TEST
Once in awhile, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale. And this is the heart of Tempt Me at Twilight. Poppy Hathaway wants a commonplace, gentle life in the countryside, yet she finds herself in a marriage to a driven man and living in a hotel in London. How is she to reconcile her dreams with her reality? How is she to find love and forge a new beginning with what life has handed to her?
Amelia, Beatrice, and Poppy Hathaway together with Amelia’s husband, Cam Rohan, are staying at the Rutledge Hotel for the London season. This is their third time at the hotel, but they’ve never set eyes on the elusive owner of the hotel, Harry Rutledge. He runs the hotel like a despotic ruler, fair but ruthless and efficient. The loyalty of his staff is unquestioned and they zealously protect his privacy.
One day, in desperate pursuit of Beatrice’s pet ferret, Poppy wanders unchaperoned into a short, hidden passageway leading off the business offices. There, she’s caught up in a brutal grip, her neck wrenched sharply to the side.
“You should know,” came a low, chilling voice close to her ear, “that with a jut a bit more pressure than this, I could snap your neck. Tell me your name and what you’re doing in here.”
And this is how Poppy meets Harry. Eventually, Harry relents and leads her into his extremely private curiosities room. Her expert knowledge about various objects in his collection utterly fascinates him as does her beauty; and for the first time, he badly wants a woman in his life. They meet again, when Poppy and animal-whisperer, Beatrice, rescue a foreign delegation’s prize macaque from the dumbwaiter. And Harry’s fascination with Poppy increases.
However, he is aware that the love of Poppy’s life is Michael Bayning, the scion of an upright and uptight peer. Bayning has been holding off paying his addresses to Poppy, because he keeps saying that he’s seeking an appropriate time to broach the topic of marriage to Poppy with his father. His father disapproves of the Hathaways and Bayning is a dutiful son. Eventually, we bows to his father’s decree and rejects Poppy.
Harry pounces on heartbroken Poppy and starts courting her. When they’re caught kissing on the terrace at a ball and are forced to marry, Harry gloats in private over his success in getting exactly what he wants: her! Being attracted to Harry and facing ostracization by the ton if she doesn’t marry him, Poppy bows to the inevitable, despite her family’s outrage at Harry for what they recognize was a deliberate action.
However, as she’s waiting to walk down the aisle at her wedding, a distraught Bayning rushes in to blurt out the truth to Poppy that Harry had engineered his father’s vehement refusal to allow their marriage. Poppy is horrified and is faced with a dilemma.
A lifetime with a man I can never trust. To marry a villain, or never to marry at all. To be Harry Rutledge’s wife, or to be an object of disgrace and to be propositioned by men who thought she was immoral or desperate.
Poppy chooses to keep her word, but warns Harry that she will never love him and will never forget that he took away the man she loved and put himself in his place. Harry confidently assures her that he still wants to marry her because he never wanted to be loved in the first place and no one has ever done so yet.
With this beginning, how are they to build their relationship into trust and into love?
Ms. Kleypas sets up the two protagonists as coming from opposite ends of the love-relationship spectrum. Poppy has been brought up in an environment full of affection and care, where her wants and needs have been safeguarded. Harry was brought up in deprivation, where no one cared for him. Poppy had parents and siblings who loved her; while Harry’s mother abandoned him and his father neglected him, to the point of locking up a five-year-old for two days in his room without food. (My heart stuttered at that and I started rooting for Harry unabashedly thence onwards.) Poppy is engaging, happy, and friendly, while Harry is taciturn, driven, and reclusive. Out of such disparity, Ms. Kleypas builds a believable HEA.
I had some quibbles about the over-familiarity between Harry and his employees, such as the housekeeper, chef, and assistant. However, I bought into it because of how deftly Ms. Kleypas wrote those characters, Poppy’s interactions with them, and their concerns and actions respecting her.
I found myself impatient with the plot device whereby Harry and Poppy are forced to marry. Clearly, Poppy did not get the memo that young, unmarried ladies should never go off with men they’re not related to onto darkened terraces at balls. Surely, there are other ways that compel a hero and heroine into a marriage of convenience other than being discovered in a compromising position by members of the ton? That aside, the marriage-of-convenience trope is handled well.
I went back and forth on the grade quite a bit as I was reading the book. On one hand, the story is tender and caring and hopeful; on the other, parts of it are too predictable and Poppy can be immature – but the romance succeeds despite her. Ms. Kleypas’s writing is very good – you can tell, you’re in the hands of an experienced writer. Eventually, I settled on a B. The Hathaway series is really strong overall, and Tempt Me at Twilight is a good addition to it.
