series, LeCoeur deftly brings out her characters’ shades of personality. Vespasian has more depth and Carine more earthiness than they at first give each other credit for. The book is well-researched, though a few anachronisms stick out: “agency” in the sense of intentional action; Carine going out in public without her corset.
An entertaining premise, growing heat, and skillful writing elevate this historical love story.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-90772-6
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Royal Street Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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