Beauty Like The Night

TEST

From reading some of the comments posted to the AAR Message Boards, I know that there are readers who miss the long leisurely historical romances that were the norm back in the days when Jennifer Wilde was writing. I cut my romance reading teeth on those and, while I do love a quick read, there is something wonderful about a long, intense book that wraps you in its reading spell. Liz Carlyle’s Beauty Like the Night is such a book. I was engrossed far into the night and didn’t regret losing sleep at all – I simply did not want to stop reading.

<!– var browName = navigator.appName; var SiteID = 1; var ZoneID = 4; var browDateTime = (new Date()).getTime(); if (browName=='Netscape') { document.write('‘); document.write(”); } if (browName!=’Netscape’) { document.write(‘‘); document.write(”); } // –>

Camden Rutledge, Lord Treyhern has a legacy of licentiousness. His late father was a rake-hell who dragged the family name through the mud. Cam reacted to his father’s exploits by becoming almost prudish, and virtuous to the core. Cam married, unhappily, and his wife apparently committed suicide, leaving him with a daughter Ariane. Ariane had been a cheerful little girl until her mother’s death when she quit speaking. The doctors think she is mad, but Cam refuses to believe them and sends for Helene de Sevres, a governess who has a reputation for being able to help troubled children.

When the governess arrives, Cam is thunderstruck to find out that she is Helen Middleton. When Cam and Helene were young teens, her mother had had an affair with Cam’s father. During that summer, the two young people were together almost constantly and they had developed a tender friendship. Both of them hated their parent’s behavior and they both longed for stability, and permanance instead of being dragged from person to person and sensation to sensation. The liason between Helene’s mother and Cam’s father did not last, but the tie between Helene and Cam did. When they see each other, they are both swamped with old feelings and emotions with which they are not comfortable.

There are many plot threads in Beauty Like the Night, and lots of secondary characters. There is Cam’s brother who looks like he is going to go the way of their late father, the local rector who is handsome as a golden angel and looks to court Helene, and Joan, the woman whom Cam is supposed to marry, although they are not at all suited for each other. We have the mystery of Cam’s wife’s death to solve and why that incident should have caused Ariane’s sudden loss of speech. There is much, much more – Beauty Like The Night has plot enough for a couple of novels, yet all the characters and all the threads are integral to the book and they come together at the end for a very satisfying conclusion.

By far the best thing about this book is the two main characters. I was enthralled by Cam and Helene from their first appearance. Alfred Hitchcock said his favorite characters were those whose outward coolness hid a passionate core. This describes Cam and Helene perfectly. Virtue does not equal coldness, and Helene and Cam are both warm and loving people. She has channelled all her passions to the ill children she has worked with and he has devoted his passion to his daughter and to restoring the good name of the family. Both of them had been each other’s one and only – they both know it, but seeing how passion had ruined their parents, they are wary. And yet the bond between them can’t be denied.

Beauty Like the Night is beautifully written. The prose is lush without being purple and filled with descriptions of people and places. I know that some readers don’t like that, but I do and it gave me vivid mental pictures of the people and places that more streamlined writing does not. There are not a lot of love scenes in the book, but the ones that are, are warm and passionate and worthy to be in the Luscious Love Scene Hall of Fame.

Liz Carlyle is fast becoming one of my favorite writers. She has a talent for delineating male characters who are passionate and Byronic, yet immediately sympathetic – ultra masculine without being cruel or arrogant. And her heroines all exhibit my favorite traits – they are intelligent and kind and not masochistic doormats. Beauty Like the Night is on my short list of best European Historical Romances for 2000. I recommend it very highly – as a matter of fact, I’m going back to re-read some favorite parts right now.

Reviewed by Ellen Micheletti

Grade: B+

Sensuality: Hot

Review Date: 21/11/00

Publication Date: 2000

Recent Comments …

  1. excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.

guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments