What's Past is Prologue by Ann Galvia - Blog Tour - Review Post and Giveaway

Today the blog tour for Ann Galvia's newest Pride & Prejudice variation/sequel, What's Past is Prologue stops by here for my review.  There is also a generous giveaway that you can take part in! I'll start by sharing the blurb with you and them move on to what I thought of the book.

Falling for her Soldier by Ophelia London

Ellie Bell used to be a professional ballet dancer until an injury led to her retirement. Now she teaches ballet to young children. Ellie has spent the last 11 months focussing on her work as she's been on a self-imposed man-free year to try and break herself of her bad habits of dating sexy bad boys who will just break her heart. Ellie's parents are both dead and the only real family she has is her brother Sam.

Sam is a soldier, and he's currently home, sporting a large scar as a reminder of his last tour. He was very badly injured while on a mission, and, knowing that news might be slow to filter through, his fellow soldier and good friend, Charlie emails Ellie to let her know what has happened. Ellie replies, and she and Charlie strike up an email correspondence. They feel very comfortable with each other, and get quite close over email and share some quite personal things. But Charlie hasn't emailed her since the unit returned home.

Ellie goes to visit Sam at the Warrior Centre, a centre for service men where Sam receives counselling and generally hangs out with friends. There, Sam, who is unaware that the two have emailed, introduces Ellie to Charlie, but he introduces her by his nickname, Hunter. Ellie has heard all about this guy 'Big Game Hunter', the man who goes through women at a rate of knots, and she doesn't have a high opinion of him. The fact that she finds Hunter charming and attractive is all the more reason to keep her distance from him, given the fact that he's just the type of man she's decided to avoid.

Charlie has come home hoping to turn over a new leaf as regards his womanising and he's disappointed that his reputation has soured Ellie's view of him. Rather than ruin her memories of Charlie he decides to try and improve her view of Hunter before he tells her the truth. He decides to volunteer at the centre, as Ellie does, and in addition, they work together on a fundraiser. But will it be enough?

This was a fairly enjoyable romance and very easy reading, but I found it a little frustrating that the characters would say they weren't going to do x and then go straight off and do it! There was also the issue of secret keeping. In real life, are you going to be able to keep your identity a secret in this way? Considering Charlie's family and friends live in the area, I can't believe he would have thought it was possible for more than a day or two.

On the plus side, I liked the healing side of this story. Charlie thought he was OK with what he'd been through on his last tour, but he had just been suppressing it. Similarly, Ellie still had lingering elements of resentment at the injury that ended her career.

There are no sex scenes in this book, but they are thinking about it :)

I had a suspicion while reading that this was part of a series, and it is, but it reads fine as stand-alone, I don't think reading this out of order is likely to spoil the others for you unless it's a surprise who ends up together. Book 1 in the series is called Playing at Love and features Charlie's sister, Tess. Book 2 is Speaking of Love which has friends of his, Mackenzie and Rick. I will certainly add those to my wishlist.

A Duchess Enraged by Alicia Quigley

I was first attracted to reading this book by the fact that according to the blurb it is inspired by real-life events. This is pretty much what it says:

‘The novel is based on actual history, that of the Earl of March and Lady Sarah Cadogan. The Earl of Cadogan married his daughter, Lady Sarah Cadogan, to the Duke of Richmond’s son, the Earl of March, sight unseen, as a way of settling an enormous gambling debt he owed the Duke. They were married the day after the agreement was made, and the infuriated Earl of March departed on his Grand Tour immediately thereafter, not to return for four years.’

According to Wikipedia, the bride was only 13 years old at the time and the groom 18.  Obviously arranged marriages were not uncommon, but this seems really sudden and very unfair to both of them. I was pleased to see that the real life couple actually had a happy marriage, as far as can be told from surviving letters. Other snippets of interest are that Lady Sarah shared my birthday, and that her husband, Charles the second Duke of Richmond, is now best remembered for being an important early patron of cricket! The picture here is a portrait of the couple.

In ‘A Duchess Enraged’ the couple in question are renamed to Allegra and Adam. I think the man who lost the fortune has been changed to be the groom’s father here. Allegra’s father, in lieu of receiving £20,000, offers to have Adam as a son-in-law instead. This has the benefit for the Duke that Adam won’t come back from his Grand Tour with an unsuitable wife in tow. Allegra is extremely frightened at being made to marry and Adam is livid with rage. He finds her unattractive and is completely uninterested in her. The plan is for her to return to her family’s home and await his return from the Grand Tour.