Buy Now: A/BN/iB/K
Grade: B
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 20/09/17
Publication Date: 09/2009
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
I’m an amateur student of medieval manuscripts, an editor and proofreader, a choral singer, a lapsed engineer, and passionate about sunshine and beaches. In addition to reviewing books for All About Romance, I write for USA TODAY Happy Ever After and my blog Cogitations & Meditations. Keira Soleore is a pseudonym.
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Maybe it comes from reading this 3-years later but I am amazed that no-one comments on their first sexual encounter. Of course in the setting of the time, sex was a husband’s right – but do I have to read about what is essentially non-violent marital rape in a romance novel – and have it presented to me as if it was okay because he is a patient and good lover?
I didn’t read that way at all. On their wedding night Harry comes to Poppy and says that he probably will take no for an answer or words to that effect and she says something sarcastic back and says she would rather just have sex with him and “get it over” and that she only married him because it’s what was best for Michael – (the guy who didn’t think she was good enough to marry over his father’s objections until she was marrying Harry). Poppy doesn’t want to end the marriage and have it annulled and she chose to marry Harry even though she had the option to walk away with her family’s support before the wedding.
Poppy decides she will have sex with him but only “submit” because anything else seemed like a “betrayal” of Michael. With her consent Harry starts and though she tries not to respond she does, pulling his head down to her encouraging him, even though she vowed she wouldn’t respond. They don’t consummate the marriage then, Harry pleasures her then decides that he won’t do anything else that night.
A few weeks later when they do finally consummate the marriage it starts when Poppy literally tells him that if he works with Sir. Gerald she will leave him. She literally tells him “ You will do as I ask or I will leave you.” He says he needs to “try what he may be missing out on” and pulls her to him, her hands go up to his shoulders but rather than push him away she is pulling him to her. He initiates things and asks her to touch him and she willingly does as things progress she thinks that “she wanted what he was giving to her”.
At every point Poppy gives verbal and/or physical consent to their encounters. Out of stubbornness or loyalty she doesn’t want to like it, but she does because she is attracted to him and does like what they do.
Yeah–I don’t see assault here at all.
Harry is still an iffy hero–although I personally love him–because he betrays Poppy and forces her hand into a marriage she initially doesn’t want.
But once they’re married, Poppy calls the shots.
Poppy’s not my favorite heroine. I find her to be the least interesting Hathaway and I found her devotion to a guy who really didn’t respect her to be annoying at best, and kind of obnoxious the rest of the time.
Harry is iffy to be sure, but as he says, he didn’t make it impossible for Poppy and Michael to marry-just harder. Poppy has the option to marry Michael but she doesn’t because she knows he really doesn’t want to marry her -he’s just acting out of spite. He wouldn’t marry her before even though he had the money and independence to do so.
The fact that she acts like Michael is some kind of hero and she’s a martyr sacrificing herself for him really grated on me. If she had said “you’re both jerks and I’m making the best of a bad situation for myself” I’d have liked her and respected her more.
Agree. I like Harry more than I like Poppy who strikes me as an “I want to have my cake and eat that yummy pie overt here too” sort of lead.
Yes, I guess for all his faults I prefer Harry and I don’t get Poppy’s lingering attachment for spineless Michael.
And also if you flipped the scripts and it was the hero saying the things to the heroine that Poppy says to Harry people would be outraged no matter what the heroines business was.
Poppy is pretty and supposedly kind but that’s all we ever know of her. Compared to Helen or even Win who have to fight for things that matter to them even against very strong willed or pushy partners Poppy falls a bit flat IMHO.
Poppy is a womansplainer.
Lol.
Honestly, she constantly explains things to him. I’m the most anti-gun person on the planet but Poppy’s whole “I won’t have sex with you if you design a gun” makes me shake my head.
Poppy made me shake my head a lot. Maybe figure out a little bit about a guy before you marry him?
Too bad Poppy’s masterful scheme didn’t work out as Christopher still had to go fight in Crimea- *heavy sarcasm*.
I recall finding this a fairly mediocre Kleypas book, though she’s not an author I enjoy much anymore. But I also remember being a little surprised that so many of her books made the Top 100. This one definitely surprised me for being there.
Yeah, I agree. I read a fair amount of Kleypas when I first started reading romance, first because she was so widely acclaimed and then because I kept thinking that THIS book would be the one where I finally understood why, but she never did click for me, and this was the book that made me admit to myself that Kleypas and I just weren’t working out. I had so many problems with it. I did read the rest of the Hathaways series, but with the understanding that if none of the remaining books wowed me, that would be it. The rest of the series didn’t bother me as much as this one did, but I haven’t read her since.
Authors and books are so subjective and personal when it comes to taste. I’m a big Kleypas fan and even her “worst” books are still enjoyable to me and when her books really work, they are among my favorite reads. There are other authors that people adore like Susan Elizabeth Phillips that drive me crazy 9 times out of 10.
