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 strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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