Spoilers in these reviews.
I'm reviewing Your Wicked Ways, A Wild Pursuit, How to Be a Wallflower, and Three Weeks with Lady X, all by Eloisa James, in the order that I read them, and also from best to -- uh, still good but not best.
Your Wicked Ways stands a lot of Regency romance tropes on their heads. The outline of the story is traditional enough: heroine Helene is estranged from her husband Rees. Helene lives with her mother, and Rees lives in the family home with an opera singer. Helene wants to get divorced and have a baby. Rees refuses to grant her a divorce, so she decides to have an affair so she can get pregnant. Rees gets wind of this, demands that he be the father of her child, and insists that she move back into his house -- with his opera singer still living there. It's not really a spoiler to say that they still love each other and that they reconcile.
But . . . but . . . but . . .
This story is so unconventional.
Most strikingly, there's a subplot involving Rees's brother Tom and a waif. The waif is an orphan the brother rescues from an inn where she has been sleeping on the kitchen floor under the supervision of the inn's cook. The cook shoves her at Tom and tells him to give the child a better life before it's too late (meaning, before she is sexually assaulted).
We see this plot all the time in Regency romances. Throughout the book the waif will say cute, wise things, show great loyalty, and probably find a lost puppy. The main characters adopt the waif and raise her as their own child, and everyone lives happily ever after.
Not so here.
Although the waif is an orphan, she thinks of the cook as her mother and she wants to go back to her. The opera singer, Lina (and, yes, there is an unpleasantly incesty subplot here), is disgusted that Tom has ripped the waif away from the only home she has known. They manage to return the waif to the cook, and give the waif a bit of money in a sneaky way. Since the cook will certainly return the money, they make sure that the cook and the waif will not be able to track them down. There will be no ongoing relationship. Lina will not eventually sponsor the waif for a debut season. I loved this so much.
Another topsy turvy plot: Helene and Rees are both passionate about writing music. Regency romances are full of musicians and artists -- mostly women whose outstanding talent is unacknowledged because of their gender. Some of these characters actually spend a bit of time between getting dressed for balls working at their craft.
But Helene and Rees are those rare characters in whom it is shown the true price of artistic genius: it's not a casual hobby, its a calling that requires work, focus, and more work. The partnership between Helene and Rees is not merely romantic; they first fell in love over their mutual admiration for each other's talent, and that talent and desire to work together is what brings them back together.
Finally, the sex in this book is delightful. In a typical Regency romance the woman, whether or not a virgin, in inexperienced and has no knowledge that sex can be fun. This is true of Helene. But unlike most Regencies, hero Rees starts out terrible at sex. He has never been interested in bringing a woman pleasure and he simply does not have any skills. Rees and Helene learn together what good sex is. And that's the best sex of all.
A Wild Pursuit, which has a lot of the same characters and is set a year or so before Your Wicked Ways, is a very different sort of book. It's basically a madcap comedy set at house party. There are too many characters to keep track of, even though I already knew most of them from Your Wicked Ways. There's the pregnant scandalous widow, and the scandalous young unmarried woman, and Helene from Your Wicked Ways, and at one point all of them are either pretend-engaged to or pretend-sleeping with or actually in love with the same male character. And then there's another male character who one of them is actually in love with. And an aunt who I think has a male hanger-on, but I'm not sure. And various mothers of the three main female characters. Since I really couldn't keep the characters straight, eventually I just gave up and went along for the very fun ride.
How to be a Wallflower is well-written and charming, but slight of plot and conflict. Heroine Cleo and hero Jake meet when they get into a bidding war over a theater costumer's shop. That dispute fizzles away. Jake likes Cleo so he moves into the hotel where she is staying. They fall in love and become lovers. Cleo has to realize that she is not like her slutty mother and is therefore worthy of getting married. Jake waits for her to come to that realization. There are some opportunities for random kidnappings, but thank goodness they don't materialize. They get married, and Jake keeps his promise to allow (a necessity in Regency England) Cleo to continue to own and run her business. The end.
Three Weeks with Lady X is good enough. Heroine India (Lady X for complicated reasons) has had to make her own way in the world since her flower-children-like parents died when she was a teenager. She puts the houses of rich people in order, from redecorating to hiring staff. Hero Thorn needs his new country house brought up to snuff so he can impress the mother of a debutante he hopes to marry. Sparks ensue, yada yada yada.
All of James's books are well-written and well-crafted, and the story of India and Thorn was no exception -- except perhaps for an idiotically dangerous grand gesture Thorn makes at the end. But I was much more taken by the subplot about Laetitia, the debutante. Everyone thinks of her as stupid and dull. It turns out she is merely cowed by her overbearing mother and that she suffers from what today we know as dyslexia. Her subplot is charming and deserved its own book.
Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited and in paperback. Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.
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