Barely a Lady Book

Where to start? Where to start! First, in a nut shell the best things about this book are the cover art and Lady Bea. That's it for me. Everything after that had such great potential, but I think this was a case of too many plot devices, themes, whatever going on, too many balls to juggle and not an experienced juggler. I was so disappointed with this one, I wanted to love it so much, but just couldn't.

Right off the bat I was immediately taken out of the story with the first sentence of the second or third paragraph. I don't have the book in front of me, and I'm not getting up to check, but the line goes something like "The smell of cordite, overridden horses and . . . blah blah blah hung in the air." CORDITE? Okay, admittedly I wasn't absolutely sure until I confirmed with my hubby, but we watch lots of History Channel stuff, mostly about wars, (he's in control of the remote, I'm usually reading) and yes, I did remember correctly that cordite wasn't invented until the 1880's. This story takes place in 1815. I remember this little factoid because it was created to replace gunpowder. I say created as in it's made up of nitroglycerin, which wasn't even invented until 1847 (I looked it up). All this to say, if you're writing historical, please take longer than two paragraphs to mess up the facts. After this, I couldn't get excited. I found this author likes to use inane words, she's really getting use of her thesaurus, and it was just sort of random and weird to me. I'd give more examples, but again, not getting up to check. Also, Lady Bea, who I loved, spoke only in phrases and idioms, some I'm fairly sure had no business being mentioned during 1815. I'm not going to say for certain, but after cordite I didn't want to be babysitting my iphone to double check anything I had doubts about.

Another thing, the hero Jack treats Olivia, Livvie (can't stand that nickname, BTW) like total crap. Probably one of the most arrogant asses I've every read about. Case in point, they were supposedly happily married, and a few people hint around she's unfaithful, with her cousin of all things, and he finds her upset and mussed in her cousin's arms, assumes the worst, calls the cousin out, kills him, banishes her, divorces her (he knows she's pregnant with his child as well) and never has a second thought about her. While he's away in the 5 years, he sleeps with a spy. Now, this is not something I like to read, but at this point I'm not totally disgusted, yet. He assumed the worst, they were divorced, whoever he wants to sleep with in the meantime, whatever. Makes me like him a lot less, but whatever. Here's where the ick factor comes in, the part I totally lost all hope of every liking the hero and wanted to slap some sense into the heroine: He's taking a much needed bath, she's helping him wash in the most euphemistically way, he's kissing her, then pauses in the middle of kissing her to say he doesn't know how he thought he could be happy with Mimi!!!!! Mimi is mysterious spy mistress. Now Olivia knew of her before this, but I guess she assumed it was done, I couldn't have overlooked it so easily, but I guess she could. But he's making out with her and brings the other woman's name!!! Of course she gets mad, but before they can even fight about it properly, the house is going up in flames. But really it's not, because it's decent enough for them to spend the night in, and they cuddle all night. She's not ever really discussed between them again. How dismally stupid.

Then there was the whole mystery of where had Jack been for the last 5 years, only it was never really discussed either. He was a spy. That's about it. He doesn't explain himself really well, and Olivia never asks. There's a silly line about how she had faith in him, so he didn't really need to explain. Faith in a man who kicked you and his unborn child to the curb and never looked back? Nice. Then there was Jack's creepy cousin Gervaise, who is down right evil in the things he's done to her, but aside from Mimi the mysterious mistress spy killing him in the end, no one else gives him his just desserts. Not even Jack when he learns that Gervaise made it so Olivia had to sleep with him for her survival, or when he found out Gervaise tried twice to kill his son, the son he wasn't there to protect. I also thought how Lady Kate made such fast friends with Olivia at a ball where Olivia was a governess and hanging with the servants to be completely unrealistic. A duchess wouldn't think 'Hey, let's hang with the old biddies and governesses for some juicy gossip,' no matter how scandalous she is. Lady Bea's condition is wacky, strange and again, completely unrealistic, but I did love it. How can you not love someone who talks in riddles and idioms only because her brain can't handle regular words? It's almost like Jeopardy or Password, or some kooky regency game, and I loved playing along. But it was odd for her to shouting out random things. Lady Kate also adopts misfits as staff it seems, but nothing is really said about that. Earl Drake has a group of men, spies, he calls Drake's Rakes, but again, nothing is really said about it, even though it's the name of the series. Jack and Olivia live on the same estate in the epilogue, but don't get remarried for awhile, but it's not said how she's getting along in a society that hated her.

Jack never really seems like his own person, Olivia forgets all her troubles once she sees Jack, the author started out with an interesting premise but had too much other stuff going on to do it justice, I just couldn't get into this. I'll probably read one of this author, just to see if it was a fluke, but I'm gonna guess probably not.