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Pity poor Evangeline Clemens. She was educated at a proper English academy where young ladies were taught “only to expect the conventional from life, and to be indignant when the extraordinary thrust itself upon them.” Evangeline is headed for Boston to become a governess. Along the way, however, the extraordinary abruptly thrusts itself upon her in a big way. She is forced to participate in a mutiny and made to attempt to seduce Captain Austin Blackwell, who is not at all averse to sharing passionate kisses with her. Not long after, she’s kidnapped at the point of a pistol and forced aboard a British frigate. From there, she’s taken to Havana and forced to lay explosives to facilitate a jailbreak. For an aging, plain spinster, Evangeline has suddenly developed an extremely busy life.
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I know it sounds a bit on the silly side, but Perils of the Heart is just plain fun. It has action and adventure, lust, and a sweetly naive heroine with nerves of steel, whose motto is survive first. It also features a way-over-the-top villainess, a sexily determined hero, and intrigue. I don’t usually like romances that rely heavily on action to advance the plot, but this one worked for me.
To be sure, this isn’t a book you can take too seriously. The villainess is utterly unbelievable, bending men to her will by her incredible beauty and a cleverly exposed breast or two. In real life, men simply aren’t that stupid. (At least, I sincerely hope not.) And the heroine is swept from wild situation to wilder situation so relentlessly that the breathless reader needs a tank of oxygen to keep up. But who cares if it’s realistic when you’re having this much fun?
The beginning is exciting, but Jennifer Ashley doesn’t rely solely on action to drive her plot. After the first third of the book, the frenetic flood of action slows to a trickle, allowing the author to deepen her characterizations. Unfortunately, the switch from action-driven plot to character-driven plot does create the book’s biggest flaw, a slight unevenness in pacing. The middle doesn’t exactly sag, but it is a lot slower than those first hundred pages or so. But the characters are so well-drawn that the book doesn’t falter to a halt.
At first the hero and heroine appear to be stock characters: a plain, bespectacled spinster and a loner sea captain. (We’ve met those characters in a thousand different romances, haven’t we?) Yet here they don’t come across as cardboard cutouts, but as people. Austin Blackwell is perhaps a trifle larger than life, a hero worthy of the name, a man who risks his own life to rescue the young traitor who’s made more than one attempt to kill him. But Austin is not one of those rocklike, stolid heroes; on the contrary, he’s possessed of a charming vulnerability. After he rescues the young man, nearly dying in the process, his fear of death almost overwhelms him. He realizes he desperately needs Evangeline to warm his… er, heart. And Evangeline is more than happy to help.
Evangeline may be a spinster, but cold and prim she is not. In fact, the morning after Austin “ruins” her she ruminates upon how wicked she is, making the reader worry that she is about to descend into the dreaded Angry Former Virgin stereotype. Her next thought, however, is that “she liked being wicked.” Now there’s a former virgin I can relate to. Yet she reads her Bible every night and can’t get to sleep without it. She’s religious, but not repressed; naive, but not frigid.
There’s certainly a lot of action in this book, but all of the conflict in the book isn’t external. Austin had a previous unhappy marriage to a young lady who wanted him to give up his life on the sea and stay at home. Now he’s convinced that in order to make another marriage work, he’ll have to give up the sea entirely. But Evangeline is afraid that if he gives up the work that he loves, he’ll grow to resent her. And Evangeline also has to make a difficult decision of her own. She must choose between Austin and another man, one who can offer her a title and the opportunity to redeem herself in the eyes of her family.
Austin’s feelings for Evangeline are genuine, beyond a shadow of a doubt. In the early part of the book, Austin is willing to follow Evangeline to Havana to rescue her, although he isn’t entirely sure she didn’t voluntarily participate in the mutiny aboard his own ship. Later he’s willing to marry her, even though he suspects she may be an English agent. Austin thinks with his heart rather than his brain, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing in a man. At least he doesn’t do his thinking entirely with that part of the anatomy so many romantic heroes seem to reason with.
My biggest complaint about this book has nothing whatsoever to do with the author (and thus did not impact the grade I gave it). The writing on the back blurb (“one harrowing night fraught with passion and peril” is but one horrific example) sounds like the floridly purple writing featured in 1970’s bodice rippers. The problem is, it bears little resemblance to the actual writing style of the book, which is not nearly so purple. It makes me wonder how many people aren’t reading books published by Leisure because the awful writing on the covers puts them off.
I will admit that Ashley’s own writing does occasionally tend to wander into mildly lavender shades, especially during love scenes. But the writing style fits the somewhat melodramatic plotting and larger-than-life characters. Perils of the Heart actually reminds me a bit of an old-fashioned romance updated with more sensible characters. It’s campy but fun.
My advice? Read Perils of the Heart. Just make sure you skip the cover blurb.
Grade: B+
Book Type: Historical Romance
Sensuality: Hot
Review Date: 13/01/03
Publication Date: 2002
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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.