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bookfortbuilder's review
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
jackiehorne's review against another edition
4.0
The most successful of the "Princess in Hiding" books, to my mind, perhaps because our hero and heroine seemed so well-matched. I enjoy stories where a previous story's villain becomes the hero, especially when his villainy was not just misunderstood goodness but really really bad behavior, and Leopold, the Earl of Somerton (the big bad in Gray's previous series) certainly fits that bill. The cross-dressing heroine trope works really well here, too, allowing our heroine, Princess Luisa (aka Mr. Markham, new secretary to the Earl) time to get to know her brusque boss, and to see how loneliness and disappointed hopes drive him to his less-than-honorable life choices. Luisa's ability to stand up to the earl doesn't come across as ahistorically feminist, because as the heir to a principality she's used to wielding authority and power. Gray's lovely language and comic touch, combined with the baddy-coming-to-realize-his-own-potential-for-good storyline and scorching sex scenes make for a winning read.
Hard to avoid in a "princess must regain her country" light comedy storyline, but the banishment of those working to free the country from despotic rule at book's end was disappointing from a justice POV...
Hard to avoid in a "princess must regain her country" light comedy storyline, but the banishment of those working to free the country from despotic rule at book's end was disappointing from a justice POV...
algae429's review against another edition
3.0
I think I missed reading the first two books in this series, so it felt kind of rushed to me. Nothing made sense and there was very much a "hurry up and finish this" feeling to the tale.
witandsin's review against another edition
3.0
Crown Princess Luisa of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof watched as the entire life she was raised to lead got turned upside down by the revolutionaries who murdered her father and her husband. Now disguised as a man and living in England while her uncle works to regain her crown, Luisa has gone from princess to personal secretary of the most dangerous man in England. The Earl of Somerton is dark, lethal, and extremely bitter. His wife is in love with another man and his focus has devolved into a quest for vengeance. Only Luisa seems able to reach him. But can she tell the man who trusts almost no one that she’s been keeping secrets from him? Even if he forgives her deception and promises to help her cause, Luisa isn’t so sure Somerton will ever be able to open his heart to her…and she’s very afraid she’s already lost hers to him.
The fate of a small German principality is decided in How to School Your Scoundrel. In the third Princess in Hiding book, Juliana Gray has penned a story filled with action, disguises, deception, redemption, and love.
Somerton is not an easy hero to like, but I grew to care about him fairly quickly, thanks to Ms. Gray’s talent. Somerton has never known love or genuine kindness, and each time he’s opened his heart he’s been slapped in the face in return. His marriage comes across as a twisted Beauty and the Beast story, one where Beauty would never give the beast a chance because he wasn’t the Adonis of her dreams. Somerton has become someone extremely bitter and hurt and it takes Luisa to bring him from the darkness to the light. Luisa is smart, capable, and just a bit cheeky. She doesn’t back down from Somerton and isn’t afraid to speak her mind. The two of them are a great pair and their relationship – both before it turned into a romance and after – gives How to School Your Scoundrel life.
How to School Your Scoundrel is a fast-paced read for the most part. The overarching series plot of the revolutionaries in Luisa’s country adds action to the story. Though I won’t spoil what happens, I will say that Ms. Gray resolves this plotline in a satisfying manner. Where How to School Your Scoundrel dragged was the plot involving Somerton’s wife. There seemed to be good chunks of the story missing, likely because Elizabeth and her lover are the hero and heroine of another book (A Gentleman Never Tells) and Somerton is presumably the villain in that story. Not having read A Gentleman Never Tells I only got Somerton’s point of view and thus many of the events in his book that paralleled Elizabeth’s story seemed out of place when they were only part of a larger story.
All in all, How to School Your Scoundrel is an enjoyable read and an excellent conclusion to the Princess in Hiding trilogy. I adored Luisa and Somerton together and their stellar chemistry had me turning the pages of their book late into the night.
Reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed
The fate of a small German principality is decided in How to School Your Scoundrel. In the third Princess in Hiding book, Juliana Gray has penned a story filled with action, disguises, deception, redemption, and love.
Somerton is not an easy hero to like, but I grew to care about him fairly quickly, thanks to Ms. Gray’s talent. Somerton has never known love or genuine kindness, and each time he’s opened his heart he’s been slapped in the face in return. His marriage comes across as a twisted Beauty and the Beast story, one where Beauty would never give the beast a chance because he wasn’t the Adonis of her dreams. Somerton has become someone extremely bitter and hurt and it takes Luisa to bring him from the darkness to the light. Luisa is smart, capable, and just a bit cheeky. She doesn’t back down from Somerton and isn’t afraid to speak her mind. The two of them are a great pair and their relationship – both before it turned into a romance and after – gives How to School Your Scoundrel life.