‘Any hopes she had cherished of possibly striking up a friendship with her husband withered away. This marriage, it seemed, was doomed from the start.’

The story then fast forwards four years. Adam’s father has now died, meaning that he is now the Duke. He has a very beautiful mistress, a widow called Lady Lousia Manning, who is hopeful that he will have his unconsummated marriage dissolved and make her his duchess. Adam’s mother has been asking him to go home and take up his life there, and he goes – taking his mistress with him. He sets her up in a house, as was common with a kept woman.

For the first few nights back in London Adam doesn’t go home, but he accompanies Lady Manning to a function. While she gambles at the card table, he wanders about, and a very beautiful lady catches his eye. She is happy to flirt with him, recognising him as her husband. He has no idea who she is, at this point. He finds out the next day, and is hypocritically unhappy about his wife behaving in such a way. She is unhappy that he is openly keeping a mistress. And so sets up the story, with Adam finding Allegra unmanageable and stubborn, Allegra trying to show Adam that he can’t control her while struggling with feelings of attraction towards him, Adam’s mother and sister trying to sort out their differences and other parties trying to cause trouble between them and force them apart.

This book is available in two versions – ‘A Duchess Enraged; An After Dark Version’ which has sex scenes, and ‘A Most Unusual Situation: A Traditional Georgian Romance’, which doesn’t. From the reviews on Amazon UK it seemed as though there wasn’t much in the way of sex scenes so I got the 'after dark' version but to be honest, I think I’d have been better off with the version with none, there were too many scenes for my liking, the style of them wasn't really to my taste, and there is literally a bodice-ripping scene, which I found brutish rather than romantic.

I was hoping for this book to deal with the couple’s unusual situation, and show how they worked through their differences and build a relationship but I didn’t really get that from this book. They just seemed to really lust after each other and that was the main driving force of their relationship. Allegra was a bit childish and naive, but she was still only 18, so that wasn’t too hard to deal with, although she made some tiresomely stupid decisions. I really wasn’t fond of Adam. Firstly, he is a bossy alpha-male type, which isn’t the type of hero I'm fond of, but the real issue was his double standards. Both his wife and his mistress are sex-mad. In his mistress he interprets this as her devotion to him, but in his wife he decides that she is untrustworthy and will very likely be taking lovers left, right and centre. He never applies this logic to his mistress’s likely behaviour, just his wife’s. It was just completely illogical. Both Adam and Allegra are also very gullible.

Some of the secondary characters were interesting, such as Adam's sister Caroline, and a beau of Allegra's, Lord Gresham, but neither of the main protagonists came alive for me here; I felt the characters needed to be fleshed out more. I felt like this was such a missed opportunity, because the bare bones of this story is fascinating and I’d have liked to see the characters come to life, and their relationship grow and develop.

Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope

Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope is the first book of ‘The Austen Project’, Harper Collins’ project to pair ‘authors of global literary significance with Jane Austen’s six complete works to write their own unique take on Jane Austen’s novels’. The fanfare in the media accompanying this series surprised me a little, when you consider how many books there are already in the Austenesque genre, albeit of variable quality, but I’m not going to complain about some bestselling authors having a go! Please note that I am working on the assumption that you’re familiar with the plotline of Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen; if you’re unfamiliar with it there may be potential spoilers ahead.

I haven’t read anything by Joanna Trollope previously but I know she’s a well respected author so I had high hopes. Here, the Dashwood family had been living for the past decade or so at Norland, the home of Mr Dashwood’s rich uncle. Although the uncle welcomed them with open arms, he was traditional in outlook, and partly due to Mr Dashwood never marrying the girl’s mother, Belle and partly to keep the estate together, the estate has been left to John, who is Henry Dashwood’s son from his marriage. Henry died in hospital following an asthma attack, and while he was ill in hospital he asked John to look after his girls. However, John’s ideas of looking after aren’t what his father had in mind.

In Sense & Sensibility Mr Dashwood leaving his widow and children to the care of his son was understandable, especially if the estate was entailed. He may have had very little to leave them that wasn’t tied to the estate, but in this day and age that is less likely. In fact, Elinor reflects:

‘Was it an adventure not to leave a responsible will that would secure the future of the person you’d had three daughters with – or was it fecklessness?’