I always find it a bit annoying and silly when recommendations are made based on esoteric things like “if you liked this steampunk book, you will probably also like this steampunk author” because authors styles and voices are so unique. I think there is rarely a right or wrong answer if a book is well written. It’s like trying to argue one ice cream flavor is better than another, either you enjoy it or you don’t and there are always plenty more to choose from.
This is so true. Whenever anyone I don’t know extremely well asks me for a recommendation, I always freeze like a deer on a highway for exactly this reason. Knowing a sub-genre isn’t enough to make a good recommendation; you have to know things like what tropes a person likes AND how they like them handled, general writing style preferences, character and character arc preferences…. It’s the same with taking recommendations, too; you have to know how your tastes align with another person’s before you can evaluate whether their recommendation is likely to work for you.
(Also, hey, SEP is another author that never works for me! I always feel like I’m the only one.)
Yes that is all true for me as well. When someone says 50 Shades Of Grey is their favorite romance-and I couldn’t get through the first chapter because I didn’t like the writing style at all, I know my recommendations probably aren’t going to align with their tastes and that’s fine. But these are things you need to know. It’s like when I see someone refer to a Joanna Bourne book as “boring” (and after the red haze clears from my vision, lol, jk) I know that probably their five star desert island keeper choices aren’t for me. No harm no foul. This is why I find All About Romance and sites that have consistent named reviewers the most helpful. By now I know say Dabney’s taste or Caz’s taste and that if they really like something I feel pretty confident about putting money or time into that book. I also try to note names of other or newer reviewers who write something that really speaks to me so the next time they review something I read it knowing we have a similar taste for X,Y or Z. Confession: I find Goodreads an absolute blur of too many flashing gifs and OMG,SQUEE, OTP! Even if someone doesn’t like something (or especially if they don’t) knowing exactly why they didn’t can be as helpful as reading a gushing review, I just need to know WHY.
Lol and don’t feel bad about SEP, I got over my guilt about it and figure if we all loved every author then I would get literally no sleep vs the small amount I get now by staying up and reading pretty much every night.
I remember having high hopes for this book at the time and while I really love the Hathaway series, I think this is the weakest one of the bunch. Poppy is charming but she lacks a specific personality compared to “mother” Amelia, eccentric animal lover Beatrice or their tragic (yet turned comedian somehow?) brother. Win already had a book where she was the kind and gentle one so Poppy felt like another version of her with another man that cared for her yet couldn’t bring himself to admit it. The details are enjoyable but looking back the hero Harry seems like a watered down version of Winterborne. I’d rate it just about where you did. It enjoyable when you read it but not Kleypas’s best work.
I agree. This was definitely not Kleypas’s best work. Having read Winterborne, I find I like Harry more than Winterborne, but, in general, Kleypas’s heroes tend to blend into each other. They’re far more similar than individual.
I agree that there are a bunch of Kleypas heroes that definitely blend into each other, the hero from the first Wallflower book is that same entrepreneur type and I can never remember his name or anything about him. My two favorite Kleypas heroes are probably on the opposite ends of the spectrum in temperament. Derek Craven was one of the earlier heroes in Romancelandia who wasn’t a secret Duke or noble and he is still among my favorites despite his moodiness. It just worked for me. Cam Rohan is another favorite because he’s so consistently even tempered and pleasant and the opposite of the stern, brooding hero in so many books. I also liked the fact that even though Kleypas made all of his aristocratic friends unconcerned at all about his Gypsy heritage when he asked them if they would like one of their daughters to marry a Romany they bluntly said “no.” I know a lot of people like their heros super angsty, he seemed like the kind of guy a heroine would have a great life with.
I love Cam too. He’s incredibly sexy in the way he takes care of Amelia and yet he’s not overpowering or surly. (I can’t stand Merripen as a hero.)
Thank you for saying that! Maybe I’m just a crabby old lady now but I really cannot stand the brooding, crabby uncommunicative heros other readers love! Merripen needed a kick in the behind but I felt like at the time it was the hero everyone preferred from the first few books. Cam is just lovely in every way.
I really like Cam Rohan as well, even back when he was working with St. Vincent. My other favorite historical heroes are Derek Craven and St. Vincent. For contemporaries: I love her Travis brother series.
St. Vincent! Thank you- how could I forget him! So I guess I have a top three favorite Kleypas heroes, not top two. I can reread Devil In Winter endlessly. I think I can forgive the “villain” hero almost anything if he is charming and funny enough. People adore the Travis brothers and I am ashamed to admit while I enjoyed them, they didn’t wow me. Perhaps I need to try them again with fresh eyes.
I do hope you’ll give the Travises another try. Blue-Eyed Devil especially is my favorite of them all with Sugar Daddy running a second.
St. Vincent does a great villain to hero recovery. I loved how Kleypas showed that growth in him. What I also liked was that he doesn’t completely lose his deviltry and become a pussy cat.