How to School Your Scoundrel is a fast-paced read for the most part. The overarching series plot of the revolutionaries in Luisa’s country adds action to the story. Though I won’t spoil what happens, I will say that Ms. Gray resolves this plotline in a satisfying manner. Where How to School Your Scoundrel dragged was the plot involving Somerton’s wife. There seemed to be good chunks of the story missing, likely because Elizabeth and her lover are the hero and heroine of another book (A Gentleman Never Tells) and Somerton is presumably the villain in that story. Not having read A Gentleman Never Tells I only got Somerton’s point of view and thus many of the events in his book that paralleled Elizabeth’s story seemed out of place when they were only part of a larger story.
All in all, How to School Your Scoundrel is an enjoyable read and an excellent conclusion to the Princess in Hiding trilogy. I adored Luisa and Somerton together and their stellar chemistry had me turning the pages of their book late into the night.
Reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed
bibliowhore's review against another edition
i do not care if this man had a tragic past—it is never an excuse. why the fuck is this man acting like he’s such a victim when he’s the one who forced the woman to marry him against her will? his actions were irredeemable and frankly he’s a disgusting pig
cdb393's review against another edition
2.0
I appreciate that Gray was trying give us a different, more complex hero than you usually see in romances. In this case, I never really liked Somerton. Occasionally, I found his situation sympathetic but I felt he caused it himself by his selfish actions. I know by the end we are supposed to believe that he's changed because of his love for Luisa but I never felt that. I never felt any sort of chemistry between Luisa and Somerton; their romance never felt believable to me.
I didn't really care for Luisa either. She didn't seem very proactive about trying to regain her throne. Her sisters, heroines in the previous books of the series, were always concerned about each other and how they were faring. Luisa didn't seem too concerned about them.
I also had a lot of problems with figuring out the timing of events in all three of the books. How the events that happened in the three books happened and when they happened just didn't seem to mesh together correctly. Plus, so many questions were raised but never really answered in this book. Did Somerton ever repair his relationship with his son from his first wife or did he just start over and leave him in the past? We get lip service that he wants to see him from time to time and we know the boy is his heir but we never see nor are we told he makes an effort to become a better father to his son. How did the fact that he had an affair with his now sister-in-law's husband's first wife that produced a child that his sister-in-law and her husband are now raising as their own work out? The whole family is present for the epilogue so obviously he has to have interaction with his daughter. Gray concocted some rather complex family dynamics then never gives them even a cursory resolution. I found this annoying.
Overall, I feel this was the weakest book of the series not only because it doesn't do what it needs to to conclude the series satisfactorily but also because the romance and plot line weren't developed well.
I didn't really care for Luisa either. She didn't seem very proactive about trying to regain her throne. Her sisters, heroines in the previous books of the series, were always concerned about each other and how they were faring. Luisa didn't seem too concerned about them.
I also had a lot of problems with figuring out the timing of events in all three of the books. How the events that happened in the three books happened and when they happened just didn't seem to mesh together correctly. Plus, so many questions were raised but never really answered in this book. Did Somerton ever repair his relationship with his son from his first wife or did he just start over and leave him in the past? We get lip service that he wants to see him from time to time and we know the boy is his heir but we never see nor are we told he makes an effort to become a better father to his son. How did the fact that he had an affair with his now sister-in-law's husband's first wife that produced a child that his sister-in-law and her husband are now raising as their own work out? The whole family is present for the epilogue so obviously he has to have interaction with his daughter. Gray concocted some rather complex family dynamics then never gives them even a cursory resolution. I found this annoying.
Overall, I feel this was the weakest book of the series not only because it doesn't do what it needs to to conclude the series satisfactorily but also because the romance and plot line weren't developed well.
sheltzer's review against another edition
Luisa is the Crown Princess of some Germanic principality. She and her sisters are kidnapped after their father dies. Her uncle, the duke, comes up with this hair-brained scheme that the 3 sisters and their governess will dress as men and he will dress as a woman to hide from the bad guys. Somerton hires Luisa as his personal secretary.
The hiding scheme is preposterous. Somerton's an ass. Luisa is not charming enough to make up for it. The comedic relief characters aren't really comedic so much as sad and one-dimensional. I don't expect much from a paperback romance, but this didn't live up to my expectations.
There are too many books I want to read for me to continue with one that I can only describe as a chore...
The hiding scheme is preposterous. Somerton's an ass. Luisa is not charming enough to make up for it. The comedic relief characters aren't really comedic so much as sad and one-dimensional. I don't expect much from a paperback romance, but this didn't live up to my expectations.
There are too many books I want to read for me to continue with one that I can only describe as a chore...
sadtomato's review against another edition
4.0
It's a shame there's too much plot in the book because I like their relationship a lot and I would have loved more time and space for the romance and not so much action. But I really like the characters and how they grow to know and respect and love each other.
sarah1984's review against another edition
3.0
SPOILERS THROUGHOUT!!
20/11 - What an outlandish plot (and this is a romance, so that's saying something)! Three princesses (this is the third in the series, featuring Luisa the oldest sister and future queen) in hiding after the murder of their father and husband (or brother-in-law). A rogue group of revolutionaries have run the princesses out of their tiny German principality and sent them into hiding in the houses of appropriately dangerous (and therefore protective) men. The two people who have been deemed to still be loyal to the royal family are Miss Dingleby (their governess) and their uncle (father's brother, I think *edit to say I was wrong, he's actually Luisa's mother's brother*) the Duke of Olympia (finally checked, just before I returned it to the library this morning). It seems Uncle (it seems he has no first name, he's just Uncle, Aunt Duke, or the Duke of Olympia) is some kind of spymaster and has 'agents', including (to my surprise considering this isn't a contemporary romance) Miss Dingleby, peppered throughout Europe (were there female spy agents in the 1890s?).
In order to stay disguised from those revolutionaries everyone needs to crossdress! Miss Dingleby becomes a Mister and so do all three of the princesses (breast-binding and fake whiskers abound), while Uncle becomes Aunt Duke from Battersea who wears lavish dresses and flamboyant, ostrich-plumed hats. Now, I've read a few 'girl needs to dress as man due to circumstances, then falls in love with man she's working with as a man' stories, but none of them have ever featured the storyline of 'loyal male family member becomes outrageous drag queen in order to continue protecting said girl'. That's a bit different and I'm having trouble believing that a man of that era would even consider, let alone be willing to, dress as a woman.
Women dressing as men due to necessity was common (if you take what fiction tells us at face value), even Shakespeare wrote about it, and that brings me to my favourite example of this subgenre - Seduced by Virginia Henley https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1150555.Seduced?ac=1, which is a retelling and reimagining of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. That's what I was hoping for when I picked this up, but unfortunately I don't feel the passion (there wasn't even a sexy 'she's a girl' reveal scene that this kind of book usually features), there have been no amusing 'she's a she, but he thinks she's a he and treats her accordingly' scenes, and I'm finding Somerton really abrasive. He's so bad-tempered, so vindictive that I don't feel comforted by his 'dangerousness' (that I think is meant to translate into protectiveness, but really doesn't), I just feel annoyed. I read in another review that he was the bad guy in another of Gray's books, and I can definitely feel that kind of vibe coming from him, but I don't think he's changed enough (or believably) for him to become this book's hero (maybe an anti-hero, but I don't think that's what the author was going for). Anyway, not quite finished yet, so I'll be back later to finish this up. To be continued...
21/11 - The lack of passion and love I mentioned before didn't get any less lacking in the last third of the book, even with Somerton (Leopold Somerton, I eventually learned) and Markham (as he continues to insist on calling her) getting married and spending two weeks doing it in every location and position imaginable (well, in those days at least), not that that is detailed, we're just told about it at the end of those two weeks when Olympia turns up to put an end to the conjugal bliss because it's time to make a play for her lost principality. I don't think it's particularly conducive to passion when the heroine calls her hero by his last name (so much so, that I don't think the reader knows his Christian name until after they're married) and the hero calls his heroine by her male alternate-identity's name. If either of the first two books appeared on the 'impulse borrowing' shelf (as I've begun calling my library's 'new and recently returned' shelf, due to my habit of impulse borrowing from it every time I go anywhere near it) I would get them, but I wouldn't bother to search them out or put them on hold.
20/11 - What an outlandish plot (and this is a romance, so that's saying something)! Three princesses (this is the third in the series, featuring Luisa the oldest sister and future queen) in hiding after the murder of their father and husband (or brother-in-law). A rogue group of revolutionaries have run the princesses out of their tiny German principality and sent them into hiding in the houses of appropriately dangerous (and therefore protective) men. The two people who have been deemed to still be loyal to the royal family are Miss Dingleby (their governess) and their uncle (father's brother, I think *edit to say I was wrong, he's actually Luisa's mother's brother*) the Duke of Olympia (finally checked, just before I returned it to the library this morning). It seems Uncle (it seems he has no first name, he's just Uncle, Aunt Duke, or the Duke of Olympia) is some kind of spymaster and has 'agents', including (to my surprise considering this isn't a contemporary romance) Miss Dingleby, peppered throughout Europe (were there female spy agents in the 1890s?).
In order to stay disguised from those revolutionaries everyone needs to crossdress! Miss Dingleby becomes a Mister and so do all three of the princesses (breast-binding and fake whiskers abound), while Uncle becomes Aunt Duke from Battersea who wears lavish dresses and flamboyant, ostrich-plumed hats. Now, I've read a few 'girl needs to dress as man due to circumstances, then falls in love with man she's working with as a man' stories, but none of them have ever featured the storyline of 'loyal male family member becomes outrageous drag queen in order to continue protecting said girl'. That's a bit different and I'm having trouble believing that a man of that era would even consider, let alone be willing to, dress as a woman.
Women dressing as men due to necessity was common (if you take what fiction tells us at face value), even Shakespeare wrote about it, and that brings me to my favourite example of this subgenre - Seduced by Virginia Henley https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1150555.Seduced?ac=1, which is a retelling and reimagining of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. That's what I was hoping for when I picked this up, but unfortunately I don't feel the passion (there wasn't even a sexy 'she's a girl' reveal scene that this kind of book usually features), there have been no amusing 'she's a she, but he thinks she's a he and treats her accordingly' scenes, and I'm finding Somerton really abrasive. He's so bad-tempered, so vindictive that I don't feel comforted by his 'dangerousness' (that I think is meant to translate into protectiveness, but really doesn't), I just feel annoyed. I read in another review that he was the bad guy in another of Gray's books, and I can definitely feel that kind of vibe coming from him, but I don't think he's changed enough (or believably) for him to become this book's hero (maybe an anti-hero, but I don't think that's what the author was going for). Anyway, not quite finished yet, so I'll be back later to finish this up. To be continued...
21/11 - The lack of passion and love I mentioned before didn't get any less lacking in the last third of the book, even with Somerton (Leopold Somerton, I eventually learned) and Markham (as he continues to insist on calling her) getting married and spending two weeks doing it in every location and position imaginable (well, in those days at least), not that that is detailed, we're just told about it at the end of those two weeks when Olympia turns up to put an end to the conjugal bliss because it's time to make a play for her lost principality. I don't think it's particularly conducive to passion when the heroine calls her hero by his last name (so much so, that I don't think the reader knows his Christian name until after they're married) and the hero calls his heroine by her male alternate-identity's name. If either of the first two books appeared on the 'impulse borrowing' shelf (as I've begun calling my library's 'new and recently returned' shelf, due to my habit of impulse borrowing from it every time I go anywhere near it) I would get them, but I wouldn't bother to search them out or put them on hold.
amshofner's review against another edition
3.0
The hero -- and I use that term loosely -- in this book spends approximately 50% of it married to another woman. While there's nothing sexual between the hero and heroine during that time, the hero isn't faithful. (And he has at least four bastards.) I struggled with liking him. The way he treated his wife sexually was appalling. Oh, he gave her pleasure alright, but pleasure doesn't make it okay. It made me feel rather icky.
Do I think he was the right kind of man to help Luisa regain her throne and rule? Sure. But as a romance novel hero, he left a lot to be desired for me, and that soured my experience with How to School Your Scoundrel.
I spent a good portion of the book wondering how the hero and his wife would part ways so as to allow him to marry Luisa (because, you know, that's how things work), and I can't say I was all that pleased with the outcome, even though it was certainly the nicest option.
Do I think he was the right kind of man to help Luisa regain her throne and rule? Sure. But as a romance novel hero, he left a lot to be desired for me, and that soured my experience with How to School Your Scoundrel.
I spent a good portion of the book wondering how the hero and his wife would part ways so as to allow him to marry Luisa (because, you know, that's how things work), and I can't say I was all that pleased with the outcome, even though it was certainly the nicest option.