I couldn’t help but understand this point of view, although there are plenty of people who just trust to chance for their family’s future. It does seem fairly irresponsible, particularly knowing that your family is essentially living off the hospitality of a relative.

The Dashwood ladies are not left entirely penniless though, although they seem to think that they are. They are left ‘only’ £200,000!  This is after being allowed to live in a stately home, gratis for over a decade. This kind of attitude makes it hard to sympathise with their situation. For most people in the UK this would not be an insignificant inheritance but they are unimpressed with it. Even being given a 4 bedroom cottage to live in for low rent doesn’t impress them. Instead they lament that it isn’t more picturesque. These are some deeply ungrateful ladies, Elinor excepted.

Elinor is studying, doing a degree in architecture, but she has to give it up. I’m not sure it was ever made clear why. I would have assumed the most likely scenario would have been that she’d get a loan and some student accommodation for the last year but she doesn’t even seem to think about it, instead resigning herself to the thought that she’ll have to get a job. The fact she didn’t even think about continuing with her degree surprised me, as surely her earning power would be greater with a degree in architecture? As it happens, Elinor lands herself a job earning a respectable £1,500 per month, though Marianne (who earns, and intends to earn, a big fat zero) deems this a pittance.

It doesn’t seem to cross the minds of Belle or Marianne that they could possibly work. Belle hasn’t worked in years, but you’d think having a family would motivate her to think about it, at the very least. It doesn’t, and she selfishly allows Elinor to sacrifice her degree rather than lift a finger herself. Marianne can’t work, because she has asthma and we are told she has a tendency to depression. I am not hugely familiar with the condition of asthma, but as far as I am aware most asthmatics are able to work. As for depression, the particular depressive symptoms that Marianne suffered from were described, but you never saw them. Instead you just saw her being vastly self-centred, for example, doing things she knew were likely to set off an asthma attack because she was so moved by whatever emotion she was experiencing.

Elinor’s family accept her self-sacrifice without question or appreciation.  To me, this made them far more unlikeable than their Sense & Sensibility counterparts. Certainly Austen's Elinor took a lead in settling them in their new life when strictly speaking her mother should have been doing it, however, what did she give up to do so? She would have been going to live with them anyway. I couldn’t decide whether Joanna Trollope's Belle and Marianne were selfish, which is what led Elinor to have to sacrifice for them, or whether she enabled their behaviour. If she’d left a vacuum, would Belle have stepped up to the task? I think people are expected to stand on their own feet more these days.

Another thing which didn’t work for me in a modern setting was people’s reactions to Marianne. She is ravishingly beautiful, which makes men fall over themselves to protect her. I find this unlikely, and more than a bit sexist; I don’t think most men are dying to be knights in shining armour for vulnerable ladies! Her beauty also allows her to be childish, self-indulgent, deeply selfish and generally pretty obnoxious. She behaves like a surly teen. Such behaviour is understandable in Margaret, who is so much younger, but in somebody of Marianne’s age it’s just weird. Yes, Marianne in Austen’s original book was quite self-centred, but having grown up in a much more sheltered environment it’s more understandable, and she was a much more likeable character. To be fair, Marianne does show growth of character by the end of the novel, and is much improved for it.

Once the Dashwoods move to Devon we meet some new characters. Sir John in particular is a scream, being as thick skinned as a rhino. He seems to find Marianne’s immature rudeness hilarious. Which is just as well. We also meet John Willoughby. I loved his introduction:

‘Margaret could see that on the scale of hotness, he registered fairly close to a full ten. He was – amazing.’

We also meet Sir John’s wife, and his mother-in-law, Mrs Jennings. This part was another oddity; these days I don’t think somebody would see late teenage/early 20s girls as a likely match for a mid thirties man, at least until they got to know them. Certainly there are relationships which have these age gaps, but people in general would be less likely to matchmake between people with this kind of age gap. There were a few references to Colonel Brandon liking young people which made him seem almost like a bit of a perve, especially as he is quite old in his outlook, and Marianne is extremely childish. Obviously in the early 1800s a bride who was late teens marrying a man in his mid thirties would have been much more common.

