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This is a difficult book to grade. It took me two weeks to get through the interminable first 190 pages, and then I devoured the remainder in an evening. It features the kind of selfish jackass hero that, under the right circumstances, I sometimes like. The first 190 pages do not provide the right circumstances, though, and I didn’t like him – or The Princess of Park Lane – at all.
This is a Cinderella story. The fairy godmother is Lady May Hayworth, a fashionable widow who has just discovered that her beloved brother Woolrich, recently deceased, left behind dozens of bastards. She is charmed by the idea of finding these children, providing them with an inheritance, and sponsoring them in society.
Michaela Standish is one of her brother’s bastards. Pretty, of respectable family, but without a dowry, she has never had a Season. She has always wondered why she isn’t anything like the rest of her family, and feels isolated and unloved. When she is informed that she is a nobleman’s bastard, she is actually relieved – it answers so many questions.
I have problems with this setup for a number of reasons. First, if I discovered that the man I called “dad” was not my father, I think I would have some sort of emotional reaction beyond “Aha!”. Then there are the social consequences of illegitimacy, or more accurately, the lack thereof. May assures Michaela that there will be no scandal, even though she looks exactly like Woolrich and everyone immediately assumes that she is his bastard. I might be able to accept that Michaela would be accepted by polite society, if she is beautiful and wealthy enough, but not without so much as a ripple. And surely the reputation of her mother would be utterly destroyed. This doesn’t happen. Michaela’s illegitimacy has no social fallout whatsoever, for her or her family.
Michaela proceeds to make her come-out in London, sponsored by Lady May. At her first ball, she flirts lightly with a famous war hero, Adrian Khoury. Adrian promptly assumes that Michaela is a courtesan, and decides on the spot to make her his mistress. Let me be clear – as far as I could tell, there is absolutely no reason for him to assume this, and I thought he was insane. He wrongly interprets her innocent chat as sexual innuendo, and comes very near to ravishing her in a parlor. When she weakly protests, he blames the whole misunderstanding on her wanton behavior. By the time this encounter ends, Michaela is apologizing to him and thanking him for teaching her a valuable lesson.
It was page 44, and I was infuriated. I hated both characters, him for being such a selfish and disgusting boor, and her for being a sniveling doormat. I put the book down and didn’t pick it up for several days.
The “courtship” between Michaela and Adrian goes on like that. I put courtship in quotation marks because Adrian has no interest in making Michaela his wife. He plans to run for the House of Commons, and has been instructed to make a political marriage to a war widow. This he intends to do, but meanwhile he schemes to get Michaela into bed. The fact that this would be a cruel thing to do to a gently-bred middle-class virgin who wants to get married someday does not even enter his thoughts. He follows her around, making suggestive comments apparently calculated to ruin her reputation. She tries to avoid him but longs for him. I think the author tries to fill this section with clever repartee, but it fails utterly to be witty; it’s just a long sequence of encounters in which Adrian bullies Michaela and she feebly responds with some stinging retort like, “You’re incorrigible.” I had to grit my teeth to get through these pages.
When Michaela (just barely) doesn’t become his mistress, Adrian decides that he must have her anyway, and they elope. At this point in the book – about page 190 – I was doggedly forcing myself to read a few pages at a time. To my surprise, though, after the elopement things actually got a lot more interesting. Despite some great sex, Adrian and Michaela are still at odds, mostly due to Adrian’s unwillingness to communicate. This leads to a confrontation in which Michaela actually demonstrates that she has a backbone. The result is thrilling and sizzling: a long, emotionally intense and sexually charged scene that took my breath away.
The rest of the book is a complete revelation: the emotionally taut story of two proud, intelligent people, both in love, both longing to make their marriage work but unable to bridge the gap between them. It’s sexy, heart-breaking, and romantic, and I really enjoyed it.
Unfortunately, it came way too late. A general grading guideline at AAR is that if a book eventually entertains, it shouldn’t be a D. But had I not read this book for review, I’d never have gotten anywhere near the part where it entertains; I’d have gotten to page 44 and hied it off to the first used book store that would take it. So I gave it a D+. The last 140 pages deserve a B, but the excruciating first 190 make for a solid F and are too high a price to pay. Jacqueline Navin has it in her to write a good book, but she writes less than half of one here.
Grade: D+
Book Type: European Historical Romance
Sensuality: Hot
Review Date: 30/12/03
Publication Date: 2003
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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.