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If you were a fan of the old AAR Purple Prose Parody contests, with their send-ups of genre tropes and in-jokes, then have I got a book for you. My Lady’s Choosing is a mature-audience’s romance version of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure stories of ‘80s childhoods, and I highly recommend it for the romance megafan who’s read everything. In fact, the more you’ve read, the more you’ll enjoy this book.
Obviously, I can’t give you a plot summary, because there are too many plots to summarize. Instead, this is the premise: you are the twenty-eight-year-old companion to a cranky dowager, and your life is about to change. Will you thaw the chilly heart of a supercilious aristocrat? Rescue orphans with a rugged Highlander? Become the governess to a brooding man with dark secrets? Travel to Egypt to seek the buried temples, and once there, fall in love with a French mercenary, an Egyptian museum curator – or Lady Evangeline, the woman who brought you to Egypt? (Yes, there’s an F/F option!) Some plot trees lead to spy thrillers, pirate adventures, and even paranormals. Whatever you love most in our genre, you’ll find it here.
The prose in this book is delightful. While it pokes fun at the conventions and clichés of romance writing, the authors’ genuine writing talent, sense of humor, and sincere affection for the genre always shine through. St. Giles is full of “thieves, murderers, murderous thieves, and at least eight different people exclaiming “Lawks!”” You can live at Manberley, fall for a man named Fabien de Mangepoussey, and be scolded by the authors if you attempt to run away from the dowager and make your own way in London (“you will be utterly doomed and dead from syphilis within a year. Sorry. This may be a choosable-path adventure, but as a penniless young unmarried woman at the start of the nineteenth century, your options are somewhat limited.”). The sex scenes are deliberately purple in a winking way. I lost track of puns involving cabers and obelisks. One hero leaves the heroine’s “ample bosom laced with a brocade of his ecstasy,” which would definitely have inspired close textual analysis at my middle school sleepovers.
My criticism of the book is that with so many romance options in the page count of a standard novel, no one storyline can developed in-depth. As storylines separate and then come back together, you have to be able to join, for instance, Lord Craven’s plot as if you never came 80% of the way to marrying Captain MacTaggart. Since romances are, at their core, about the love stories, I can’t help dinging the grade for this. Also, while no ending is a downer, there are a few non-relationship endings – although more in a ‘if this book was part of a series, you’d have a great time in the sequel’ kind of way, which is, itself, true to the spirit of romance publishing.
I wish grown-ups had slumber parties, because I cannot imagine a better way to stay up too late than with some fellow romance fans and this book. But even reading by yourself, it’s a real hoot, and I can honestly say you’ll want to read it again and again. What’s more of a Desert Isle Keeper than that?
Buy it at: Amazon
Grade: A-
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 23/05/18
Publication Date: 04/2018
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.
Yep, definitely buying this one to keep about for party games!
There is a tongue-in-cheek “choose your own romance” section in “Beyond Heaving Bosoms”, by the ladies behind Smart Bitches Trashy Books.
I played. I must have made very bad choices, because the first time my character became an opium-addicted prostitute (game over). The second time my character was murdered by the man she had a crush on (game definitely over). There was no third time, which was the happiest ending I could have hoped for.
I am laughing at the tragic endings to your characters’ romances. I need to go dig out my copy because I don’t remember this part.
I have that book and played through it too! My heroine only got the boring ending, alas!
It could be a fun book for a romance book group to read and discuss. I suggested it to the moderator of my group. We’ll see if it’s chosen.
I didn’t think about book clubs! That would be a fun option, especially to compare and contrast everybody’s outcomes.
Okay, you had me at “choose your own adventure” and now I want a giggling group of ladies at a slumber party reading this aloud.