The main thing that struck me as anachronistic about this book was the characters attitudes to marriage; I would say that most teenagers living in Britain today (with the exception of people of strong religious belief) wouldn’t expect to marry before the age of 25-30 or may not plan to marry at all. However, Elinor, Marianne and Lucy Steele all seem to think there is nothing unusual about marrying at the age of 20 or so. It was very strange, as was Elinor’s attitude towards Edward’s secret engagement:

‘I don’t know if he wants to be with Lucy or not, but he’s not going to let her down because he’s been let down himself by so many people all his life that he can’t bring himself to do it to someone else, whatever the cost to him is.’

Personally, I think attitudes have changed greatly in this regard. Firstly, it is not dishonourable for a man to break off an engagement. Secondly, very few people would expect an engagement made between teenagers to be morally binding. Thirdly, I would say that it would be the prevalent view that it is less honourable to marry somebody who you don’t love than to break off the engagement and give them a chance to find somebody who really loves them.

In summary, this book didn’t quite work for me. I think for the story to work in a modern setting more changes needed to be made. The attitudes of the characters were strangely outdated, which made some of the behaviour implausible, and in some cases changed your perception of the characters. I haven't read any other modern updates of Sense & Sensibility, but I will definitely try to; I am hopeful there is a way to make the story work both as a retelling and as a modern book in its own right.

One Week Girlfriend Series by Monica Murphy

I read the first two parts of this series, One Week Girlfriend and Second Chance Boyfriend last year and I really enjoyed them.  They tell the story of Drew (who isn’t in reality how he’s been drawn) and Fable (who isn’t like the stories told about her – do you see what the author did there?!) who meet under unusual circumstances, but turn out to be just what the other needs. The series continues with Three Broken Promises which tells the story of Jen and Colin, who Fable meets through work, a novella completing Drew and Fable’s story called Drew + Fable Forever and a story about Fable’s teenage brother Owen which came out this month, Four Years Later.  I wanted to find out about Owen’s story because I was so fond of him in the first two books so I thought I’d finish off reading the whole series, and here are my thoughts on each instalment:

One Week Girlfriend: College student Drew hires Fable to pose as his girlfriend for a week on a trip home. On paper, Drew has a brilliant life; he's rich, does well in college, football team star and is hot to boot but he has some major issues. The poor guy is pretty lonely and unloved, has some serious guilt, control issues and has been used pretty badly. He doesn't want a real girlfriend as he's unprepared to let anybody past his defences and he asks Fable, who has a reputation as the town's easy lay to pose as his girlfriend rather than somebody else because he knows she won't expect anything more from him, relationship-wise.

Fable has her own problems - she is having to pick up the slack from her alcoholic mother both financially and as a stable parent figure to her younger brother. She is also very unloved, and although she sleeps around a bit to escape from her life for a brief time, her reputation has been exaggerated.

Spending time together proves more problematic than either Drew or Fable had anticipated, they have some serious chemistry and the fact that they both have issues helps them understand each other and break through each other's barriers but neither are sure how much is an act for the week and how much is real and whether either of them are capable of having a relationship at this time.

I really enjoyed this story although I felt sorry for both Drew and Fable for the issues they had but I felt that there was some good progression with their problems, particularly for Drew.  

Second Chance Boyfriend - We pick up a couple of months after the first book. Drew has run away from his feelings again, and is missing Fable badly. He realises how stupid he has been to throw away a relationship which could really have helped him work through his demons and when he meets again with Fable he seizes the chance to try again. If you've read the first book you will know that these two both have some serious issues and baggage and they continue their improvement into the realms of "normal" rather than remaining messed up. We also get to see some more of Adele (HATE her, she turns my stomach!) and more of Fable's brother Owen, who I liked, I thought he was a really believable character. I am probably not selling this book well, saying it's all about healing etc, but it's a heartwarming book rather than a soppy tale, both Drew and Fable are such likeable characters and so good for each other that I really enjoyed seeing their progress towards a happy ending.

Three Broken Promises – I thought Jen and Colin were interesting secondary characters in Second Chance Boyfriend, we knew they went way back, and that Jen had feelings for him and that Colin had some demons, so I was glad to see that they were getting a book of their own.  Colin was the childhood best friend of Jen’s brother, who died overseas serving in the military. Jen’s family fell apart after Danny’s death and Jen ended up in a bad situation that Colin saved her from.  He gave her a job and a roof over her head and though he cares for her deeply he doesn’t want to pursue a relationship with her because he feels too guilty – for her brother’s death, the family breakdown that led to the situation she got into and he also doesn’t feel he is good relationship material and Jen deserves better.  Jen feels trapped; she loves Colin but he won’t open up to her and although she misses her brother she feels it’s time to move on with her life.  She also has some secrets from her past which she is afraid are catching up with her. Jen can’t see Colin ever letting her in so she hands in her notice at work and tells him that in 4 weeks she’ll be moving away, putting the ball in his court – if he wants her to stay he’ll have to do something about it.

While I enjoyed this book there were aspects I found frustrating.  First of which was Jen – she wasn’t what I expected. I thought she was more like Fable, who is feisty, independent and capable, but Jen is frustratingly naive – she says that she is always dependent on somebody but that is just as well, as anytime she does something of her own instigation she makes bad decisions and takes silly risks.  I also felt like there was too much time spent on the ‘will they – won’t they’ and the resolution of other threads, such as Colin’s fractured relationship with his father was tied up too quickly.  Still, I enjoyed this story, and I liked seeing some small glimpses of Drew and Fable, which whets the appetite for the novella tying up their story.

Drew + Fable Forever

We first met Drew and Fable in One Week Girlfriend and saw them take on their issues in Second Chance Boyfriend, working to overcome their obstacles and becoming happier than either of them thought was possible.  I loved both Drew and Fable from the previous books and I was looking forward to seeing a bit more of them.  If you hadn’t read the first two books you could pick up this novella and it would make sense because some of the main events from the previous books are referred to, but you would miss out on all the detail, I would definitely recommend reading this after reading the first two books. 

  

We start off about a year after the end of SCB.  Drew is now a professional American Football player and he and Fable are still very much in love but theirs is not a carefree existence because they have to spend a lot of time apart, as Drew has to train with his team in another town and Fable can’t go with him because she has to stay in home because of her responsibility for her brother. Owen is still in school and they don’t want to disrupt his schooling.  We see a number of different events in Drew and Fable’s lives in the near future as they work towards their happy ever after.  This novella isn’t so much a story as more of an extended epilogue, following Drew and Fable through the next few years.  The novella is very, very sweet, and if you already know the couple and what they’ve worked through together then you are on their side hoping for a happy ending, but if you prefer a bit more conflict and tension you may feel it falls a bit flat.  However, since I am very fond of the couple I really enjoyed it!

Four Years Later

Owen is Fable’s brother from One Week Girlfriend and Second Chance Boyfriend and I was very fond of him from those books, when he was a foul-mouthed teen who poor Fable was trying to keep from going off the rails.  Owen’s mother is an alcoholic and drug user who never stepped up to the plate for her kids. Fable had to step into that role, and her anger at that, and trying to minimise the distress and damage it caused Owen left her with very little sympathy for her mother, especially when she abandoned her children.  Fable has cut her mother out of her life without a backward glance. Owen was always more forgiving towards her and now, four years later Owen’s mother has come back into his life, asking for handouts all the time. He knows he should tell her where to go but deep down he still craves his mother’s love. 

Owen is living in a pretty good situation; his brother in law, Drew, is doing well in his career as a pro American footballer and he’s bought Owen a house to live in and a car.  Owen is potentially good enough to become a pro footballer too, but he needs to keep his grades up to stay on the team, and that is where one problem lies – he’s been cutting class so he can work more at his part time job so he can keep giving his mother money.  Owen has also been turning to drink and drugs to curb his anxieties, which obviously could lead to him losing his place on the team.  Owen agrees to have a tutor to help his grades in English Literature and creative writing, and this means he meets Chelsea.

Chelsea is a bit of a lonely soul. Academically she’s pretty gifted and she was advanced a few years, meaning she made few friends amongst people her age or her older classmates. Her family is dysfunctional, with a mother who has done her best to indoctrinate Chelsea to be independent and stay clear of men while simultaneously behaving in the exact opposite way, allowing Chelsea’s father to walk all over her.  Chelsea’s father is currently in prison, which is something she is trying to keep secret, but due to this Chelsea is on a tight budget, hence the tutoring, and a part time job too.  She is immediately attracted to Owen, but he has heartbreaker written all over him and so she does her best to keep her distance.

Owen has some pretty strong feelings for Chelsea from the beginning too, but he needs the tutoring to raise his grades, doesn’t want to scare Chelsea off and doesn’t feel like he’s good enough for her.  These two are a bit like chalk and cheese, he’s foul-mouthed, promiscuous and a casual drug using party boy and she is all work and no play, pretty straitlaced and she is very inexperienced with the opposite sex but the more time they spend together the more they like one another. 

These two are so sweet together; the differences between them balance each other out really nicely, she loosens up a bit and he cleans up his act.  Not everything goes smoothly for these two.  I was actually expecting more obstacles, but these two don’t have the same type of big issues that Drew and Fable had to overcome.  Reminiscent of Drew, Owen also writes poetry for his lady, but rather than the sweet poems that Drew writes Owen’s are a little more earthy. 

“I am so lucky. He’s so thoughtful, sweet and funny.  He writes me poems.  Dirty ones, but I don’t care. They’re beautiful.  He’s beautiful.  Not perfect, but he’s mine.  And I am his.”

Awww! I thought this was a lovely way to end the One Week Girlfriend series, I really enjoyed this book.

Emma & Knightley by Rachel Billington

This is a sequel to Jane Austen’s Emma, beginning around 18 months into the Knightley’s marriage and all is not well in Highbury.  The story begins really quite depressingly; news of a death, and the realisation that Emma and Knightley are emotionally not very close – they have kept up their respective roles of spoiled child and advisor. The story then moves onto a bankruptcy and another death.  I had to take a break from this book and come back to it, misery piles upon misery and through it all Emma and Knightley get further and further apart. 

At the end of ‘Emma’ I felt that Emma had matured somewhat and gained a better level of understanding but here the character has reverted to the clueless character of two years before. It is also disappointing to see Mr Knightley constantly pulling away from his wife, he is hardly ever there, and when he is he’s usually leaving!  Since Mr Knightley provides Emma with so little friendship it is comprehendible that she wouldn’t confide in him but I don’t feel that would be in line with Emma’s character, I think in the circumstances in the story Emma would have felt obliged to tell him of certain events. There was also a reliance on the couple mistaking the other’s feelings in the same way that was cleared up in ‘Emma’ and I felt it was unlikely that they’d both do this again.  Plus all this was cleared up in literally five pages, and there must have been so many opportunities for this to be cleared up much more quickly, it seemed unlikely to me that it would have dragged on for so long.

There were some things I liked very much about this book; the style of the writing is really very good, it’s witty and ironic and it reminded me of the original book. Emma’s sister Isabella is a very minor character in ‘Emma’ and here she is fleshed out much more, which I thought was done really well.  There are also some original characters, most notably Mrs Philomena Tidmarsh, who is an intelligent widow who befriends Emma for a mixture of reasons.  However, despite all these positives, the sad subject matter and bad state of the relationship between Emma and Knightley, which I felt was unlikely, meant that I found this book hard going to read. 

Caroline’s Comeuppance by Tess Quinn

This is a story in two volumes, focussing on Caroline Bingley, after the events of Pride and Prejudice. After P&P I didn’t have strong feelings either way on Caroline.  Although I am by no means her biggest fan, in P&P her biggest crime is being a social-climbing snob. For all we know, she may have genuinely felt that Jane didn’t care for Charles Bingley and been saving her brother from unwittingly making a marriage of unequal affection.  I feel that Caroline was one of the characters who had a comeuppance in Pride and Prejudice, which was to see Mr Darcy get married to Elizabeth, and to be fair, Caroline actually swallows her pride and pays off ‘every arrear of civility’ towards Elizabeth and tries to make things up with Jane. Often in Austen-inspired stories Caroline is portrayed very harshly, so I was interested to see what type of comeuppance the author here had planned for her.

Volume 1 deals with the time before Charles and Jane marry.  Caroline comes in to Hertfordshire at her brother’s command; he wants her to show support for his marriage. However, Caroline has another agenda, realising that this is the last chance she would have to stop Fitzwilliam Darcy from marrying Elizabeth.  In this story, Caroline genuinely loves Mr Darcy and she feels that she almost deserves him for all her years of diligence in attending to her lessons in being a proper lady. You would think that this would engender the reader’s pity for her, but it doesn’t because she is so unlikeable, clueless and ruthless in her approach to trying to break up the relationship. Obviously her scheming doesn’t come to much and after a run of embarrassments she comes to realise that her perceptions of people were shallow in the extreme.  This volume was pretty good, it got the emotions going, even if it was mostly negative feelings towards Miss Bingley!

Volume 2 is quite a bit longer.  Here we see Caroline after the weddings.  She is now in London, living with her brother and Jane. The story begins with Caroline leaving an evening event alone and getting caught up in some intrigue.  She gets abducted by somebody calling himself only ‘Sir’ who later turns out to be a spy.  Following this meeting Sir contacts her again and Caroline agrees to go on adventures with him.  I had a few issues with this volume.  Firstly, societal norms of the time – I don’t think that Caroline would have left an event unescorted, and I certainly don’t think that as a woman, particularly an unmarried woman, she’d have stayed in London alone when her brother and his wife went to visit Hertfordshire. Going off unescorted with Sir (aside from the initial abduction, which she obviously has no control over) would have been so risky that I don’t think Caroline would have done it.  As a social climber of many years standing the risk would have just been too great.

Secondly, the relationship with ‘Sir’.  I don’t buy it.  What on earth he sees in her aside from her physical charms is a mystery.  It is obvious that he sees her flaws, but Caroline in this story has no good points in her character. Since ‘Sir’ is a spy he might find some of her manipulative societal skills useful but how that would serve them in a relationship when they are not out in society is less clear.

There was an aspect of this story that I found a real shame, and that was that we see little to no development of Caroline’s character, she begins the story as a manipulative, unpleasant woman, and that is how she remains, and she is rewarded for it.  I think Caroline was an intelligent woman who could have either found somebody to care for and potentially soften her attitudes, or she’d meet somebody who would have advanced her in society and she’d become a society wife, but in this latter scenario I don’t see how her husband could care for her at all unless he was unaware of her true nature. Here she is cemented in her awfulness but with the love of an intelligent, decent man who knows what she is and it just seems quite unlikely, and pretty sad for him to have knowingly made such a bad bargain. I also felt that this second volume didn't flow that well, there were a number of flashbacks which I feel interrupted the timeline.  I much preferred the first volume to the second.

The Boss's Fake Fiancée by Inara Scott

Melissa has recently started working for Garth's company.  She'd moved back to the area after her last relationship had broken up due to her ex-boyfriend's infidelity.  This was particularly crushing for Melissa because she'd moved away from all her family and friends to be with and work for the boyfriend, Mark, and came home to find him cheating on her with her only friend in the area. It's taken Melissa a long time to get over it, but she loves her new job and is pretty attracted to her new boss, who is known as 'the human calculator' because he shows so little emotion.  Garth is brilliant at his job, but intensely private and is the first to admit that he doesn't do relationships.

Melissa is getting ready to watch Garth's new presentation at an event when she spots Mark.  He has the cheek to approach her and pityingly ask her how she is coping.  To annoy Mark, Melissa hints that she and Garth are in a relationship.  Unfortunately for Melissa, Mark embellishes the story, and passes it off to the press, and within a day or two there is a story proclaiming that the Human Calculator has become engaged to Melissa.

Garth has very few people in his life that he cares about - one of them is his grandmother, who brought him up after the death of his parents.  Garth's grandmother is elderly, and is fighting off pneumonia. She is overjoyed at the thought of him getting married and he doesn't have the heart to tell her the truth until she is stronger.  He is also hoping to land a funding partner and avoid any type of scandal so he persuades Melissa to play along as his fiancée.  Although both of them are clear that they don't want a relationship, neither is prepared for the level of attraction they feel.

I only realised after finishing the book that it's book 2 in a series, so I think it reads pretty well as a standalone.  I have a guilty weakness for marriage of convenience and fake fiancée scenarios, even though the ending is usually assured and they are often formulaic!  However, this was quite a fresh take on it.  I liked the fact that both of them genuinely weren't on the lookout for a relationship, having both been burned in the past and not wanting to mix business with pleasure so they both fight it. In Garth's case there were also a few other factors preventing him from pursuing a relationship with anybody. I was really enjoying the book but I felt it was let down somewhat by the ending, which seemed unlikely and unrealistic, I couldn't imagine most people behaving like that, and it seemed particularly out of character for Garth.  I thought it would have been far more romantic and likely if it had been much more private.  On the whole, despite the slightly disappointing ending, if you enjoy fake fiancée stories, this is probably worth a read.